Tag Archives: Paul Wills

Admissions

Admissions
★★★

Trafalgar Studios

Admissions

Admissions

 Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 13th March 2019

★★★

 

“Every element of Admissions is running very smoothly, but it’s difficult not to feel like the whole thing is skirting around some realer issue”

 

The recent release of blockbuster superhero film Captain Marvel has seen a staggering spectrum of critiques crop up: some glowing, some vitriolic, and some more tepid. One of the more interesting arguments from the latter of those is that the film is riddled with ‘performative progressivism’ – that it heralds itself as part of a revolution in the representation of women heroes in Hollywood as though Marvel itself didn’t necessitate it with its previous twenty male-centric films. Joshua Harmon’s Admissions tries to dissect the role of performative progressivism in education – primarily university admissions – but the execution of the story raises questions as to whether the play falls victim to the very same thing.

Admissions opens with Sherri Rosen-Mason (Alex Kingston), an admissions officer at a prestigious school, chastising Roberta (Margot Leicester) for not taking diverse enough photos for their prospectus, as she’s hoping to raise the percentage of minority students to 20%. The sincerity of this belief is challenged, however, when her son Charlie (Ben Edelman) is deferred from Yale while his black friend Perry gets accepted despite them being otherwise nearly identical candidates, and so she and her husband Bill (Andrew Woodall) try to pull strings and exercise their privilege to secure a place for their son, and we see the perceived progressivism of Sherri is thrown firmly into doubt as soon as it affects someone related to her.

Harmon’s writing is explosive and satirical; Charlie’s first scene contains a venomous and entitled rant that sees him assert the notion that women and black students are only succeeding because of a need to fill quotas and ends with making a Nazi salute – it just about manages to toe the line between comedic and discomforting, despite a slightly overly-shouty performance from Edelman. Elsewhere, Sherri does her best to convince Roberta that she’s not discriminating against white people with her prospectus demands because some of her best friends are white. The performances all serve this excellently – Kingston’s stamina is exceptional, and Woodall brings a particularly stellar gravitas to his role, while Leicester wrings humour and pathos in equal measure for a beautifully measured performance.

Daniel Aukin ensures a slick pace with deft direction and scene changes that blend into each other, while Paul Wills’ set perfectly depicts the home of a white middle class family. Every element of Admissions is running very smoothly, but it’s difficult not to feel like the whole thing is skirting around some realer issue; it feels like the play at its heart is begging to critique the exclusive and privilege-ridden club that Ivy League universities (or the likes of Oxford and Cambridge here in the UK) have bred, and the opportunities that are only afforded to their graduates as a result. It comes across as hugely performative for the characters to preach the importance of making space at the table for a whole spectrum of people and identities while the play contains an all-white cast. Harmon even suggests in the programme that Admissions is a play about whiteness, but I have to wonder – do we need one?

 

Reviewed by Tom Francis

Photography by Johan Persson

 


Admissions

 Trafalgar Studios until 25th May

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
Lonely Planet | ★★★ | June 2018
Two for the Seesaw | ★★ | July 2018
Silk Road | ★★★★ | August 2018
Dust | ★★★★★ | September 2018
A Guide for the Homesick | ★★★ | October 2018
Hot Gay Time Machine | ★★★★★ | November 2018
Coming Clean | ★★★★ | January 2019
Black Is The Color Of My Voice | ★★★ | February 2019
Soul Sessions | ★★★★ | February 2019
A Hundred Words For Snow | ★★★★★ | March 2019

 

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Lady Windermere’s Fan – 4 Stars

Windermere

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Vaudeville Theatre

Reviewed – 23rd January 2018

 

“Samantha Spiro gives a glorious and dazzling portrayal”

 

By the end of the nineteenth century London publishing houses were awash with “fanologies”: more for the benefit of men on a quest to understand the ladies’ use of the fan and its coded language to convey messages. Combined with eye movements it was a fancy communication tool. The messages conveyed on the whole were those of love. It is no surprise then that it made its way into the title of Oscar Wilde’s 1890s comedy. Whilst its symbolic meaning may be partly lost on a modern audience, the central metaphors still ring true in Dominic Dromgoole’s revival of “Lady Windermere’s Fan” as part of the year long Oscar Wilde season at the Vaudeville.

Young, rich and happily married, Lady Windermere seemingly has it all. Until her husband invites a mysterious widow to her ‘coming of age’ birthday ball. Suddenly everything that she holds dear is in jeopardy. Mixing the comic and the serious, this dramatic technique makes it more interesting, and more full of intrigue, than Wilde’s later, more popular plays.

At the heart of this production are two of Britain’s female comic icons. Kathy Burke, who directs and who has gathered a top notch cast, and Jennifer Saunders who plays the gossip-mongering battleaxe Duchess of Berwick. To allay accusations of star casting, Saunders gives a generous performance and consciously refuses to steal the show (her character is gone by the end of the first act anyway). Yes, there are shades of “Ab Fab”, particularly in the way the character treats her daughter, but Saunders adds more depth here and ingeniously manages to make Wilde’s chiselled epigrams her own.

Grace Molony makes her West End debut as the eponymous Lady Windermere, and she is ‘looking at the stars’. A cool player, she commands the stage. Initially icy in her belief in moral absolutes, she is shaken by a sudden failure in trust caused by the Duchess maliciously yet deliciously leading her into thinking that her husband is having an affair with another woman; a Mrs Erlynne, played by Samantha Spiro giving a glorious and dazzling portrayal of perhaps the most multi-layered character in the piece. All the other characters act as though Mrs Erlynne should be ashamed of herself, yet Spiro plays her without shame. That her character feels so up to date is down to the fact that Wilde was writing before his time. He had the utmost respect for women. Spiro captures this quintessence, but then adds some. Her observations on how easily love can be capsized are heartfelt because she has the biggest heart of them all.

Despite all the right ingredients, though, the production does tread safe ground, but in doing so pays homage to the text, which is the real star of the show. Burke’s solid direction moves the piece along at a comfortable pace, unhindered by Paul Wills’ uncluttered but strikingly stylised set, except for a slightly odd musical interlude which, despite being a sharp-witted music hall pastiche penned by Burke herself, is out of place and too obvious a time-filler.

The energy does step up a notch in the second act and the chemistry between the characters strengthens. The scene where Mrs Erlynne persuades Lady Windermere to return to her husband is the highlight of the evening, and the heart of Wilde’s writing comes to the fore. Beneath the wit and the satire, it is what goes unsaid that matters most. This is perhaps Wilde’s play most overflowing with aphorisms, but between the lines, it is the play with the most compassion.

It attacks the un-navigable quagmire of the morals we are supposed to live by, but it does it with heart and humour.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Marc Brenner

 

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Vaudeville Theatre until 7th April

 

 

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