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Foreign folly

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons
Soho

The Internationalist
Gate

The Black and White Ball
King’s Head

Anne Washburn’s play The Internationalist explores fascinating terrain. America leads the world but when Americans go abroad they can’t speak the lingo as well as the locals can speak English so they become prisoners of their own cultural dominance. Lowell, an American corporate wonk, is posted to an imaginary Slavic republic where his colleagues hose him down with hospitable banter. ‘Do you make now that you are here are lot of tourist? Or do you stay in your room at hotel and drink all of the time and order girls?’ Apart from this grammatical slapstick, the play examines corporate corruption and religious mysticism and the second half turns into a sort of art-house movie with lots of cleverly lit silhouettes arranged against a white screen. The acting is sometimes too understated and subtle even for the Gate’s titchy space, which has the seating capacity of a school bus, but this show is well worth seeing if only for its rarity value: cerebral topics handled dextrously on the London stage. Elliot Cowan’s gentle, befuddled Lowell is a delight to watch.

Director Matthew White has masterminded the seemingly impossible, a world première of a musical by Cole Porter. The Black and White Ball, written by Warner Brown, uses the music and lyrics of Porter in a genre-crossing show. It’s the 1960s and Leah returns to the ramshackle ballroom where her stepfather, Jay, was murdered years earlier. To solve the mystery of his death and to clear her mother’s name forever, she conjures his spirit from the dead. Kaisa Hammarlund gives a moving account of Leah, and Katherine Kingsley, as Suzanne, has a rich haunting voice and buckets of charisma. Bethany Lloyd-Perks, playing young Leah, offers a performance of nerveless maturity.

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Food for thought

Simon Hoggart

My favourite programme last week was France on a Plate (BBC4, Sunday) in which Dr Andrew Hussey investigated the link between gastronomy and la gloire; French glory and destiny.