★★★★

“There is a playfulness that fits the season perfectly. Like a Christmas jumper. It is great fun, but any other time of the year you could never get away with it.”

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time for normal rules to be put on the back burner. Sparkly and ridiculous clothes are worn without embarrassment or comment, and behavioural patterns stray from the straight and narrow. Usually induced by festive merriment and alcohol, social barriers are pulled down and liaisons instigated (a polite euphemism) that would normally be questionable. It is the time that, in the grey, sober light of a January, many of us will look back on with a touch of regret.

Suffice to say, Dave Hearn, Amy Revelle and Michael Dylan, who comprise ‘Original Theatre’, will look back with befuddled amazement at their antics at the Park Theatre. But there will be no regret whatsoever, such will be the triumphant success of their seasonal yet anarchic take on H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”. I say success maybe prematurely – time will tell – but if there’s any justice in the world, my prediction will be right.

It is also timely. ‘Time’ is a trending topic at this moment in time. With Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary occupying our screens and far too many column inches in our media. And with ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ soaring into the West End. Time travel has always fascinated us – it is a weighty issue that is usually treated with reverence and intellectual respect. ‘Original Theatre’ are having none of that. Apart from making it one of the most hilarious explorations of the theory, they also bring it riotously into the realms of reality. Almost.

“The trio take us on a delightful tour in H. G. Wells’ time machine, taking liberties with wild abandon and fuelled by reckless and irreverent gags”

Dave Hearn has adopted the surname Wells, claiming to be the great great grandson of the prolific writer and social critic Herbert George Wells. He has taken it upon himself to convince us that his great great grandfather’s novel was, in fact, science fact rather than fiction. After all, he found the original, ink-stained manuscript in his aunt’s attic to prove it. What ensues is a high energy romp through plays within plays within plays (that inevitably go wrong), with much emphasis on the three main paradoxes that render time travel theoretically illogical. The tone is set from the outset. It is bold and heightened, which is a good thing as it needs the chutzpah to overcome a few clichés before it gets into its stride. The pseudo under rehearsed conceit is over-egged, while the dramatic interruptions veer close to predictability. Sometimes the subject matter is at odds with the delivery, but once the concept is fully established, the chaotic, over-the-top humour falls into place. The trio take us on a delightful tour in H. G. Wells’ time machine, taking liberties with wild abandon and fuelled by reckless and irreverent gags.

In the second act, the plot appears to be irrevocably lost, but by now we are absorbed in the personalities and the human touch. A subliminal message of friendship, loyalty and hope is glimpsed somewhere beneath the mayhem, melodrama and histrionics. Writers Steven Canny and John Nicholson have cleverly pulled the characters out of the story and seemingly left them high and dry. It is shrewdly scripted but the performances convince us of the disarray. The audience are invited to help save the show – and perhaps save a life. It could all go horribly wrong, but Orla O’Loughlin’s sprightly direction inspires reassurance, mixed with some Hitchcockian suspense and Buster Keaton style daring – courtesy too of Fred Meller’s set design.

Hearn, Revelle and Dylan have a natural ability to connect with an audience. Yes, the big questions are either glossed over or pebble-dashed into puzzlement, but such concerns are drowned out by the laughs. There is a playfulness that fits the season perfectly. Like a Christmas jumper. It is great fun, but any other time of the year you could never get away with it.

THE INTERVIEW at the Park Theatre

★★★

“Maitland’s writing and Kettle’s performance gives us a Diana that is multi-dimensional”

There is an eminent fascination with Diana, the people’s princess. More than twenty-five years after her death there are TV shows, documentaries and musicals all seeking to understand something of her, or to simply draw in the viewers. Jonathan Maitland’s original play at the Park Theatre zones in on just one interview between the princess and a reporter.

