Roberts is immaculate in playing both parts: the sour, rotten, old Wallis who, despite her bitterness, wants to save Diana from the dreary drudgery of joining the monarchy; the shy, uncertain Diana, a mere child when it comes to the machinations of royalty, taking her cues from the gay coterie that surrounds her at the Palace and dimly thinking that a string of pearls might make her wedding a real event to remember.
Julie Atherton can play dowdy geek character, svelte seductive siren, and camp fetish magnet (complete with vinyl Nurse’s outfit just covering her pert derrière and barely containing her heaving bosom) seamlessly, as part of the one character. Atherton’s performance encapsulates the underlying promise of the piece: Geeks and Outsiders can have sex, drugs and Rock’n’Roll too! So too do the two other magnetic, but polar opposite, performances of totally committed seductive power. Ben Kerr is hilariously straight as Brad, the quiet, slightly dull husband of Janet with the body of a Greek God and Mateo Oxley milks every comic nanosecond in his turn as the outrageously camp, one-foot-leaping-out-of-the-closet Ralph Hapschatt.
The role of Willy Loman is very exacting, requiring great range and subtlety from the actor. The single greatest requirement, though, is for the actor to be Loman rather than to play him; there needs to be total immersion in the character, and the character’s different stages. It must be possible to see the Loman who so enthralled and impressed his sons, the Loman who believed in the Dream and to contrast that against the Loman who is engulfed, diminished, destroyed. Antony Sher gives a prickly, vigorous, erratically explosive performance. He might wear Loman’s skin but he never gets under it.
Despite a delicious design from Anna Fleischle (the black velvet floor and beautifully detailed costumes especially) and some winning, often charming, performances from Catrin Stewart, Jamie Thomas King, Andy Apollo, Colin Ryan and Matthew Needham, Dunster’s production does not establish any case for Love’s Sacrifice to be revived.
At just over 90 minutes, this is a theatrical spectacle and tapestry as ethereal and vital as it is strange and incomprehensible. Simon Stephens throws those elements such as the destruction of community, the isolation of individuals, the globalisation and sterilisation of culture, the power of money and capitalist dreams, the despair that comes from non-intervention, together with the characters and some of the music and plot points from Bizet’s Carmen, into a blender, creating a dystopian present-day landscape where pretty much anything can and does happen. The poetic nuances fly through the writing such that return visits to see the production again are almost compulsory.
The Orange Tree theatre has established a unique niche for itself as a home for new writing and carefully chosen revivals of long-neglected repertoire. This production is a distinguished badge added to that reputation and another notable success for director Paul Miller and his creative team in their award-winning first season.
Plastic Figurines, presently on tour across the UK, and currently stopped at the New Diorama Theatre is a tour de force two hander one act, illuminating the limits of love—when caring for someone and loving them are positioned firmly at odds from one another.
With the recent news that the Florida and Wisconsin state governments have banned employees of their state level environmental protection agencies from using phrases like “climate change” or “global warming” in any official capacity, “Animals,” now playing at Theatre503, is a particularly prescient and fascinating piece of political theatre.
