Tag Archives: Jason Taylor

The End of the Night

The End of the Night

★★

Park Theatre

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The End of the Night

The End of the Night

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 3rd May 2022

★★

 

“The fine cast … do their best to instil compassion and nuance but are obstructed by too many facts and a stilted script”

 

On 19th April 1945 Norbert Masur, a Swedish activist and highly regarded representative of the World Jewish Congress, boarded a plane, emblazoned with a swastika, from Stockholm to Berlin. From there he was taken under cover of darkness to the home of Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler’s personal physiotherapist. Understandably Masur comes with fear and loathing; especially as it has been arranged for him to meet with the Reichsführer to persuade him to release prisoners from the Nazi concentration camps. It is the eve of Hitler’s final birthday; Germany’s surrender is imminent, and the Third Reich is collapsing. Days are numbered. The covert meeting is taking place without the Fürher’s knowledge. Himmler’s betrayal of Hitler is casting off its cloak of caution it seems, although we cannot trust his reasons for agreeing to the meeting.

The premise is riveting and Jason Taylor’s lighting with Michael Pavelka’s design evoke the right degree of trepidation and tension. Yet while the stakes are high, Ben Brown’s text and Alan Strachan’s staging bring them down to almost floor level in this rather lifeless production. The language has the dull flavour of domesticity that makes light of the shadows and the foreshadows that hang over the topics addressed. Ben Caplan’s Norbert Masur bookends the piece with context setting exposition which is mirrored by the overly urbane and polite dialogue that misrepresents the awful details. The fine cast, including Richard Clothier as the self-assured Himmler and Michael Lumsden as an amiable and slightly obsequious Kersten, do their best to instil compassion and nuance but are obstructed by too many facts and a stilted script.

It should be shocking. The denial of the Holocaust – a vicious product of Nazism and anti-Semitism – is a shocking historical fact. But we need more than Himmler stating, in a rather lazy RP, “I personally have never had a problem with your people”, or “I’ve never acted maliciously”. There is talk of “burying the hatchet” that bounces off the exposition so incongruously that it feels almost like a comedy sketch. Yet the introduction of humour arrives like a nervous gate crasher. If Brown is attempting irony, it doesn’t work.

Himmler left the meeting promising to release a thousand Jews form the camps. Masur is not satisfied but, as he says, ‘it’s a start’. We leave the auditorium with similar misgivings. Olivia Bernstone, as one of the survivors of the camp, suddenly appears and delivers a footnote describing the release from her perspective. Dramatically it is out of place, but it does add a touch of poignancy albeit too little too late.

 

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mark Douet

 


The End of the Night

Park Theatre until 28th May

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
When Darkness Falls | ★★★ | August 2021
Flushed | ★★★★ | October 2021
Abigail’s Party | ★★★★ | November 2021
Little Women | ★★★★ | November 2021
Cratchit | ★★★ | December 2021
Julie Madly Deeply | ★★★★ | December 2021
Another America | ★★★ | April 2022

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

Ten Times Table

★★★★

Theatre Royal Windsor & UK Tour

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Ten Times Table

Ten Times Table

Theatre Royal Windsor

Reviewed – 27th January 2020

★★★★

 

“every character vivid and witty as the play builds to its satisfyingly mad climax”

 

Sir Alan Ayckbourn is probably England’s best-known living playwright, and almost certainly its most successful. With more than 80 plays to his credit, he’s celebrated for a string of biting comedies that poke enthusiastic fun at the adulterous middle classes. At 80, he’s still writing, but was at his high point in the seventies and eighties, with a record-breaking five plays once running simultaneously in the West End. These days he’s also often the subject of university theses, with some seeing more than sparkling comedy and huge box office success in the darker side of his writing.

‘Ten Times Table’ was written in 1977, after the playwright endured a year of seemingly interminable committee meetings as his Scarborough theatre prepared to move. Yes, at least in the first half, this is ‘a predominantly sedentary farce’ about committee meetings, according to its author. It’s also something of an allegory for the politics of its day, when union activism was just taking off, and Margaret Thatcher was preparing to take power. But don’t be put off! In the hands of this team of seasoned Ayckbourn performers, directed by the excellent Robin Herford, an excellent evening’s entertainment is guaranteed.

The play opens as Robert Daws (Tuppy Glossop in Jeeves & Wooster) enters the darkened ballroom of a tatty three star hotel. He and Deborah Grant (playing his wife) are the mainstays of the play, which has a large cast by Ayckbourn’s standards. As Ray, Daws has a repertoire of funny vocal mannerisms that are just right for a pedantic committee Chairman. With her big hair and bigger speeches, there’s more than a passing resemblance to Margaret Thatcher in Grant’s smart performance as his wife. Her protagonist is a Marxist teacher of modern history who becomes obsessed with bringing to life a working class hero in a historical pageant (an excellent performance by Craig Gazey, Graeme Proctor in ‘Coronation Street’). The rest of the cast are equally strong, with every character vivid and witty as the play builds to its satisfyingly mad climax.

It’s also worth mentioning some satisfying design backing up the performers in this traditional-looking show (Michael Holt, with sound and lighting by Dan Samson and Jason Taylor).

A play about committees and the posturing follies of British political life? In these capable hands we’re guaranteed a good evening that brought appreciative whistles and cheers from a good-natured audience at the start of its short Windsor run.

 

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Pamela Raith

 


Ten Times Table

Theatre Royal Windsor until 1st February then UK tour continues

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Trials Of Oscar Wilde | ★★★★ | March 2019
Octopus Soup! | ★★½ | April 2019
The Mousetrap | ★★★★ | October 2019
The Nutcracker | ★★★★ | November 2019
What’s In A Name? | ★★★★ | November 2019

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews