Preach to the winds: Godspell at the Bridewell Theatre

With The Book of Mormon being the hottest selling ticket in town and shows like Jesus Christ Superstar even taking over our television casting shows, religiously-themed musicals seem to be in high demand. Now amateur company Sedos takes on the 1971 musical Godspell and puts Jesus on a skateboard. At the Bridewell Theatre.

Conceived in 1971, John-Michael Tebelak’s book is based on the Gospel of Matthew and tells the story of a group of people united through Jesus’ storytelling. When the show had a Broadway revival in 2011 it seemed that in times of severe financial hardship theatre goers were yearning for a bit of starry-eyed idealism and return to Christian values in their evening entertainment. If only the piece weren’t steeped so much in overbearing, religious righteousness, it might actually be a lot of fun to watch.

In Sedos’ version of Godspell, subtitled ‘Occupy London’, much of the viewing pleasure certainly goes to the credit of director Robert J. Stanex. Together with the cast and designers he has found a lot of visually appealing solutions to illustrate the various parables about Christian love or salvation through altruism. Seeing the 19 performers frolicking about on stage, teasing each other here and high-fiving, you can clearly tell that the ensemble has a lot of fun. None of it feels laboured or overly rehearsed, which is refreshing and allows the audience to discover the little quirks and peculiarities of the performers. Adrian Hau and Doug Colling prove especially convincing as members of the community, switching effortlessly between tender moments and high-octane numbers. But with the piece brimming so much with the energy of the actors, sometimes the loveable madness unfolding on stage outstays its welcome slightly.

It is the quiet moments when the piece works at its best. Joe Penny’s Jesus is an uncompromising idealist and he delivers the well-known “Beautiful City” as a hopeful hymn that points towards a utopian dream. Musical director David Griffiths together with the skilfull band guide through an evening full of chequered musical styles from gospel choir to tap dancing as well as reverent solo pieces. As is to be expected with an amateur musical production some of the singing is a little unrefined, and a few of the finer aspects of the show, like the opening number “The Tower of Babble” get lost in table banging and clanging. But this is not to say that I wasn’t very entertained by the beautiful little moments that were created on stage.

This production set out to be an eco-friendly production, and so Scout Isensee’s costumes and Darren Goad’s set are very inventive and use a lot of recycled and upcycled materials. Paper puppetry, bottle cap tap socks and wandering Monopoly board pieces – everything is colourful and integrates very well with the performers’ energetic approach to the material. And I swear I’ve never seen a woman so sexy dressed only in black bin-liners as in Heather Jones’ number “Turn Back, O Man”.

There is just this one big problem with the show that can’t be hidden under colourful clothes, pleasant songs and entertaining circus antics: John-Michael Tebelak’s book is a bit of a stinker. It’s more preachy than Sunday School, and I simply could not bring myself to care about any of the barely-fleshed-out characters. The book makes Jesus and his disciples out to be a clownish cult of scroungers and hippies, and Stephen Schwartz’ (Wicked) songs, however moving and meaningful they might be, simply don’t compensate for a lack of a coherent plot or well-drawn secondary characters. It is a shame then that some of the characters, for example Dan Geller’s broody Judas, get slightly lost in the higgledy-piggledy storytelling.

Considering Sedos is not just any amateur company but the Stock Exchange Dramatic and Operatic Society, a company that maintains very close links to the City, it is telling that the backdrop for the do-gooders community lead by Jesus is the London 2011 Occupy movement. Although there is no satire or cynicism tainting Jesus’ journey in Godspell, that oddly enough is the problem of Tebelak’s book. A more ruthless approach to updating the book probably would have turned this into a much grittier, more relevant piece. If Jesus’ messages were cleared of the religious preachiness there might have been some important points about solidarity and social responsibility for communities to be rediscovered. And to have Jesus die on the stairs of St. Paul’s after he has relentlessly preached about the dangers of greed does give a gloomy outlook on the City’s ability to listen to wake-up calls.

Still, with Sedos a little idealism seems to go a long way. The company creates meaningful and well-produced work and then donates some of the income it generates towards inclusive art charities like Angel Shed. That’s more than can be said for most commercial theatre companies.

 

Digging deeper: Facts at Finborough Theatre

A murder in the West Bank and two cops, one Palestinian, one Israeli, must work together to solve the case. Facts is a tense play that sets out to uncover the underlying historical, cultural and political frameworks for one of the most gridlocked conflicts of our time. At the Finborough Theatre.

An American is murdered in the city of Hebron and two unlikely investigators are put in a room together to dig up the truth. The cultural triad of America, Israel and Palastine is very much the focus of this murder mystery. Set in the dreary interrogation room of a police station, impressively designed by Georgis Lowe, we are witness to the unwilling collaborators mulling over ideas concerning the case, and raising bigger issues about religion or the accuracy of historical accounts. When we find out that the victim was an archeologist whose excavations and research defied the existence of Moses and even the great Jewish King David the stakes of the investigation rise considerably. If the exodus never happened the divine predestination for the Jewish people to occupy the sacred land and therefore the base for the mighty movement of Zionism falls apart.

The writing is very dense and is vigilant about not taking sides too easily. Having grown up in a household with extremist zionist beliefs, Facts is Arthur Milner’s way of accounting for the complicated web of unmovable notions of entitlement for the sacred land. An archeological piece in itself, it tries to show that the motivations of all the parties involved in the political conflict are not simply black and white or good or bad, but results of centuries of misunderstandings and biased interpretations of history for their own cause. En route to solving the case fixed points in alliances dissolve and residual anger breaks out from under the surface. To create this scope in a small room with only three people is quite a storytelling achievement. However, in the course of the actual investigation there are some conclusions the detectives jump to that are made out to be more self-evident than they really are – but that is not really the point of the piece anyway.

Philip Arditti’s Khalid opens the show with a pantomimic portrayal of a checkpoint hold-up. It’s an stylistic element that does not reoccur, and one of the few elements of the show that feels a bit unfocused and alienating. However, it does serve to illustrate the absurdity of how even Palastinians of high rank are subjugated to the humiliation of time-comsuming border controls in their own city. Either that or they need to go to elaborate lengths to travel to their desired location, while their Israeli neighbours are allowed to move around freely. People are not equal in the West Bank, they are Arab or Jews and treated accordingly. Arditti’s superbly judged performance adds considerably to the tension proposed by this conflict.

Michael Feast, who seems not entirely at ease in the intimate space of the Finborough, does not quite bring the necessary gravitas to the Israeli police investigator Yossi. Possibly a directorial choice, his performance somewhat stands in the way of the piece’s intentions to blur the character’s motivations. A self-proclaimed “devout atheist”, Yossi represents the secular Jewish community that feels uneasy about the extremist approach of his people and the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

When it comes to the question of land or peace there is no question for suspect Danny (Paul Rattray) as to what is more sacred. An extremist Jew who supports the settlements in the West Bank, he is in the current focus of the ongoing blame game for the continuing conflict and makes for a perfect suspect. Is he guilty? Who has the power the to end the the vicious circle of violence? Can Arabs and Jews ever live together peacefully? Facts is a play that has high stakes and manages to balance them in an intruiging way. The end is surprisingly inconsequential for a work dealing with such grand issues, however this could be taken as befitting the political conflict from which the piece is born.

Journey’s End at Greenwich Theatre

Set in a British infantry dugout in the World War I trenches, Journey’s End centres around young Captain Stanhope and his officers who are all waiting for something meaningful to happen. At the Greenwich Theatre.

An impending German attack provides the time frame to clearly guide the plot, but the play is much more about the exploration of motives and characters rather than actions. It’s a rather long, pondering and episodic tale, but I would argue that this is intentional to create an understanding of the waiting game that must have played out in those trenches. And to “get” the piece the audience simply has to play along with the characters. For the better part of three hours we see the soldiers waiting for their next meal, waiting to go home, waiting to become a man, waiting to win the war, waiting for the next German attack, waiting for death and waiting for ways to try and cope with all of this.

Every friendship found on the front lines could be ended any moment by shrapnel from the other side. David Aldwyn as Stanhope gives a high octane performance that pretty much stays in the same register of anger or despair throughout. A man constantly on edge and afraid to form bonds with the men around him, he resorts to alcohol to drown out the terrors of war. Fairly early on he and the illness-faking Hibbert (convincingly played by Adam Fletcher) have an emotional breakdown about how they are both trapped between the duty to serve their country and the desperate desire to get out of the hell of war. What is playing out in front of our eyes is the complete failure of “stiff upper lip” as a coping strategy for human misery.

Liam Smith plays “Uncle” Osborne, a former school master who has ended up in the rabbithole-like madness of the World War I trenches and who, amongst all of the chaos and squalor, remains calm and serene. For me, his performance alone makes the show worth watching. In small gestures and seemingly throwaway anecdotes, the director and Smith have found the essence of what the piece seems to be about. When he and young Raleigh share a quiet moment in the officer’s quarters, it’s sad and touching without resorting to overbearing melodrama. When Osborne talks to him about gardening while the German grenades are about to explode around them, Matthew Pattimore as the naïve soldier Raleigh looks beautifully out of place – the mundane mixed into the state of expectation.

While some choose memories of their pre-war lives to keep sane, others resort to rather more tangible survival strategies. Steven George as Trotter has great comic timing while having to juggle all of the food his character is obsessed with. Only James Hender’s Colonel remains a slightly uninvolving stage presence. The set by Kemey Lafond is suitingly drab and gray, but some of the uniforms and boots could have done with a bit more mud for the sake of authenticity.

Touching upon so many issues relating to war, be it hero worship, duty or friendship, the play is by no means an easy watch, nor does it set out to be. But with such an oppressive piece everything could have been just a tad more involving and a bit more attention could have been paid to details that create atmosphere or establish characters. Some of the sound, light and other effects also felt like they were added on without necessarily supporting the story. On press night parts of the piece felt slightly underrehearsed, but no doubt the run will see much smoother performances; on the whole, the actors are doing a fabulous job portraying these tragic characters trapped in the trenches of a senseless war.

Not much pointless pondering: Hamlet at the Rose Theatre, Bankside

The story of the young Dane contemplating how to take revenge on the uncle who has murdered his father has been done uncountable times by companies throughout the centuries. In this version by director Martin Parr, Hamlet is not given much time to pointlessly ponder his actions. At the Rose, Bankside.

The story of the young Dane contemplating how to take revenge on the uncle who has murdered his father has been done uncountable times by companies throughout the centuries. Contemplating love, madness, suicide, family and politics, it’s a story that can serve as a vehicle for numerous explorations of political and social issues. In this version by director Martin Parr, Hamlet is not given much time to pointlessly ponder his actions.

Turning a play that usually sprawls between two and a half and three hours down to the TV movie-length of 90 minutes is an achievement in itself. This Hamlet zips along rather nicely, and the fact that time is clearly out of joint in this interpretation overall plays to the advantage of the piece.

Only four actors play the most prominent characters in this version, and it is self-referential and witty about the play’s own performance and reception history. When Hamlet addresses the audience almost conversationally right from the beginning, we know that this chamber piece-approach is also aiming to explore motives of theatricality or performances of public personae.

For example, efficient text edits cut right to the core of the “play in the play”, and having Claudius (Liam McKenna in a charismatic performance) give the audience the murdering knave. This elevates the whole section from a mere plot contrivance to make Hamlet see his uncle’s guilt into an eye-opening observation of such human foibles like flattery or guilt and how they relate to our inner demons and fears.

To have both Getrude and Ophelia played by the same actress (Suzanne Marie) opens the door to some very intriguing implications, some of which might be subtly about incestuous urges, others, when Getrude recounts the news of Ophelia’s demise, are played nearly like an out-of-body recollection.

It’s not an abstract meta-Hamlet though, the characters and their motivations are very much the focus. Seeing Hamlet performed on the site of the original Rose Theatre is a special treat, so the set and props are minimal and effective. Rebecca Brower’s design, which is dominated by red strings of light, adds depth to the character’s actions and turns the challenging and confined space of the Rose into an intriguing spectacle. It jars slightly with the chamber theatre approach of the piece, but it is still wonderful to watch how the performers claim the unusual space as their own. The Rose has a great acoustic for a place that’s essentially a little wooden stage with a roof looking out on an excavation site, and in this historically-laden place Shakespeare’s words sound as fresh and crisp as the day they were written.

Jonathan Broadbent’s Hamlet is a soft-spoken and sometimes impish man – a strong performance with a more adult-like approach to the character, which made sense in the overall arc of the story. And Jamie Sheasby, faced with the challenge of being Laertes, Rosenkrantz and the Gravedigger, found some very convincing and entertaining-to-watch nuances.

Not all of what was attempted works though. A card game with poisoned tequila shots never quite reaches the dramatic heights of the sword fight in the original. This is a great Hamlet for Shakespeare new-comers and open-minded connoisseurs. To me it felt like nothing essential was missing from the story, but with its ruthless cuts it is definitely not for people hallowing the original text.