Tag Archives: Lex Kosanke

Gently Down the Stream
★★★★★

Park Theatre

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , ,

Gently Down the Stream

Gently Down the Stream

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 17th February 2019

★★★★★

 

“deeply personal, yet universal; beautifully crafted, yet natural and full of love”

 

There are some extraordinary theatrical experiences that move you so much that you want everybody to share them. This is one of them. Gently Down the Stream is written from the heart with such genuine feeling and soul that it gets inside you, taking you on a journey full of laughter, tears and hopeful joy.

Martin Sherman wanted to write a play that looked at the changes in gay lifestyle during his lifetime, but couldn’t figure out how to go about it until, one day when shopping for groceries, he got the idea of setting the story around an intergenerational relationship. The play takes place in West London over a thirteen year period, from 2001 to 2014, starting at the beginning of the relationship between sixty two year old Beau and twenty-eight year old Rufus. Rufus’ desire to learn about Beau’s life and his experiences on the gay scene take the audience on a voyage from New Orleans, where he grew up, through New York, Paris and London, from the forties on. As the love between Beau and Rufus develops they deal with their own personal demons, against the background of memory and history, until Harry arrives in their lives and changes everything.

Sherman says “I would write about a generation of gay men – my generation – that was brought up to believe they weren’t allowed to love, who now had to deal with a young generation that had no doubt but that they had every right to love.” His writing is deeply personal, yet universal; beautifully crafted, yet natural and full of love.

Jonathan Hyde’s Beau is touching and very funny. Beau’s life story takes us through iconic moments in gay history and intensely personal memories, and Hyde thoroughly inhabits the role. If his accent seems, at times, to slip, it doesn’t matter. He is outstandingly real and believable. Rufus is played by Ben Allen with energy and charm. He breathes new life into Beau, showing him new possibilities as he learns about the past. Harry Lawtey brings humour and a delightful freshness to the role of Harry, changing the relationship between Beau and Rufus, and opening the way for other kinds of love.

Director Sean Mathias is a long term friend of the writer, and he has worked with Sherman and his cast to produce an unforgettable piece of theatre. The set, designed by Lee Newby, is a living room with a stairs leading to an upper hallway, a perfect home for Beau, giving a sense of his character through his furniture and possessions. Jamie Platt’s lighting and Lex Kosanke’s sound design meld together, adding to the atmospheric background of the play.

Gently Down the Stream is an important piece of work that tells a story that we need to know. A story of how gay men have come from a world where their lives and loves were illegal, to a world where they can marry and raise children together. There is still homophobia, there are still battles to be won, but this journey through a history that includes Stonewall and AIDS, is a triumphant one. In this play, that is universal and deeply personal, Beau, Rufus and Harry show us how love has many forms, and is at the heart of a life well lived.

 

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Marc Brenner

 


Gently Down the Stream

Park Theatre until 16th March

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
The Other Place | ★★★ | September 2018
And Before I Forget I Love You, I Love You | ★★★★ | October 2018
Dangerous Giant Animals | ★★★ | October 2018
Honour | ★★★ | October 2018
A Pupil | ★★★★ | November 2018
Dialektikon | ★★★½ | December 2018
Peter Pan | ★★★★ | December 2018
Rosenbaum’s Rescue | ★★★★★ | January 2019
The Dame | ★★★★ | January 2019
My Dad’s Gap Year | ★★½ | February 2019

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

 

Sacha Guitry, Ma Fille et Moi
★★★½

Playground Theatre

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sacha Guitry Ma Fille et Moi

Sacha Guitry, Ma Fille et Moi

Playground Theatre

Reviewed – 29th January 2019

★★★½

 

“Main Quote Line”

 

Sacha Guitry, playwright, filmmaker and actor, was known for his charm, womanising and lyrically frank depictions of Parisian social life in the 1920s. Marianne Badrichani has reimagined the famous wit in a show which depicts the way that life can imitate art, and art life. This makes for a production that feels intelligent and crisp but has a static emotional landscape.

The show interweaves selections of Guitry’s plays with the stories of the playwright and actors bringing them to the stage. Beyond Guitry, then, Ma Fille et Moi is a story of a mother, an actress and a muse, Edith Vernes and her struggles with performance and motherhood. This story line is compelling but is left, unfortunately, overshadowed but Vernes’ affair with Guitry.

The play begins on a meta-theatrical note, with Vernes (played by Edith Vernes) threatening to kill Guitry but waiting to see a little bit of his performance before she does so. “I’ll shoot you when I get bored,” she heckles from the audience. This beginning feels promising in its simultaneous criticism and admiration of Guitry’s work. Unfortunately, Vernes the character, remains at this hightened level of sensitivity and self-involvement and Guitry, played by Sean Rees, remains the confident, eye-rolling playwright, exasperated by his lead actress and lover’s hysteria. The mild misogyny of such a well worn story of the battle of the sexes is a little tiring.

Nonetheless, Vernes and Rees’ performances are full of life. Their movements from different characters and fictions carry an admirable ease. Anais Bachet, playing Vernes’ daughter among other roles, is a talented newcomer to the stage. The multiple narrative switches are also wonderfully and simply executed by some fantastic stage and lighting choices involving an oversized frame of lightbulbs imitating a vanity mirror. Vernes’ costumes too capture the charm of Guitry’s period.

In many ways, this is a play about acting and authenticity. The melodrama of Guitry’s work is juxtaposed with the real problems encountered with making theatre. In this sense, this also not a comedy, but an attempt to inspect how an actor might engage with comedy sincerely. Unfortunately, the play’s meta-theatricality creates a loose form that loses itself and drags in places. It feels easy to forget, in some scenes, why we were here in the first place. However, Vernes’ speech to her daughter at the end is candid and clever and ties these rather loose threads together.

This is a So French Production, performed in French with English surtitles. For those for whom French is not their first language, the surtitles are easy to follow and the translations are sensitive and accurate, holding most of Guitry’s jokes intact. In that humour is often culturally and historically specific, it is possible that Guitry’s humour falls deaf on the ears of a modern, English audience. Though they are just flashes, there are moments of real intelligence as well as a tasteful and elegant aesthetic. As a show about the self-importance of great writers, this production does well to explore Guitry’s life and work.

 

Reviewed by Tatjana Damjanovic

Photography by Sonia Fitoussi 

 

logo

 

Sacha Guitry, Ma Fille et Moi

Playground Theatre until 2nd February

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Fanatical – the Musical | ★★★ | November 2018

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com