BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

Read the book.

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

AN INSPECTOR CALLS | ★★★★ | September 2024

THE GLASS MENAGERIE | ★★★★ | May 2024

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY | ★★★★ | November 2023

TREASON THE MUSICAL | ★★★ | November 2023

BUGSY MALONE | ★★★★★ | December 2022

BIRDSONG

★★★★

“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.

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

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