The interview in question is Princess Diana’s 1995 BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. A watershed moment, the innocuous title ‘An Interview with HRH The Princess of Wales’ belied the explosive revelations made by the princess about her relationship with her husband Prince Charles, the Queen, and the rest of the royal family as well as shocking revelations about her own mental health. It was explosive stuff, hailed at the time by the BBC as ‘the scoop of a generation’. But in 2021 the BBC has vowed never to broadcast the interview again or license it to others due to Bashir’s foul-play in securing the interview.

Maitland’s play, under Michael Fentiman’s direction, explores the events leading up to the interview from the perspective of both parties, attempting to leave us asking whether this really was a one-sided manipulation on the part of Bashir, or whether Diana had more agency than critics today would have you believe.

Diana is well written and charismatically portrayed by Yolanda Kettle. With recent portrayals from Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown to Kristen Stewart in Spencer, there is no shortage of Diana content for comparison, and whilst it’s difficult to make a Diana feel fresh, Kettle does so with humour, emphasising the princess’s lighter side. She makes jokes about the music she chooses to play to avoid her conversation with Bashir being picked up by bugging devices as being about a woman who murders her adulterous husband, and has a great retort about why her sister said she should go through with the wedding despite reservations. Maitland’s writing and Kettle’s performance gives us a Diana that is multi-dimensional – light-hearted yet deeply hurt by her husband, strong-willed yet insecure, paranoid yet with good reason.

“the lights fade, and the audience groans, having been teased with what would have been the highlight of the evening”

Sami Fendall’s costume design is peak 90s with Diana’s ‘off-duty princess’ styling of belted dark rinse Levi 501s and a tucked in white shirt. Her short bouffant crop looks almost comically voluminous but is actually pretty spot on when compared to the stills from the interview itself.

Tibu Fortes as Martin Bashir is incredibly sincere and despite his refrain that he and Diana are the same, outsiders, in many ways his character stands in stark contrast. Whereas Diana is emotionally complex, Bashir seems to have only one motivation – to score the interview of a generation by doing whatever he needs to do to get it. Maitland’s choice to have Bashir use the same story about his dead brother to endear himself to Diana and her Butler is Machiavellian and makes us wonder whether he even had a brother at all. Act II focuses in on Bashir through the editing process and the fallout does him few favours. However, the suggestion that the fraudulent methods used to get the interview were the start of a long line of truth doctoring that stretched forward through Blair’s ‘dodgy dossier’ to Trump was a ham-fisted stretch.

It’s also an odd choice to have much of the first act narrated by Diana’s infamous butler, Paul Burrell. His character is almost totally redundant, other than perhaps to show that even those close to Diana were looking for ways to elevate themselves at her expense. A much more interesting aide is Luciana, wittily played by Naomi Frederick, perhaps a press or media secretary or just a close confidante who comes from the same world as Diana but seems to understand what she’s going through.

The second act does let this piece down, swapping conversations between the princess and the reporter for dry ethical conversations between the broadcaster and his BBC bosses. It starts to look up when the Kettle as Diana re-emerges after a long absence and converses with Bashir as if from beyond the grave, arguing that despite the foul-play, those were words she wanted the world to hear. Chairs appear carried by other cast members and you start to hope we will see some of the interview recreated live. But then the lights fade, and the audience groans, having been teased with what would have been the highlight of the evening – Diana live and self-scripted as she intended to be.

THE TIME MACHINE – A COMEDY at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“There is a playfulness that fits the season perfectly. Like a Christmas jumper. It is great fun, but any other time of the year you could never get away with it.”

“The trio take us on a delightful tour in H. G. Wells’ time machine, taking liberties with wild abandon and fuelled by reckless and irreverent gags”

THE TIME MACHINE – A COMEDY at the Park Theatre

Reviewed on 5th December 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Reviewed this year at the Park Theatre:

The Time Machine

The Time Machine

THE INTERVIEW at the Park Theatre

★★★

“Maitland’s writing and Kettle’s performance gives us a Diana that is multi-dimensional”

“the lights fade, and the audience groans, having been teased with what would have been the highlight of the evening”

THE INTERVIEW at the Park Theatre

Reviewed on 1st November 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Interview

The Interview