Synopsis Love, art tragedy, loyalty, ambition and the passing of eras in our own recent history all intermingle in this masterpiece from the author of The Absence of War, Racing Demon and (with Howard BrentonPravda). Originally performed by the Royal National Theatre and on Broadway Amy's View follows the relationship between Amy Thomas, the man in her life and her eccentric actress mother, as it develops through a decade and a half of social change and growing maturity - from the passionate idealism of the 70s, through the self-promoting cynicism of the 80s and 90s when, at last, it might just be possible to find redemption of a sort through acceptance of 'Amy's view'.
Peter Hall’s new production of David Hare’s 1997 play Amy's View - starring Felicity Kendal (pictured) in the part of ageing actress Esme Allen, originated by Dame Judi Dench – opened at the West End’s Garrick Theatre on Monday (20 November 2006, previews from 14 November), following a regional tour (See News, 16 Aug 2006).
Esme, a West End veteran who makes a living through TV soap operas, is locked in a battle of ideology and emotional conflict with her daughter Amy. Spanning the years from Labour's fall from power in 1979 to post-Thatcherite England in 1995, Amy's View premiered in 1997 at the National - directed by Richard Eyre, Hall’s successor as NT artistic director, and starring Dench opposite Samantha Bond as Amy - and subsequently transferred to the West End and Broadway.
Hall’s new production, the play’s first major London revival, incorporates revisions Hare made for the Broadway premiere and co-stars Jenna Russell, seen earlier this year in the West End in Sunday in the Park with George. It’s designed by Simon Higlett, with lighting by Peter Mumford and sound by Gregory Clarke.
Overnight critics gave largely positive notices, with all enjoying the drama and the cast’s performances. Kendal, in particular, won raves for a mature turn, playing against her usual “winsome” image, while Jenna Russell and, in supporting roles, Gawn Grainger, Ryan Kiggell and Antonia Pemberton were also praised. While critics disagreed about the enduring merits of Hare’s play itself – with descriptions ranging from modern classic to dated - they felt that Hall’s “excellent” production raised interesting issues about art, politics and relationships.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (4 stars) - “There are so many things to enjoy about David Hare’s 1997 play, revived in a production of great clarity and classical poise by Peter Hall…. It is Felicity Kendal’s considerable achievement to make the part resoundingly her own. Her performance is utterly captivating…. This is a long journey, but Hare’s play is so skilfully fashioned and interesting on a line-by-line basis that you only appreciate its architecture on the way home…. At the crux of what happens is her volcanic relationship with Amy, winningly played by Jenna Russell as a critical friend, as well as a loyal daughter…. Handsomely designed by Simon Higlett, exquisitely lit by Peter Mumford, this superb play – I’d say it was a modern classic - deserves to draw the town and enrich the West End theatre list for many months.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (4 stars) – “In Peter Hall's expert revival, (Hare’s play) seems a less sentimental paean to theatre than it once did…. Its marriage of family drama and state-of-the-nation commentary emerges more clearly…. On a first viewing, the personal drama and the cultural debate never seemed totally in synch. But here there seems more intensity in the mother-daughter relationship. Felicity Kendal is excellent, playing Esme as a capricious, vain, and sometimes infuriating woman who views her daughter with an exasperated love…. Meanwhile, Jenna Russell intelligently implies that, for all her attacks on Esme's wafting dreaminess, Amy has something of her mother's obduracy…. In Ryan Kiggell's sympathetic performance, you understand his sense of exclusion from this family relationship, and his dislike of theatrical clannishness…. Hall's production heightens the play's Chekhovian undertones. Gawn Grainger gives a pitch-perfect performance as Esme's quietly adoring neighbour.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (4 stars) - “Those who still think of Kendal as the pert chipmunk of yesteryear will be as surprised by her strong, doughty performance as they must have been when she recently played Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days…. She’s acquired the depth and, where needed, the gravity that seemed missing in her cuter, more winsome days. But how has the play itself fared? As Peter Hall’s revival proves, not at all badly…. In many ways… Amy's View is a well-written mother-in-law play. But, Hare being Hare, Esme and Dominic’s cultural attitudes largely cause and shape their mutual dislike. Dominic despises the theatre as elitist, arty-farty and, compared to the electronic arts, embarrassingly old-fashioned and dull. And he proceeds to become slickly successful…. All Sir Peter’s cast do their bit: from Kiggell, who brings aggro and punch to Dominic, to Gawn Grainger, who is gloriously flummoxed as Frank…. But it’s Kendal who gives the lie to those who underrated her. At the end, she’s quietly, movingly heroic.”
