Tag Archives: John Logan

DOUBLE FEATURE

★★★★

Hampstead Theatre

DOUBLE FEATURE at Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“Each performer reveals the layers of these complex characters with a skill that stretches beyond the mere words on the page”

Can you separate the artist from the man? Now there’s a question. One that has been around for a very long time, but becomes more pertinent as time progresses and attitudes advance. John Logan addresses this in in his cutting-edge and challenging new play “Double Feature”. Although Alfred Hitchcock is only part of the story, he is the one that pulls focus, morphing from idol to vindictive sexual predator in the space of ninety minutes. It is perhaps dangerous territory to tread, but thrilling to watch. So long as you are prepared to be discomfited.

It is 1964 and Hitchcock, at his zenith as the world’s most celebrated filmmaker, has invited his muse and leading lady, Tippi Hedren, to his cottage on the Universal lot to ‘rehearse’. Meanwhile, in 1967, the young film director, Michael Reeves, is attempting to cook for, and mollify, veteran actor Vincent Price in his Suffolk cottage. Two continents and three years apart the stories are intermeshed with echoes and parallels that overlap like twisted limbs in a fierce, four-hand wrestling match.

Jonathan Kent’s imaginative staging splices the action together seamlessly, beautifully capturing Logan’s dramatic device of running the two stories simultaneously. All four characters are onstage throughout; one couple retreating to the shadows like ghosts in limbo during the moments when the lights are focused on the other pair. Yet there is an invisible cord that pulls all four together which tightens each time we cut from one scene to the next.

Both relationships are at a period of crisis and the cast capture the requisite power struggle and dynamics. Ian McNeice is an affable, charismatic titan as Hitchcock. His initial, almost cuddly persona rapidly melting into sinister monstrosity while Joanna Vanderham swings in a completely opposite direction. Her obsequious Tippi Hedren, pushed to the very edge of humiliation fights back with a master stroke performance that will have every #MeToo advocate cheering from the rooftops. Jonathan Hyde, as the understandably cantankerous Vincent Price, toys with his ‘new-kid’, arthouse director, wielding his experience and superiority like a piece of string to an overwrought kitten. Rowan Polonski brings out the multifaceted Michael Reeves with consummate skill, eventually winning Price’s respect. Each performer reveals the layers of these complex characters with a skill that stretches beyond the mere words on the page. Polonski, in particular, bringing out the tragic irony of a man who would be dead less than a year later.

This might not be to everyone’s taste, and the insider knowledge often threatens to overshadow the general appeal of the play. And we sometimes feel that Logan is writing for himself almost as much as for his audience. It is, however, compulsive viewing. As the scenes overlap, so do the notions of life imitating art. The two storylines portray the sometimes hidden and dark process of creating art, like a ferocious tennis match in which the unseeded has as strong a backhand as the ace server. It does well to keep the play within a short, one act time frame, concentrating the drama instead of overstretching the concept. Never becoming too earnest there are plenty of moments of humour in this unashamed and unflinching glimpse behind the scenes. The real winner, in the end, is the audience.


DOUBLE FEATURE at Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 19th February 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL | ★★★★ | December 2023
ANTHROPOLOGY | ★★★★ | September 2023
STUMPED | ★★★★ | June 2023
LINCK & MÜLHAHN | ★★★★ | February 2023
THE ART OF ILLUSION | ★★★★★ | January 2023
SONS OF THE PROPHET | ★★★★ | December 2022
BLACKOUT SONGS | ★★★★ | November 2022
MARY | ★★★★ | October 2022
THE FELLOWSHIP | ★★★ | June 2022
THE BREACH | ★★★ | May 2022

DOUBLE FEATURE

DOUBLE FEATURE

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Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge! The Musical

★★★

Piccadilly Theatre

Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge! The Musical

Piccadilly Theatre

Reviewed – 20th January 2022

★★★

 

“this would make a really fun proper knees-up sing-along if that’s the direction they wanted to go in”

 

When Moulin Rouge was released in 2001 it put its very best foot forward with an absolute dream team of Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce, Craig Armstrong, Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo, and Richard Roxburgh to name a few. For goodness sake, even Kylie Minogue featured for a second (“I’m a green fairy!”) Not only that, but it apparently took Luhrmann over two years to gain the rights to the most carefully curated track list, featuring some of the biggest songs of the century. So, with all that in mind, Moulin Rouge: The Musical faces a tremendous amount of pressure. How on earth could you make a version of a Baz Luhrmann production and make it better, even make it just as good?

Filing into the theatre, the staging already promises a lot, with tens of floor-to-ceiling light-encrusted ruby red hearts sitting nestled within one another; an enormous adorned elephant bedecks the royal box, and opposite, the iconic windmill spinning lazily. Emblazoned in bright lights across the front of the stage, ‘MOULIN ROUGE’. As the audience shuffles past one another, holding plastic cups of wine, taking off their giant winter coats and shoving them under their chairs, dancers move in seductive slow-motion across the stage and around the front rows, in encrusted velvet corsets and top hats, crescendoing with two low-key sword swallowers before its even begun. It’s all very alluring, and the first song, ‘Lady Marmalade’ is the perfect smutty number to introduce us properly, filthy-sexy and so much fun.

But as the play unfolds, unfortunately it doesn’t quite keep up, with some songs merely echoing the film’s outrageous performances, and others bizarrely saccharine or, quite frankly, just not good enough.

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It’s a strange beast in that it doesn’t quite know what it is. On the one hand, Derek McLane’s gloriously over-the-top, no-holds-barred stage design, and Catherine Zuber’s saucy, sexy, sometimes lurid, sometimes lavish costumes are the stuff of the very highest production value. On the other hand, there’s something disturbingly panto about some of the performances, the leads feel a bit- dare I say it- Disney in their wholesome asexual chemistry, and the additional songs not included in the movie are presented like a sing-along; rather than being cleverly and carefully chosen and then moulded to suit the story’s palette, they seem to clash. In the second half, for example, the morning after Satine has had to break Christian’s heart and pretend she doesn’t love him because otherwise the Duke’s going to have him murdered; it’s a pretty tense and heavy moment. Christian starts singing Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ with all the melodrama of a fourteen-year-old Glee member, and the audience takes their cue and joins in! Not only are they clapping along, they’re bloody singing! At near on the saddest part of the whole story.

That’s not to say there aren’t flashes of flamboyant ecstasy: Clive Carter’s Harold Zidler, despite doing a sort of impression of Jim Broadbent’s performance, is delightfully sinister and scornful, and contributes a slightly different flavour to the complicated character.

The end of the Elephant Medley is pretty spectacular, Satine’s room spinning to reveal a starlit night sky, the Eiffel tower being rolled on by eight extra dancers, and quick sparkling costume changes for both leads as they climb the miniature landmark. Two aerialists spin elegantly from the ceiling as Satine and Christian sing the last high notes together, “How wonderful life is now you’re in the world”, and the chorus stares lovingly on. It’s just so ridiculously excessive, I love it.

I think this would make a really fun proper knees-up sing-along if that’s the direction they wanted to go in; a great night out with the girls, belting ‘Baby you’re a firework’ and ‘Single Ladies’.

Alternatively, it could do what it looks like it should and be properly debaucherous and depraved, and the subject handled with a lot more grit and seriousness. I don’t want to hear Satine saying “I can’t go back to the streets!” and Christian responding with a fatuous “Then come with me to the stars!” Dude, she’s talking about a life of prostitution and homelessness. What are you talking about??

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Matt Crockett

 


Moulin Rouge! The Musical

Piccadilly Theatre until May 2022

 

 

 

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