“a drama that feels outdated, lacking the high stakes needed to make this two-hander as compelling as it could be”
An “intimate character driven comedy-drama” (as described by director Gary Condes), Two For The Seesaw premiered in 1958 and has enjoyed a successful history since then, including a Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine starring film adaptation. Now in the intimate Studio 2 space at Trafalgar Studios, this new staging is painfully faithful to William Gibson’s original script, producing a drama that feels outdated, lacking the high stakes needed to make this two-hander as compelling as it could be.
Jerry (Charles Dorfman), a lawyer from Nebraska, has recently separated from a wife he is financially and emotionally reliant upon and moved to New York. There, he meets aspiring dancer and Bronx girl Gittel (Elsie Bennet). Representing two clashing personalities, the pair seesaw between loving embraces and tempestuous arguments, each keeping secrets from the other until a climactic duel that decides the duo’s fate. The success of this show hinges on powerful and, to use a slightly vague term, truthful performances, which Dorfman and Bennet, though both highly committed to character and given circumstances, fail to provide. We never quite connect with these characters’ drives, or feel what’s at stake, and delivery at times feel one-note, lacklustre and constrained.
The actors aren’t helped by Condes’ direction, who seems intent on making his actors sit and talk over the phone, or sit and talk in person, scene after scene… after scene. Max Dorey’s lovingly naturalistic set design too seems orchestrated to provide areas for actors to rest their tired feet. This prop-heavy design leads to soul-crushingly long blackouts that actually counteract the naturalism and make it harder to reconnect with the setting and situations. Though attractively working to support the story, the set seems to simplify the characters’ differences (Jerry’s apartment is blue! Gittel apartment is pink!) rather than interrogate the play’s themes further.
Revivals work best when we can question older plays from a contemporary point of view, and Condes lets Two For The Seesaw off the hook too easily. For some, some good old fashioned, barbarous exchanges between the sexes and a heartfelt exploration of marriage and power are enough for an entertaining evening of West End theatre. But ‘The Apartment’ this is not.
“The air is also blue with some magnificently filthy language, imbuing the evening with an irresistibly sinuous rawness”
Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’ is a great swaggering blast of a play, set in the fictional Wiltshire village of Flintock on St George’s Day. Taking its title as much from William Blake’s ironic poem (‘was Jerusalem builded here among those dark, Satanic mills?’) as from its use by Parry as a patriotic hymn, Butterworth tackles head-on the idea of Englishness. He comes up with some answers that may surprise more than one regular theatregoer at Newbury’s dreamy Watermill theatre, which is nestled in bucolic woods and fields not far from those the play depicts.
At the heart of the play is the larger than life character of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, (Jasper Britton, ex-RSC) an exuberantly crowing cock-of-the-walk who has lived for decades in a semi-derelict caravan deep in the woods. He’s a spinner of the most fantastic yarns. Born by immaculate conception with a full set of teeth, a daredevil with magic blood in his veins, he’s a man made of rock who has heard the trees sing.
But this is no enchanted forest from a Midsummer Night. Byron is also a drug pusher and a drunk who has been banned from every pub for his brawling. His life is a ‘Bucolic, Alcoholic Frolic.’ Around him cluster half a dozen or so wasted, washed-up kids, half-believing his wild stories, but quick to turn on him when he’s down. A kind of mythic haze hangs over the grimy clearing where Byron’s caravan is slowly mouldering into the ground in Frankie Bradshaw’s compelling set. The air is also blue with some magnificently filthy language, imbuing the evening with an irresistibly sinuous rawness. This is an inspired production that thanks to Lisa Blair’s excellent direction seems to grow out of the very earth the Watermill theatre stands on.
As Byron, Britton has made the part his own in a way that stands apart from Mark Rylance’s much-praised interpretation at the play’s Royal Court premiere. Britton is a colossal figure, bursting with fierce energy, mired in filth but brilliant with quick wit that lights up the theatre. The same quick-fire vitality marks the performances of several of Rooster Byron’s acolytes. Peter Caulfield as Ginger is one of the ‘Lost Boys’ – gawky and wasted, never growing up, always hoping for a break that he knows in his heart will never come. As Lee, Sam Swann has a touching innocence that’s just right for the part of the kid who thinks he’s heading to a better life tomorrow. Santino Smith is funny and compelling as Davey who has never seen the point of other counties. ‘I leave Wiltshire, my ears pop.’ Richard Evans makes the professor ethereal and vulnerable, making a vivid connection with the language of enchantment in the literature and lyrics he quotes. Robert Fitch gives a raw and edgy performance as Wesley, the hopeless morris-dancing publican who’ll take a line from Rooster and then ban him from his pub. Adam Burton, Rebecca Lee, Natalie Walter and an alternating trio of child actors as Marky all make excellent contributions to this brilliant show. Dialect coach Elspeth Morrison deserves a special mention for keeping the cast (mostly) on track in a broad Wiltshire accent.
This wonderfully involving three-act play opens with Nenda Neurer as Phaedra singing ‘Jerusalem’ with a kind of sweetly knowing innocence. What follows is both a compelling story but also a brilliantly crafted meditation on what it is to be of an ancient land where continuity and chaos, truth and fiction, hope and despair are all wrapped up into an enthralling mixture.
The Watermill Theatre’s ‘Jerusalem’ continues to Saturday 21 July. Lighting by Christopher Nairne, Sound and music, Tom Attwood, Paul Benzing, fight director.
