I rarely visit the Jermyn Street theatre because it’s too nice.
I rarely visit the Jermyn Street theatre because it’s too nice. A small, raffish space just off Piccadilly, it has plush crimson seats and good-natured staff who never to fail to press a welcoming glass of claret into my hand. To criticise one of their shows would feel like abuse of hospitality. So in discussing Anthony Biggs’s production of Ibsen’s late play Little Eyolf let’s focus on the positive. The costumes are nice. Now we can move on. Though written when he was in his mid-60s, the play finds Ibsen in suicidal teenager mode and taking a perverse delight in cramming every scene with wrist-slashing reversals of fortune. Little Eyolf is a charming, chirpy nine-year-old cripple who stumps about bravely on his velvet–trimmed crutches showing off his brand-new soldier’s costume to everyone he meets. He lives by a fjord, with dangerous hidden currents, and he can’t swim. Right-oh. Can you guess what happens next? Correct. That’s the end of Act One.
The rest of the play follows his parents’ attempts to cope with the aftermath of their son’s unsuccessful bid to make the Norwegian paralympic swimming team. Eyolf’s dad, Alfred, is a turgid mystic who likes scrambling up mountainsides and experiencing philosophical epiphanies while listening to the trickle of glaciers. He’s also prone to bursts of humanitarian sermonising. Think Bono without the jokes. You’d put him in charge of malaria but you wouldn’t ask him round for beer and a game of darts. His tremulous priggishness is caught nicely by Jonathan Cullen. His wife, Rita, is even harder to warm to. A morbid, scatter-brained hysteric, she’s haunted by sexual guilt because eight years before the newborn Eyolf was irreparably injured in a fall from the dining-room table while she and Alfred were upstairs trying to knock out a sibling for him. Frankness like this shocked and titillated Ibsen’s audiences. It scarcely raises an eyebrow today.
The show’s big draw, Imogen Stubbs, plays the grief-stricken Rita in a pair of far-out sunglasses and with hippie-chick blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. Fetching but inaccurate. Fin-de-siècle ladies didn’t flounce about the house with their barnets all awry. And Stubbs certainly knows how to act but she does it like a woman with a jewellery-box full of treasures she hasn’t looked at for a while. Rummage, rummage, rummage. Out comes a trinket. Show it off a bit, put it back. Rummage, rummage, rummage, out comes another. Ooh, that’s nice. These displays of well-worked craftsmanship are impressive but marred by a certain flashiness and impetuosity. And she shrieks far too loudly for this small venue — a fault any sensible director would correct — which creates the impression that her performance is self-composed, self-edited and self-approved.
Giving famous stars directions they’ll adhere to is notoriously difficult and Anthony Biggs isn’t to be blamed for allowing her to floor the accelerator and screech off wherever she fancies. Happily Stubbs seems to be blooming. Is she 50? She looks barely 35. This is a strange show, in a lovely venue, which doesn’t quite come together. The performances are poorly harmonised and the weird set — boring blue walls topped by a bus shelter made of chipboard — looks like a half-finished conference stall. Newly separated from her partner, muse (and casting agent) Trevor Nunn, Imogen Stubbs needs to remind the world what she can do. Alas, this feels more like a promo for her than a play for an audience.
At the Trafalgar Studio, Darren Murphy’s new drama uses a timeless storyline: death of parent triggers family bust-up. We’re in a south London garage where two sons of a deceased Irish cab-driver are plunged in a vicious feud. Con is a ‘visionary loser’ married to a ‘thundering witch’. His brother, Ray, has turned Con’s marriage into a situation comedy. The show is a massive hit and may transfer to America. But Con is hurt, confused and angry. This is a crackingly funny idea and although Murphy has no trouble portraying Con as a tedious dimwit, and his wife as the biggest cow in England, he can’t find a single gag or punchline for Ray. Instead he focuses on tawdry arguments emerging from a convoluted back-story.
If your idea of fun is watching a troupe of nasty Cockneys yelling at each other in a lock-up then you’re in for a treat. Me, I can’t recall being so exquisitely bored. Odd, really. As an English-born Londoner with an Irish mother I’m hard-wired to find this material fascinating. It hardly helps that the brothers, who impersonate their dad regularly, can’t get the accent right. They sound like Ray Winstone mimicking Terry Wogan. And sometimes they sound like Spike Milligan doing Nehru. A tip for the management of this nifty little venue. Quality control, please.
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