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

★★★

“there are some lovely moments, and some laudable dialogue between Maitland and his wife”

How to Survive Your Mother is the newest play from playwright and former journalist Jonathan Maitland, dramatising the work of his 2007 memoir of the same name. Working with director Oliver Dawe, this play explores Maitland’s relationship with his mother, throughout his childhood and early adulthood, as she hot desks her way through different men, and opens up Britain’s first ever gay hotel (this definitely didn’t get enough attention).

Whilst the piece is strewn with moments of humour and astute observation, it was let down by a distinct lack of theatrical action. And by this, I mean a narrative arc; a dramatic structure; a climactic rise and fall, punctuated by catharsis. A play needn’t be a tragedy to necessitate such structures. Perhaps Maitland is jarred by his journalistic instincts, veering into the realm of witty and engaging reporting, but at the expense of theatrical flow. Thus, in lacking direction, the play also lacked pace, making the 90 minutes – sans interval – drag somewhat.

The work lacked that je ne sais quoi that electrifies theatre into life. It felt more like a loose montage of memories of Maitland’s mother’s outrageous displays of narcissism and abuse, than a constructed account of his mother and their relationship. So perhaps, actually, I do sais quoi, and it is the pressing lack of a coherent narrative.

Whilst both play and staging did feel overly busy at times, the set design (Louie Whitemore) and use of props were accomplished and inventive. I especially enjoyed a birthday cake’s transformation into a steering wheel, and shortly after, an airbag.

Within the small cast, majority were multi-rolling, and excellently so, interspersing humour and subtlety into their every character. Personally and perhaps unfairly, I have a long-held vendetta against child actors, and the inclusion of a child (Brodie Edwards and Howard Webb, alternately) in this play did not help to dispel my prejudice.

Maitland has his own role on stage: he appears as himself in the present day action, addressing the audience, and sometimes his wife. At other times, he just circles the stage, or plops himself down in the audience for long stretches. Whilst his self-effacing commentary on both this choice and his lack of acting ability is amusing – and fascinating on a meta-theatrical level – it undermines the dramatic action, detracting focus from the scene itself.

The play, as one would assume, revolves around Maitland’s mother. And whilst he does point out that he has written ‘a play, not a diagnosis’, his mother dabbles in all sorts of textbook narcissism. The problem with narcissists, though, is that they often straddle charisma and malice simultaneously (PSA: I’m not a psychiatrist). The problem with the portrayal here is that, as effervescent as Emma Davies is, Maitland’s mother is consistently selfish, nasty, and completely objectionable. And with the absence of a narrative arc compelling us to her, it’s hard to develop a strong enough interest in both her and her relationship with her son.

It is the lack of coherence and narrative that lets this play down. Despite this, there are some lovely moments, and some laudable dialogue between Maitland and his wife, largely deliberating on the nature of The Female Middle Age Crisis to Trained Therapist pipeline.

Oedipus did a great job of sparking our collective obsession with mother-son relationships, and Maitland’s new play is an interesting addition. But Oedipus also excelled in its very story, without which there is little appeal. How to Survive your Mother, whilst entertaining, needs this appeal if it is to also be affecting.

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”

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER at the King’s Head Theatre

★★★

“there are some lovely moments, and some laudable dialogue between Maitland and his wife”

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER at the King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 28th October 2024

by Violet Howson

Photography by Charles Flint

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER