“The cast was absolutely outstanding, with not a single weak performance amongst them”
It is an interesting choice to hold Allegiance at The Charing Cross Theatre. The small, quirky theatre was recently home to From Here to Eternity, a stunning musical which told the story of American soldiers stationed in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbour Attack. Allegiance feels rather like a sequel to From Here to Eternity, telling the story of the aftermath from the perspective of the Japanese Americans.
George Takei’s touching musical tells the true story of the Japanese Americans forced into internment camps following the Pearl Harbour attack. A place where Takei spent a large portion of his childhood. It is clear that this musical is written from personal experience and was filled with heart. It is a moving story and a stark portrayal of the racism that was ingrained in society at the time, and a warning signal for the modern era.
The music (Jay Kuo) was cleverly written, with traditional Japanese themes intertwined with American Big Band style, and much like the cultures in the show, these styles were at times complementing each other, and at others appearing to clash somewhat.
The cast was absolutely outstanding, with not a single weak performance amongst them. A few stand outs were Telly Leung as Sammy Kimura, a young Japanese American feeling torn between his citizenship and his heritage. The song Allegiance, led by Sammy and his father (Masashi Fujimoto) was sublime. Patrick Munday as Frankie Suzuki led another fantastic performance in the song Paradise. However, the showstopper for me was Aynrand Ferrer, a powerhouse vocalist whose performance was filled with emotion. Her ballad Higher was truly breath-taking.
Given the heart-breaking subject matter, I was surprised to find some genuinely very funny moments in the show – George Takei is a great comic actor, with the humorous moments heightened by the hopeless situation that the characters were in at the time.
The set (Mayou Trikerioti) was simple and effective, however with the traverse staging, it sometimes felt like one side of the audience or another was being left out of the action a little, or that the performers were trying to find a happy medium, and at times appeared to be performing to the walls between the audience sections.
Allegiance is an incredibly powerful show that highlights an important and often overlooked part of history, and holds a vital lesson for the modern era to prevent history from repeating itself.
“Bang-Hansen’s elegant direction is right at home in the Coronet’s beautifully restored interiors”
When We Dead Awaken is Ibsen’s last play, and the master was very well aware of that as he was writing it. In consequence, it has a distinctly different tone to his earlier, better known works such as An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, and A Doll House, to name just a few. The language in When We Dead Awaken shifts between the lyrical and the brutal. The play is haunting, and also elusive in its final, elegiac notes. Added to all that is the chance to see the play acted (mostly) in Norwegian, performed by (mostly) Norwegian actors. These are just some of the features that make this production, by The Norwegian Ibsen Company with the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill, a highlight of the still evolving 2022 theatre season in London.
When We Dead Awaken begins slowly, but (spoiler alert) like the avalanche which makes its appearance at the end of the play, its gathering power draws you in and holds you fast, even in the knowledge of certain obliteration. And as always in Ibsen’s plays, the endings are not up for sunny reinterpretations. Viewed in this way, the confrontations between an aging artist, Arnold Rubek (Øystein Røger), his young wife Maia (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and his muse, Irene (Ragnhild Margrethe Gudbrandsen) take on a mythic quality as they struggle to decide what is more important. The life of an artist? The work of art itself? Is it worth giving up a chance of family and children to pursue your art? What happens if you become successful, but still feel something lacking in both art and life? What happens if success feels like death? Into this mix of conflicting situations, we can be pretty sure, Ibsen is pouring the accumulated frustrations of his own life as an artist. But there’s always at least one wild card in play in Ibsen’s dramas, and this arrives in the form of a bear hunter named Ulfhejm (James Browne). It’s Ulfhejm who separates the unhappy couple. It’s the crude and brutal hunter who entices Maia away from her husband, and, ironically, gives the artist one last chance to reconnect with his muse, Irene. And it is Ulfhjem who entices them all up the mountainside where revelations and endings come together in surprising, but somehow appropriate ways.
Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s elegant direction is right at home in the Coronet’s beautifully restored interiors and its surprisingly spacious stage. His actors move with assurance around a set design by Mayou Trikerioti that evokes fin de siécle decay —the wreckage of an excessive past spilling out on stage where no one can ignore it any longer. With some deft sound design and music by Peter Gregson, it’s easy to get drawn into a space where resort hotels become remote mountainsides in a subtle change of lights (Amy Mae.) Special mention should also be made of the ease with which the Norwegian actors manage this difficult play in two languages. Listening to a play in a language one doesn’t know is always revealing. In this production of When We Dead Awaken, Norwegian sounds clipped and precise. The lyrical struggles a bit, but then it should. And every so often the unfamiliar becomes familiar again as English words peek through the Norwegian in odd pronounciations, reminding us that modern English retains more than a few Norwegian words. Andrea Bræin Hovig and Øystein Røger establish a palpable sense of tension in their scenes in Norwegian together, which contrast nicely with the scenes in English when Irish actor James Browne is on the stage. The subtitles, when necessary, are discreetly projected onto a curtain upstage.
The main disappointment of this production is — you guessed it — the avalanche. But it is hard to argue with Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s pragmatic choice to have the avalanche always on stage, in a sense, in Mayou Trikerioti’s set design. So there is no dramatic movement on stage at the end of the play. The actors simply narrate the final moments. On the whole, this production of When We Dead Awaken shows itself up to the challenge of Ibsen’s last drama. It cleverly avoids falling into the traps that Ibsen has set for the overconfident theatre maker.
