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++ THE WORK :: REVIEWS ++

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++ HEDDA GABLER ++

Review by Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, Wednesday October 31, 2001

"At first you think you have stumbled into an Agatha Christie thriller by mistake: the two old dears in 1930s attire, both in a twitter, the grand house waiting for something to happen, those pistols... But no, Braham Murray's edge-of-the-seat revival of Ibsen's great domestic play is not about murder in its literal sense, but about the murder of the soul, the corrosive effect of dissatisfaction, the acidity of despair. One of the great things about Amanda Donohoe's Hedda is that she gives you glimpses of what this woman might have been - in other circumstances, and married to the right man.

Transposed forward by four decades (though the 1950s might have been a bolder choice), and set within a giant birdcage (this Hedda is more claw than feather), Murray's production makes you see that there is a comedy in every tragedy. Hedda, who abhors the ludicrous, wouldn't like it one jot. But I did, because the funnier it is, the more shocking the play becomes.

It's also exceptionally well cast. Donohoe's magnificently brittle and terminally discontented Hedda meets her match in Terence Wilton's Judge Brack, who spins his silky web around her like a particularly deadly spider. Never before has Brack's talk of being the third person in the Tesman marriage ("entering by the back way") seemed so sinister or subtly sexual. And Simon Robson makes a lot of Tesman - a boyish, toothy, eternal student, clearly deeply in love with his wife but oblivious to the fact that she is bored senseless by him and his work. He and Kate Isitt's Mrs Elvsted would be much better suited.

The translation seems a little stilted at times, but for the most part it's sharp and well-pointed. And the production constantly shows up the foibles, self-deceptions and extraordinary blindness of a group of human beings who fail to see that they are buffoons in their own unfolding tragedy. When Brack utters his famous final line - "People don't do things like that" - you want to shout back, "Oh yes they do." All the time, both to ourselves and to other people. "

Other reviews can be found on the Royal Exchange Theatre page for this production here

++ A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE ++

"Yet in this production, both Fitzgerald and Sharian are so focused on delivering powerful presentations of their characters that this sense of interaction is lost. Instead, Blanche and Stanley are two remote poles, between whom Stella is increasingly torn. Consequently, it is Kate Isitt's performance as Stella that is most worthy of note.

Her performance is finely drawn, with a depth of complexity and believability lacking in the more cartoon-like leading characters. Ms Isitt has taken what the script offers, and built a strong and sympathetic three-dimensional character out of it..."

++ DREAMING ++

Review from The Times

"...Set amid the lawless aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, Dreaming, another of Peter Barnes's lavish historical epics, follows a soldier's odyssey in search of heart and home... This being Barnes you get nothing so straightforward as a conventional narrative. The macabre dance of medieval life is represented by comic vignettes of unnaturally epigrammatic cutthroats, scavengers and swindlers. Cheesy song-and-dance acts add to the vaudeville air... Directing his own play, Barnes creates some strikingly beautiful tableaux, much helped by Alan Miller Bunford's superbly effective set. The brief, stylised battle scenes are vivid and atmospheric; a stolen moment of joy set amid ice and snow, delicate and magical. The cast are sometimes defeated by the clashes of tone, though there are some enjoyable performances. Gerard Murphy is solid as Mallory, his dogged pursuit of his dreams his making and undoing. Dilys Laye and James Clyde provide charismatic comic support. But Kate Isitt steals the show as Susan; her poised, quicksilver delivery and emotional transparency almost single-handedly provide the play's much-needed emotional core."

++ REALITY AND DREAMS ++

Not all Stalin plays need dwell directly upon his political ruthlessness; Olga Kuchkina emblematises it in his marriage in 1919 at the age of 40 to his secretary, eighteen-year-old Nadezhda Allilueva. In this two-hander, Josif is a sinister strategist as well as plain cunning, and is much more than the vulgarian brute of popular demonology – although he's that as well; Nadezhda's youthful ingenuousness is more than obliterated by exposure to this corrupting force, and even when she returns after her death (aged 31, by suicide, announced as acute appendicitis) in a dream, Stalin still tyrannises and ultimately repudiates her.

Kate Isitt's Nadezhda captures both the bewildered innocence of "before" and the terminal despair of "after"; Paul Arlington keeps himself at some distance from Josif's lines, narrowing the range of his performance but strengthening (perhaps) the impression that every word and move are calculated. A firm production of a play which throws an engrossing sidelight upon the dictator.