(seen at the afternoon performance on 5th September 2024)
Written in 1982, everything about this play felt like a nostalgia trip for the monkey. It had forgotten just how sophisticated West End plays were back then.
Writers like Stoppard could rely on their audience having inquisitive minds and a breadth of “common knowledge.” This allowed reference to events recent and historical, processed quickly into enriching extra context rather than the current requirement of explaining lines and limiting ideas to one concept at a time.
British deflection through acid humour is key. James McArdle’s Henry is an arrogant theatre director, self-obsessed yet oddly vulnerable. With first wife Charlotte (Susan Wokoma) he is comfortable enough to cheat. With second wife Annie (Bel Powley) he is insecure about meeting her needs - motivational psychology neatly reversed.
Wokoma in turn is having an affair at the start of the play with Max (Oliver Johnstone). Johnstone is “Henry Lite,” without the status and ego to crush fully, but distilling nicely his own acid.
Irritatingly, Wokoma does not find the snappy return service her lines require in her opening scenes, but seems comfortable with her later maternal ones with daughter Debbie (Karise Yansen). Yansen’s quiet rebellion is well-judged, another reminder of a different world in which 17 was more than old enough to contemplate wild experimentation.
To complete the adult quartet, Annie was with Max, and moves on to Henry. Powley makes the most of her flirtatious seduction sequence, gliding smoothly on to a dalliance with rebel Brodie (Jack Ambrose, suitably looming and contemptuous of the ruling classes before Twitter was anything other than a birdsong, X a film rating); and fellow actor Billy (Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran, innocence concealing other motives).
Leaving aside the ubiquitous “halo light over the stage” which, being fair, does work effectively to close down the angle for an intimate train ride or three, Peter McKinstosh’s set and costumes provide excellent cover for these machinations.
The angular white furnishings of the era, the stark clothing are accurate, as is the Saturn ring light-shade. Dark blue walls with mouldings conceal entrances, and Richard Howell bathes each moment in the fuzzy light we remember before L.E.D. bulbs. Best of all, they find a VHS video recorder. Perhaps too compact for the era, but near enough.
Alexandra Faye Braithwaite never loses a line in the sound design, the only oddity being how a centre-stage record player rather too noticeably pauses as it expands in volume when connecting to the main auditorium amplification system.
As a staging device, however, Max Webster has found a good one. The songs of the era are well-chosen and a lovely moment by Chi-San Howard has the very visible stage team acknowledging their own existence, shuffling furniture as they do – echoing in vision the thoughts and relationship rearranging at the heart of the play.
Literate, still challenging and asking eternal questions about loyalty, needs, desires and the consequences of mixing them both in personal life and the wider community; through fakery and deception, and most of all expert theatrical crafting, this modern classic is an excellent opening shot in the West End’s upcoming autumn season.