Sheridan Morley in the Daily Express - “Just under a decade after it was first and last seen at the National, David Hare’s Amy's View re-emerges as one of his most personal and least publicly political plays…. Although largely set in a Thames Valley cottage, this is centrally a play about the theatre where we end up: on one level it’s all grease-painted views through a dressing-room mirror darkly, but Hare brilliantly keeps us away from a land for luvvies only by running throughout his script an almost soap-operatic plot about the daughter giving her heart and children to the wrong man, and the mother in perpetual mourning for the right one despite the new suitor (a superbly double-faced Gawn Grainger)…. Real life keeps crashing into the footlights and the arc lights, and once again Hare takes our national temperature, remarking in passing that it is Amy herself, the one character with her feet apparently firmly on the ground, whose view (that all will be well if we are just very nice to each other) turns out in the end to be the most deluded of all…. Peter Hall’s new production is suitably and unashamedly theatrical, and apart from the central casting there are brilliant performances from Antonia Pemberton as the Alzheimer’s-riddled grandmother and Ryan Kiggell as the treacherous young director. But in the end it is clear that Hare’s heart is with the rapidly ageing actress and her fight for theatrical and personal survival against all odds.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (3 stars) – “What a blast of dramatic irony attends Peter Hall's emotionally charged revival of this nine-year-old play by David Hare…. For Amy's View arrives when the serious West End play is being declared an endangered species…. The play still strikes me, though, as startlingly conservative in style and sympathies, harking back to the Fifties work of NC Hunter and Robert Bolt…. Hare's focus is on those opposing credos of mother and daughter which ultimately destroy the lives of both under-characterised women. Esme puts passion into theatre and her daughter's life - about which she feels free to pass judgment. By contrast, Jenna Russell's wan, rather too cool Amy relies upon her pacific, platitudinous view that love conquers all…. Kendal, exuding that formidable charm and sweetness of hers, is less grand, steely or passionate than Judi Dench's original Esme and sometimes relies too much on actressy hand gestures. Yet in Esme's final incarnation as a bereaved, penniless, lonely actress… Kendal achieves a sensational poignancy.”
There are so many things to enjoy about David Hare’s 1997 play, revived in a production of great clarity and classical poise by Peter Hall, that one feels spoilt for choice in discussing them. Set in rural Berkshire, covering sixteen years (1979 to 1995) of political and cultural upheaval, and ending finally backstage in a small West End theatre, it is first and foremost the story of an actress, Esme Allen, dealing with her daughter, Amy, and her own career.
Esme was played originally at the National Theatre by Judi Dench. It is Felicity Kendal’s considerable achievement to make the part resoundingly her own. Her performance is utterly captivating, going from the fluttering dominance of her post-theatre euphoria to a steely defence of her profession, financial ruin, reconciliation with the film critic and director who betrayed her daughter, and resolution to survive in art.
This is a long journey, but Hare’s play is so skilfully fashioned and interesting on a line-by-line basis that you only appreciate its architecture on the way home. For the changing mood of the times, and the characters’ fortunes, is revealed in their arguments. Amy used to express her views in a school newspaper. Her boyfriend, Dominic (Ryan Kiggell), is at first a film critic (“In my day we just watched them,” says Esme, witheringly) and newspaper diarist. He will later have made a film replete with violence, which he euphemistically calls “action.”
The richness of the play comes from this distinction between what people say and how they behave. Ironically, the actress Esme, who inhabits other people’s worlds in her profession, is revealed as a tragic role played out for real. At the crux of what happens is her volcanic relationship with Amy, winningly played by Jenna Russell as a critical friend, as well as a loyal daughter. When Amy becomes pregnant, Dominic’s behaviour does not improve. But the thunderbolt of the last act brings Esme and the adversary who finds theatre “irrelevant” much closer together.
By this time Esme has lost all her money in the Lloyd’s catastrophe following the advice of a devoted alcoholic neighbour - beautifully played almost sotto voce by Gawn Grainger - a metaphorical instance of having to live with the consequences of unconditional trust. The third act opens with Esme’s funny, bravura speech about the reality of working in a television soap opera, brilliantly delivered by Kendal, while Dominic’s career, of course, is in the ascendant.
The personal stories acquire focus and depth because of the vividly implied background. You get a sense of the moral and ethical ideologies of the 1980s, the brazen Philistinism, the contempt for seriousness in the arts, the brutality of city financial arrangements. And as a reminder of the painter husband she lost fifteen years previously – he was part of no school or movement, Esme pointedly tells Dominic – Esme’s mother-in-law (the wonderful veteran Antonia Pemberton) potters helpfully around the house until immobilised in the third act, staring pitifully and permanently out of the kitchen window. Handsomely designed by Simon Higlett, exquisitely lit by Peter Mumford, this superb play – I’d say it was a modern classic - deserves to draw the town and enrich the West End theatre list for many months.
saw this matinee 14 December. I came to it with no pre-conceived ideas as i had not seen Judi Dench in the role of Esme. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thought that Felicity Kendal was excellent as indeed were the rest of the cast. It is an absolute "must" for the older generation who have experienced a bit of life! Go see it soon because there were quite a few empty seats. - 82.35.9.63)
14 Dec 06
No other playwright is as adept as David Hare at addressing major political and sociological issues while never losing sight of the humanity and credibility of his central characters, and it is wonderful to welcome this engrossing piece back to the West End in Peter Hall's slick, satisfying production. In what may be the performance of her career, Felicity Kendal succeeds triumphantly in banishing all memories of Judi Dench as ageing actress Esme Allen, beginning with the mixture of self-absorption and generosity of spirit that characterises so many performers, and ending up with a nobility and intensity of well nigh classical strength as her world collapses around her. She is utterly magnificent, and will come as a revelation to those who only know her from TV work. Jenna Russell's intelligent, warm, sympathetic Amy is an improvement on Samantha Bond's original interpretation: the mother-daughter showdown in Act 2 is electrifying. A superb supporting cast, a fine script and beautiful set complete a perfect picture. I laughed and cried....just cannot recommend this highly enough. - 80.225.163.59)
10 Dec 06
Strangely for a David Hare play this is very reminiscent of Noel Coward's Hay Fever, particularly as Felicity Kendall sounds uncannily like Judi Dench, who originated the role of Esme. Like Mrs. Bliss, Esme is an eccentric actress who dotes on her daughter and enjoys disapproving of her prospective son-in-law. The play catches fire in a superb third act when Esme has to deal with financial ruin and Amy with the loss of her husband and the betrayal of her rose-tinted view of life. Unfortunately the final act is a disappointment bringing more tragedy and an unconvincing reconcilliation but does not add to the drama and could easily have been cut without significantly damaging the piece. However, I was a teenager in the 70s so of course I fell in love with Felicity Kendall as did millions of others. It is a privelege to see this great actress in a dramatic role and there is also a special laugh for the line where she complains about living in Surbiton (the setting for the Good Life for younger readers). - 62.6.139.13)
24 Nov 06
I'm afraid I don't think it has passed the test of time. Here in 2006, the play fails to resonate like it did 9 years ago. It's an efficient enough production, but it made nothing like the impact it did first time around. - 89.168.30.44)
Opened on 24 Apr 1889, funded by W.S. Gilbert. 675 seats. Bought from Andrew Lloyd Webber and now owned by Broadway producer Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns.Society of London Theatre member.
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