Joshua Pharo Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“this is a play that promises much and fails, ultimately, to deliver”

Lucy Kirkwood’s new play The Human Body is a complex creation, not unlike the human body itself. Michael Longhurst and Ann Yee’s stylish direction makes many pretty pictures of the bodies on stage from this overly length piece. They have assembled a talented cast, lead by Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport. Cinematic touches, created by onstage videographers, and clever screening of the images, give a touch of glamour to the proceedings. But the overall effect is to remind us that we are not in the cinema, watching a sharp edged black and white movie, but in a theatre, watching a play that is just out of focus.

Set in 1946, the same year that Parliament passed the National Health Service Act, The Human Body is a timely reminder of what an enormous difference free health care made to Second World War exhausted Britain. GP Iris Elcock, (Keeley Hawes) and her disabled war veteran husband Julian (Tom Goodman-Hill) are attempting to rebuild their marriage in much the same way that the rest of the country is attempting to rebuild. Which is to say—they are outwardly supportive of each other as Iris juggles her household responsibilities with her medical practice, and her political ambitions. Presented as an outwardly successful, New Look woman, It’s in the interior spaces of home, her GP practice, and later, a railway carriage, that all Iris’ juggling comes off the rails.

Echoes of the British movie Brief Encounter allows playwright Kirkwood an attempt at some of the glamour and powerful, yet repressed emotions captured so well in director David Lean’s classic. But The Human Body is less about the passionate affair Iris has with actor George as a result of a chance encounter in a railway carriage. It’s more about her boundless ambition to be in Parliament. Kirkwood’s play isn’t even about the passing of the National Health Act, despite the occasional reference to Aneurin Bevan, who spearheaded the passing of the Act. The Human Body is ultimately about Iris—seen from every angle, thanks to the presence of those videographers on stage. We see Iris attempt the impossible. To be a wife, mother, successful career woman, politician, and lover to George. When we see Iris fail to manage all these roles, even her assistance in supporting the passage of the National Health Act, isn’t quite enough to salvage The Human Body. No amount of brilliant acting, stylish direction, and onstage videographic wizardry can overcome a script that fails to give an audience some sense of catharsis.

Yet Keeley Hawes manages to keep Iris a fully rounded character despite the shortcomings of the script. She is ably supported by fellow actors Jack Davenport and Tom Goodman-Hill. Jack Davenport’s portrayal of George is particularly noteworthy. He manages to reveal George the man with a complex family life, lurking beneath the film actor’s polished charm. Tom Goodman-Hill has the thankless task of portraying Julian, Iris’ resentful husband, but succeeds in making Julian sympathetic nonetheless. He, along with Pearl Mackie and Siobhán Redmond take on a host of other roles as well. Together these seasoned actors bring energy and a sense of ever-changing drama to The Human Body.

Nevertheless, The Human Body cannot decide whether it is a play, or a film. Kirkwood writes the script as though it were a screenplay, but bringing on bits of furniture, endless props, often held by stagehands while the actors use them, simply serve to remind the audience that film can manage all these complicated changes of location simply by saying “Cut!” and moving on. If one tries to change the location in the theatre on stage, it merely looks clunky. In Iris and George’s passionate encounters, the camera is an intrusive third party, no matter how beautiful the images captured on the screen above the actors. What’s happening on stage is a messy distraction, and even good lighting and snatches of Rachmaninov’s lovely music cannot help the actors establish the same intimacy when there’s a camera in the way. There is a profound difference in the ways that theatre achieves its magic on stage, and film on the screen, and The Human Body is a very good lesson in why that is.

It says much for the skills of the actors that the playing time of The Human Body passes as quickly as it does. Fans of Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport will not be disappointed. But this is a play that promises much and fails, ultimately, to deliver.

