Tag Archives: Alastair Whatley

BIRDSONG

★★

Alexandra Palace Theatre

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

Read the book.



BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

 

 


 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

AN INSPECTOR CALLS | ★★★★ | September 2024
THE GLASS MENAGERIE | ★★★★ | May 2024
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY | ★★★★ | November 2023
TREASON THE MUSICAL | ★★★ | November 2023
BUGSY MALONE | ★★★★★ | December 2022

 

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR

★★★★★

Reading Rep Theatre

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR at Reading Rep Theatre

★★★★★

“an elegant and electrifying revival”

Micheál Mac Liammóir (1899-1978) was a prodigiously talented actor, writer and director who founded the famous Gate Theatre in Dublin. In 1960 he wrote and performed a highly successful one-man show about Oscar Wilde which went on to tour the world. For many years the play was the only available theatrical presentation of the celebrated Irish writer and gay aesthete’s life.

Director Michael Fentiman, whose credits include the Watermill’s award winning musical Amélie, has delivered an elegant and electrifying revival of the show for this lively Reading theatre. It is performed by Alastair Whatley, the artistic director and founder of prize-winning Original Theatre which has made a name for itself for its pioneering work in digital theatre.

The play is delivered as a first person narrative, from a black box set by Madeleine Girling which consists of a circular daïs which is mirrored by a circle of light above. The highly effective lighting design by Chris Davey complements this satisfyingly simple design. It is matched by a subtle and highly effective sound design by composer Barnaby Race.

In a notable omission, the playwright glosses over the fact that Wilde arguably brought a criminal prosecution on himself by attempting to prove in court that he was libelled by the Marquess of Queensberry who had accused him of ‘posing as a somdomite’ (sic).

 

 

But Wilde’s brilliancy shines in extracts from ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. Alastair Whatley’s performance is both very fine and a prodigious demonstration of his powers of recall. His version of Lady Bracknell’s cross-examination of Worthing (‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune – to lose both seems like carelessness’.) was an absolute delight.

There is a special poignancy in hearing extracts from Wilde’s landmark letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas performed in Reading, since Wilde wrote it in the town’s gaol during his two year incarceration following a conviction for gross indecency. ‘De Profundis’ or ‘from the depths’ was laboriously written on 80 sheets of prison paper. It begins with self-pity but in the second half turns to humble and spiritual reflection: ‘To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day’s experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which one’s heart is happy.’

The highlight of this performance was a cleverly staged rendition of Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol which tells the true story of a man hanged at Reading gaol for murdering his unfaithful wife: ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves / By each let this be heard, / Some do it with a bitter look, / Some with a flattering word, / The coward does it with a kiss, / The brave man with a sword!’

In ‘De Profundis’ Wilde writes about ‘feasting with panthers’ – a reference to his fondness for sex with underage boys, an offence for which he would still be imprisoned today. At the time, his offence was seen as immeasurably worse because they were not of his class. None of that takes away from Oscar Wilde’s greatness, which is brought to vivid life in Reading in this compelling theatrical tour de force.

 


THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR at Reading Rep Theatre

Reviewed on 29th May 2024

by David Woodward

Photography by Marc Brenner

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE | ★★★★★ | December 2023
SHAKESPEARE’S R&J | ★★★★ | October 2023
HEDDA GABLER | ★★★★★ | February 2023
DORIAN | ★★★★ | October 2021

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR

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