Love and Other Acts of Violence

Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed – 15th October 2021

★★★★

“it’s essential to remind ourselves that theatre isn’t just about feel good musicals and revivals of the classics”

Cordelia Lynn’s new play, Love and Other Acts of Violence, is an unsettling look into how intimate relationships can be haunted by the past. In Lynn’s hands, it’s a clever premise. It’s multi-layered, complex—and yet, predictable in its unraveling. It looks back into the past and—just as unsettling—suggests a bleak future which, at this time of writing, doesn’t seem all that impossible. It is a timely reminder how quickly educated, civilized communities can be destroyed in a moment, if malign forces converge to set them against one another and tear them apart. Even more heartbreaking are the fates of the people caught in the middle. People just trying to live their own lives, to be true to their own cultural values, and not get drawn into fights that mean nothing to them.

It helps, then, to see the contemporary relationship between a Jewish physicist/Her and a poet of Polish descent/Him in this play as—broadly speaking—a series of echoes from the past that destroyed Her’s family in 1918 in what had just become Poland. We don’t learn the details of this past tragedy until the lengthy epilogue of the play, but Lynn sets about creating the inevitable revelations from the very first encounter between this ill-matched pair. He’s the idealistic firebrand at a party, invading her space as he rants passionately about poorly paid workers at the university where she is a graduate student. He notes with disdain the nice flat that he has snooped around during the party, and makes some unflattering comments about the likely owner. It turns out that it belongs to Her, the woman he is trying so hard to impress. Luckily for Him, and not so luckily for Her, she’s also kind, sensitive and intelligent, willing to forgive. This dynamic sets up the encounters that follow, becoming more intense, and violent, as the pair become lovers, then partners. The audience can only wonder why she doesn’t walk away. It’s painful to watch. And that is the point.

If we expect Lynn to stop there, however, Love and Other Acts of Violence has a couple more surprises for us. The first is a trip to a harrowingly imagined future, as the couple’s relationship deteriorates. At every point, the relationship echoes the slow, but insidious erosion of civil rights in the world around them, and hints of civil war. And then, in a magnificent moment, a coup de théâtre indeed, Basia Bińkowska’s bleak set converts from a bare space in the twenty-first century British Isles, to a meticulously detailed room in twentieth century L’viv (also Lwów, or Lemberg). In the epilogue, we see how events playing out during a struggle between Poles and Ukrainians for a small piece of contested territory sets the stage for the relationship we have just witnessed. Powerful, and tragic, stuff.

The newly refurbished Donmar Warehouse is a good place for a play like this. The austere brickwork and stark lines of the auditorium focus our attention squarely where it should be—on the stage, and the actors. Tom Mothersdale (as Him/Man) has the thankless task of playing the unsympathetic protagonist, and it’s to his credit that he goes for it so unstintingly. It’s easy to sympathize with Abigail Weinstock’s Her, but there’s not much for her to do except to react to His goading in the first part of Love and Other Acts of Violence. Baba (the role she takes on in the epilogue) is in some ways, a more interesting, nuanced role, and Weinstock makes the most of the opportunity. Richard Katz as Tatte is the charming, yet dolefully prescient father in the epilogue, who explains to his daughter why they have not taken the opportunity to escape to America. Director Elayce Ismail’s assured direction holds the play together, and sets the stage for each feature of this production to shine. I’ve mentioned the brilliant set design, but the sound (Richard Hammarton) and lighting (Joshua Pharo) are also noteworthy. And although there is no dramaturgy credit, the programme notes by Professor Michael Berkowitz are an absolutely essential part of understanding how this complex play fits together.

While a play like Love and Other Acts of Violence might not be everyone’s idea of how to spend a Friday night in the theatre, it’s important to remind ourselves that theatre isn’t just about feel good musicals and revivals of the classics. There are times when playwrights have to be the Cassandras of their generation, and fortunately for us, Cordelia Lynn knows how to rise to the challenge. I urge you to see this show.

THE HUMAN BODY at the Donmar Warehouse

★★★

“this is a play that promises much and fails, ultimately, to deliver”

THE HUMAN BODY at the Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed on 28th February 2024

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Marc Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE HUMAN BODY

THE HUMAN BODY<

Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed – 15th October 2021

★★★★

“it’s essential to remind ourselves that theatre isn’t just about feel good musicals and revivals of the classics”

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Helen Murray

Love and Other Acts of Violence

Donmar Warehouse until 27th November

Previously reviewed this year by Dominica: