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Category Archives: Events
THE IRISH TIMES IRISH THEATRE AWARDS 2022: ALL THE WINNERS REVEALED · Jun 15th
(Sara Keating’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 6/12; Photo: Best actress: Bríd Ní Neachtain won for her role in Happy Days. Photograph: Andrew Downes/Xposure.)
Six months ago Ireland’s theatre world was in lockdown. Tonight felt like a big win for the entire creative community
It felt like a big win for the entire theatre community at the 23rd Irish Times Theatre Awards ceremony on Sunday at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, in Dublin. Six months ago, venues, artists and producers across the country were still in lockdown, wondering when the live-performance sector might return to normality.
On paper, the artists shortlisted in the 15 categories, for productions staged in 2020-21, may have looked like competitors. Who was the better actor: Domhnall Gleeson playing a psychologically unstable patient in Enda Walsh’s Medicine or Matthew Malone playing an HIV-positive man in his dying days in Phillip McMahon’s Once Before I Go? But in the courtyard of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham the rivals came together as colleagues.
It seemed especially fitting, then, that the judges’ special award was presented to the National Campaign for the Arts for its “exceptional dedication to advocacy and political engagement on behalf of the arts, particularly during Covid”, an award that recognised the collective endeavour involved in keeping the lamps lit during a period when creating live performance was almost impossible.
In the end, neither Gleeson nor Malone was triumphant in the best-actor category, although Helen Atkinson, Teho Teardo and Seán Carpio won the best-soundscape award for their support of Gleeson, and Katie Davenport won best costume for dressing Malone, who was gloriously clad in celestial wings for his final scene in the Gate Theatre production. (Davenport’s costuming for Michael Gallen’s opera Elsewhere was also recognised in the award.) Instead the honour for best actor went to Stanley Townsend for his performance as Marcus Conway, the middle-aged protagonist of Solar Bones, adapted from the Mike McCormack novel by Michael West.
Solar Bones also saw Lynne Parker named best director; the Rough Magic Theatre production premiered at the Watergate Theatre as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2020, marking the reopening of theatres after the first lockdown; the play’s themes of isolation, grief and anxiety chimed uncannily with Covid times.
The best-actress award went to Bríd Ní Neachtain for Laethanta Sona, the first Irish-language production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, which was performed in the extreme environment of Inis Oírr last August as part of Galway International Arts Festival. Buried up to her waist and then her neck in the inhospitable landscape, it was a performance of physical endurance and a psychological challenge.
A big winner tonight was a sleeper hit of Galway International Arts Festival: Volcano, created by Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects, won four of the seven categories in which it was nominated, including best movement for Murphy and best lighting design for Stephen Dodd (who was also commended for his work on the Abbey Theatre’s production of The Long Christmas Dinner). Alyson Cummins and Pai Rathaya won best set for their claustrophobic reconstruction of Nun’s Island Theatre, in which audience members sat alone in booths to watch Murphy and Will Thompson perform a disturbing but life-affirming postapocalyptic tale that unfolded in four instalments over four nights. With any luck, a bigger audience will get the opportunity to see the remarkable work—which took the best-production honour—in the future.
As theatre artists reminded us as they advocated for each other over the past two years, the essence of theatre is its liveness, its ephemerality, its unrepeatable nature. Perhaps the most felicitous honour, then, was the award of the special-tribute prize to the photographer Ros Kavanagh, who has played a key role in preserving the artistic process and output of hundreds of theatre artists over the past two decades, including much of the work being celebrated at the awards. Selina Cartmell, director of the Gate Theatre, called Kavanagh a key collaborator who has a rare ability to “make you understand your role as a director”; the choreographer David Bolger highlighted the beauty of an archive of images that “will last forever when the show is gone”.
Best actor
Stanley Townsend, Solar Bones (Kilkenny Arts Festival in partnership with Rough Magic in association with Watergate Theatre)
Best actress
Bríd Ní Neachtain, Laethanta Sona, (Company SJ and Abbey Theatre in association with Dublin Theatre Festival and Galway International Arts Festival)
Supporting actor
Bosco Hogan, One Good Turn (The Abbey Theatre) and The Enemy Within (An Grianán Theatre)
Supporting actress
Bláithín Mac Gabhann, The Seagull After Chekhov (Druid) and Our New Girl (The Gate Theatre)
Best director
Lynne Parker, Solar Bones (Kilkenny Arts Festival in partnership with Rough Magic in association with Watergate Theatre)
Best set
Alyson Cummins and Pai Rathaya, Volcano (Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects)
Best costume
Katie Davenport, Once Before I Go (The Gate Theatre) and Elsewhere (Straymaker and the Abbey Theatre in association with Miroirs Étendus and Once Off Productions)
Best lighting
Stephen Dodd, Volcano (Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects) and The Long Christmas Dinner (Abbey Theatre)
Best soundscape
Helen Atkinson, Teho Teardo and Seán Carpio, Medicine (Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival)
Best movement
Luke Murphy, Volcano (Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects)
Best ensemble
Mojo Mickeybo (Bruiser Theatre Company)
Best production
Volcano (Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects)
Best new play
Mark O’Halloran, Conversations After Sex (thisispopbaby)
TONY AWARD WINNERS 2022: LIST · Jun 13th
(from The New York Times, 6/12, compiled by Rachel Sherman; Photo: Ben Power accepting the Tony for best new play for “The Lehman Trilogy.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.)
The Tony Awards were back at Radio City Music Hall for the first time since June 2019. The awards ceremony, which honors the plays and musicals staged on Broadway and resumed its traditional calendar after a long pandemic disruption, honored work that opened on Broadway between Feb. 20, 2020, and May 4, 2022. (“Girl From the North Country” opened on March 5, 2020, just a week before theaters shut down for the pandemic.)
Ariana DeBose, the former Broadway understudy turned Oscar winner, hosted the three-hour broadcast portion of the Tony Awards on CBS, which was preceded by a one-hour segment hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough on Paramount+. “A Strange Loop” won best musical and “The Lehman Trilogy” was awarded best play at a glittering ceremony celebrating Broadway’s comeback. Myles Frost won his first Tony for best leading actor in a musical for “MJ,” his Broadway (and professional acting) debut. And there were performances from some of the past year’s most prominent musicals: “Company,” “Girl From the North Country” and “Paradise Square,” among others.
A complete list of winners is below.
Best Musical
Best Revival of a Musical
Best Play
Best Revival of a Play
Best Book of a Musical
Michael R. Jackson, “A Strange Loop”
Best Original Score
“Six: The Musical,” music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss
Best Direction of a Play
Sam Mendes, “The Lehman Trilogy”
Best Direction of a Musical
Marianne Elliott, “Company”
Best Leading Actor in a Play
Simon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy”
Best Leading Actress in a Play
Deirdre O’Connell, “Dana. H”
Best Leading Actor in a Musical
Myles Frost, “MJ”
Best Leading Actress in a Musical
Joaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square”
PAAPA ESSIEDU ON GRIEF, DOUBT AND FURY AT BORIS JOHNSON: ‘BIGOTRY IS THE BACKBONE OF HIS CHARACTER’ · Jun 12th
(Simon Hattenstone’s article appeared in the Guardian, 6/11; via Pam Green; Photo: Paapa Essiedu: ‘Before the first day on a job, I have a nervous breakdown.’ Photograph: Elliott Wilcox/The Guardian. Clothes: Fendi. Necklace: Alighieri.)
The I May Destroy You star talks about politics; his great friend Michaela Coel; dealing with drama school racism; and why even as a leading man he still struggles with self-confidence
Paapa Essiedu greets me at his local caff in London. He has a cold drink in his hand, and a bag featuring Basquiat-style daubings hangs over one shoulder. Essiedu is wearing huge shades, black nail varnish, a designer T-shirt that translates Jamaican patois into the Queen’s English, an open shirt and the coolest two-tone raincoat you’ve ever seen. He seems eye-poppingly confident.
And so he should be. Essiedu is establishing himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. His punk, graffiti-artist Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company was unforgettable, not least for his astonishing, tearful delivery of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. He was heartbreaking as the hook up-addicted rape victim Kwame in Michaela Coel’s brilliant TV drama I May Destroy You, and complex in Jack Thorne’s Kiri, which dealt with the abduction of a black child from her white adoptive family in Bristol. As reporter Ed Washburn in the TV series Press, he constantly kept you guessing – is he too noble for the scuzzy world of the tabloids or the most unscrupulous of the lot? Essiedu has a rare suppleness as an actor, both verbal and physical, that keeps him one step ahead of his audience. Now he’s starring in Sky’s existential sci-fi thriller series The Lazarus Project as a regular fella who discovers he has the ability to turn back time. Essiedu gives another beautifully nuanced performance. As George, he is bewildered, soulful and utterly believable, anchoring both the premise and the series.
Well, you’re a very good actor, I say. “Do you really think so?” he asks. I assume he’s fishing for compliments. Well, don’t you? “Erm … I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I just started a job yesterday and on the day before the first day on every job, I have a nervous breakdown, thinking: this is the one where people will find me out, see that what’s underneath the car bonnet doesn’t work.” Genuinely? “Genuine!” he says fiercely.
Essiedu in The Lazarus Project
When you say nervous breakdown, how bad are we talking? “Like, really bad. I need a lot of support from the people who are close to me to drag me into the car to go to work on that first day. It’s generally only the first day or the first week.” You really don’t want to go? “Yes. I’m like: I’m going to fuck it up. I read, ‘What are you doing here?’ on everybody’s face. Or, ‘Oh my God I’ve made a huge mistake in inviting you to be in this’ in their body language. You know that thing when you project what your brain wants you to see on somebody who is probably just having a cup of tea? I read things into them that they are hopefully not thinking.” He comes to a stop. “Maybe they are thinking it.” Blimey, I think – we’ve only been talking for a couple of minutes.
He tells me he’s starving, and always has Colombian eggs when he’s here. “But I’ve got a real phobia of people watching me eat.” I tell him I won’t watch, and can’t see anyway because the sun’s so strong. “Do you want to borrow these?” he says, pointing to his shades.
Essiedu, 32, was born in London to Ghanaian parents. His father, Tony, a lawyer, returned to Ghana when he was a baby. His mother, Selina, who taught fashion and design at adult education colleges, was a single parent; he was an only child. They were a team, adored each other, relied on each other, and couldn’t be closer. She struggled for money, but Essiedu won a scholarship to a private school. She encouraged him to work hard, and he did – for himself and for her.
I ask if he has a photo of her. He brings out his phone. “Do you think I look like her?” He does, and it’s obvious he wants me to say so. His eyes burn with emotion. What made her so special? “She was just an amazingly loving, strong, resilient and, for me, inspiring person.”
DRAMA DESK AWARDS 2022: WINNERS ANNOUNCED (LIST) · Jun 9th
(via Scott Klein, Keith Sherman & Associates)
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TOM STOPPARD IN NEW YORK, ON BROADWAY: ‘LEOPOLDSTADT’: 2020 OLIVIER AWARD “BEST NEW PLAY”–OPENING SUN., OCT. 2 · Jun 8th
(Via Michelle Farabaugh, BBB, Adrian Bryan-Brown; Photo: The Original West End Company of Leopoldstadt (Credit: Marc Brenner)
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★★★★★
“Magnificent!
Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece.
GO!”
The Independent
Opening on Broadway
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Performances Begin Wednesday, September 14
at the Longacre Theatre
In a Limited Engagement
Tickets On Sale Soon
American Express Pre-Sale Begins June 15
Audience Rewards Pre-Sale Begins June 22
General On-Sale Begins June 29 at Telecharge.com
“A momentous new play.”
Financial Times
“Tom Stoppard’s new masterwork.”
Evening Standard
“There is something momentous about Leopoldstadt.
It’s a grand, contemplative historical sweep across six decades.”
The Guardian
Sonia Friedman Productions, Roy Furman, and Lorne Michaels have announced that Tom Stoppard’s Olivier Award-winning Best New Play, Leopoldstadt, directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Patrick Marber, will open on Broadway in a limited engagement at the Longacre Theatre (220 West 48th Street) this fall. Performances will begin Wednesday, September 14, 2022 ahead of a Sunday, October 2, 2022 opening night.
Perhaps the most personal play of Stoppard’s unmatched career, Leopoldstadt opened in London’s West End to rave critical acclaim on January 25, 2020. A planned extension due to overwhelming demand was curtailed due to the COVID-19 lockdown seven weeks later. In late 2021, the play returned for a further 12-week engagement. Both runs completely sold out and Leopoldstadt received the Olivier Award for Best New Play in October 2020.
Leopoldstadt will mark Tom Stoppard’s 19th play on Broadway since his groundbreaking Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead opened 55 years ago. Stoppard has won four Best Play Tony Awards, more than any other playwright in history.
Casting for Leopoldstadt will be announced at a later date.
Set in Vienna, Leopoldstadt takes its title from the Jewish quarter. This passionate drama of love and endurance begins in the last days of 1899 and follows one extended family deep into the heart of the 20th Century. Full of his customary wit and beauty, Tom Stoppard’s late work spans fifty years of time over two hours. The Financial Times said, “This is a momentous new play. Tom Stoppard has reached back into his own family history to craft a work that is both epic and intimate; that is profoundly personal, but which concerns us all.” With a cast of 38 and direction by Patrick Marber, Leopoldstadt is a “magnificent masterpiece” (The Independent) that must not be missed.
Sonia Friedman said, “Any new Stoppard play is something to treasure, but Leopoldstadt is truly a gift and our greatest living playwright’s most intensely personal piece. Leopoldstadt is a passionate drama of enduring love and familial bonds that asks us to bear witness to our pasts, no matter how painful that might be.
I so look forward to bringing Patrick Marber’s epic and truly extraordinary production to North America at a moment when it feels more necessary than ever.”
Patrick Marber said: “It was my great pleasure to direct a revival of Tom’s early play Travesties on Broadway in 2018. At the time he mentioned that he was just beginning to write something new. And here it is, his mighty Leopoldstadt.
I’ve loved Tom’s plays since boyhood. I studied his work at university, he inspired me as a fledgling playwright. To be the director of his new play is one heck of an honour.
We are so thrilled to be bringing this moving and beautiful play to life once more.”
Leopoldstadt’s creative team includes scenic design by Tony Award winner Richard Hudson (The Lion King, La Bête), costume design by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, lighting design by three-time Tony Award winner Neil Austin (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Company, Travesties), sound and original music by Tony Award winner Adam Cork (Red, Travesties), video design by Isaac Madge, and movement by Emily Jane Boyle. Casting is by Jim Carnahan and Maureen Kelleher, and UK casting is by Amy Ball CDG.
TICKET INFORMATION
As the official card sponsor of Leopoldstadt, American Express® Card Members have access to exclusive presale tickets before the general public from Wednesday, June 15 at 10am ET at Telecharge.com.
Presale tickets for Leopoldstadt are available exclusively to Audience Rewards® members and American Express® Card Members from Wednesday, June 22 at 10:00 am ET through Wednesday, June 29 at 9:59am ET. It’s free and fast to join at www.AudienceRewards.com.
Audience Rewards is the Official Rewards Program of Broadway, providing membership benefits and rewards for more than 2.7 million members and representing more than a quarter of all Broadway tickets purchased through Ticketmaster and Telecharge. Free and easy to join, Audience Rewards allows buyers to earn ShowPoints on every ticket purchase, to be redeemed for free tickets, theater collectibles, unique experiences, and more.
Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Wednesday, June 29 at 10:00am EST online at Telecharge.com or by phone at 212-239-6200.
For 10+ Group Sales information contact Broadway Inbound at broadwayinbound.com or call 866-302-0995.
BIOGRAPHIES
Internationally award-winning writer TOM STOPPARD’s plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Jumpers, New Found Land, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (a play for actors and orchestra written with André Previn), Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia, Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Hard Problem. His radio plays include Albert’s Bridge, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died, If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, and most recently, his dramatic imagining of Pink Floyd’s Darkside of the Moon, Darkside. Stoppard is also a writer for film and television and received the Academy Award for the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love.
PATRICK MARBER was born in London in 1964. He is a playwright, screenwriter and director. He directed his own play Closer on Broadway (Music Box) in 1999 and then Tom Stoppard’s Travesties in 2018 (Roundabout/American Airlines). These productions received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Director and Best Revival. Directing credits of his own work include Dealer’s Choice, Closer, Howard Katz, Three days in the Country at the National Theatre, After Miss Julie for BBC TV and Don Juan in Soho at Wyndham’s Theatre. Other directing credits include The Room as part of the Pinter at the Pinter Season, Venus In Fur at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, The Caretaker at the Comedy Theatre, Blue Remembered Hills at the National Theatre, ‘1953’ at the Almeida and The Old Neighborhood at the Royal Court Theatre. Marber’s plays, which have received multiple awards both in the West End and on Broadway, also include The Red Lion and versions of Hedda Gabler and Exit The King. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay Notes on a Scandal.
SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS is an international production company responsible for some of the most successful theatre productions in recent years. Since 1990, Sonia Friedman OBE has developed, initiated and produced over 180 new productions and won a combined 58 Oliviers, 34 Tonys and 3 BAFTAs. Current productions include: The Book of Mormon, West End and UK & Europe tour, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, London, New York, Melbourne, San Francisco, Toronto, Tokyo and Hamburg, Mean Girls US tour; To Kill a Mockingbird, London; Jerusalem, London; Oklahoma! London; Funny Girl, New York and Dreamgirls UK tour. Forthcoming productions / co-productions include: Hamlet, New York; Oresteia, New York; Merrily We Roll Along, New York; The Doctor, UK tour and London and The Piano Lesson, New York. In New York SFP has produced previously three Tom Stoppard plays, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Arcadia and Travesties. Other notable Broadway shows include Boeing-Boeing, Jerusalem, Farinelli and the King and King Richard the Third/Twelfe Night, all with Mark Rylance, as well as The Seagull, A Little Night Music, The Norman Conquests, La Cage aux Folles, The River, Mean Girls, The Ferryman and The Inheritance. soniafriedman.com
REAGAN REMEMBERS D-DAY—PART OF THE BOOK ‘REAGAN’S COWBOYS’ BY JOHN B. ROBERTS II · Jun 7th
“Reagan’s Cowboys is something of a memoir of Roberts’s career with the 40th president, and as such, it’s a time machine back to the days of typewriters, hard-line telephones, and Marlboro cigarettes. .. Be grateful to Roberts for giving us history as it actually happened, uncensored and un-politically corrected. … [He] gives us glimpses of a huge cast of characters in Reaganworld.”―James P. Pinkerton, Breitbart
(View on Amazon)
JAMMING WITH JOKERMAN: HOW BOB MARLEY AND BOB DYLAN’S SONGS POWERED HIT MUSICALS · Jun 7th
(Ammar Kalia’s article appeared in the Guardian, 5/31; via Pam Green; Photo: Arinzé Kene in Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical and Shirley Henderson with Adam James in Girl from the North Country. Composite: Tristram Kenton.)
Olivier award-winner Simon Hale on the thrill of orchestrating two legends’ tracks on Get Up, Stand Up! and Girl from the North Country
It’s not often you get the green light from Bob Dylan to run riot with his songs. But for composer Simon Hale and playwright Conor McPherson, a call from the Old Vic theatre in 2017 was just that: an invitation to rework Dylan’s songbook into a musical, with the blessing of free rein from the artist.
The ensuing show, Girl from the North Country, opened that year to rave reviews for its deft transformation of 19 of Dylan’s journeying songs into a story set in 1930s Minnesota. Following runs in the West End and on Broadway, the show is now embarking on a UK tour and Hale is back in the rehearsal room.
“This is an unusual piece. We don’t deliver songs in the way that musical theatre generally does,” he says. “We don’t play for applause, we go from one song to another and sometimes they drift off as something else happens. I worried about representing such an iconic songbook this way but Dylan followed his instinct and so I did the same.”
Hale, 58, has spent most of his career traversing genres. Cutting his teeth as a touring keyboard player for Seal in the early 90s, he went on to arrange string sections for early Björk and Jamiroquai albums. He has since arranged Sam Smith’s 2015 Bond theme, Writing’s on the Wall, and recorded with George Michael and Céline Dion. But it was a call to write orchestrations for a US production of Spring Awakening in 2006 that established a lasting relationship with the theatre.
“Collaboration is very visceral in theatre and that’s what has kept me coming back,” he says. “Everyone’s in the same room, whereas making a record or film, you’re in and out in a few hours and you don’t have the same human connection.”
The role of an orchestrator might facilitate human connection but it can also be a tricky mediation. Typically, you work with existing songs or demos that need the addition of extra instrumentation. “You have to create a new character in that story, one that has to fit seamlessly but that also adds to the essence of the song, so that when it’s taken away it’s missed,” Hale says. “It’s a challenge but you have to trust yourself, otherwise you get swallowed up in trying to copy other people’s visions.”
Hale, who realised as a child that he had perfect pitch, initially composes his music in his head before he commits pencil to paper. “I’m always thinking in my own time, visualising the music,” he says. “The first time anyone ever hears what I’ve done is in the recording session. There is a fear in anticipating that first note being played but the shock of those black and white dots being turned into sound never gets old. The sense of danger is good.”
Trusting that connection between his mind’s eye and the performers bringing his work to life has paid off. In April, Hale won an Olivier award for his orchestration of another Bob’s songbook for Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, directed by Clint Dyer. The two projects were markedly different. “Girl from the North Country is set in a period where the composer of our show wasn’t born, so we’re entirely reimagining the music, whereas in Get Up, Stand Up! we’re trying to faithfully represent the brilliance of what Bob Marley did in his life,” he says. Working with arranger Phil Bateman, Hale’s role was to take his selections of Marley’s songs and realise them with the band. “It’s all about detail – providing that sense of rhythm and melody that means any talented musician can turn it into exactly what we’re trying to convey, night after night,” he says.
LOUIS LOVETT AND THE DARK HEART OF CHILDREN’S DRAMA · Jun 6th
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(Chris McCormack’s article appeared in Irish Times, 6/6/22; Photo: Louis Lovett weighs up the challenge of The Tin Soldier: `What a child knows is their own world. So we like to bring in aspects of things they don’t know.’ Photograph: Ruth Gilligan.)
`Every child arrives hard-wired to imagine, to pick up an object and play with it’
Looking back on the past decade, it is tempting to ask Louis Lovett, an actor dedicated to making plays for young audiences, why he started getting spooky.
Cast your mind back to 2010′s adventure fantasy The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly, and you’ll remember Lovett arriving colourful and light-hearted, in a striped swimsuit, as a young girl on a mission to save her family. You could easily divide the plays made by his company Theatre Lovett into two camps, one characterised by such narratives that are original and consoling. The other camp, containing adaptations of fairy tales and popular stories, is boldly sinister.
“Very often with theatre for young audiences, the rainbow colours and the brightness are what you come to expect. That wasn’t our thing. We went towards those darker colours,” says Lovett. Ahead of his new play, The Tin Soldier, a version of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, he shares his experiences of what happens when you make children’s stories dark.
For instance, a few years ago Theatre Lovett toured the chilling play A Feast of Bones – a tonal turning point for the company. During one post-show discussion, young members of the audience voiced their strong disagreement with the ending. The play had served up something that was fascinatingly morbid and difficult to resist: the possibility of revenge.
A retelling of the folk tale Henny Penny, A Feast of Bones found something very serious in that story of a chicken who, believing the world is ending, recruits a group of animals to alert the king, only for her to lead them into the deathly clutches of a fox. The foolishness and violence held historical echoes for Lovett. “I saw a parallel with the march towards war in 1914, and with this mob mentality. It was an obsessive drive based on an idiotic assumption of something falling on someone’s head,” he says.
He gave the idea to playwright Frances Kay, who set the narrative in wartime France, in a dimly lit cafe where folk musicians play songs containing subtly murderous lyrics. Henny Penny is now disguised as a waitress, and is wracked by survivor’s guilt after the death of her friends. Her customer is the fox, a war profiteer who gains from other people’s suffering. Henny Penny brings plates in and out of the kitchen, and, with each course, there are hints that the fox, unbeknown to himself, is being served his own family to eat.
Atmospheres of menace
Lovett has a talent for creating atmospheres of menace, but what if it sways children to mistake the hero for an avenger? “One of the key elements of these plays is the responsibility you have for young audiences. You can’t go around saying vengeance is a dish best served cold,” he says. After Henny Penny leads the fox to the horrifying conclusion that he devoured his own loved ones, she reveals that it has all been a masquerade, and reunites him with his family. The fox has learned the horror of his actions but that wasn’t enough for Lovett’s audience. “The children wished she didn’t let him off the hook,” he says. They wanted blood.
That puts Lovett in a complex position, where the demands of being an artist often resembles the responsibility of an adult setting an example for young people. Since A Feast of Bones, there haven’t been as many instructive lessons about how to contemplate the consequences of someone’s actions. Instead, he went down the path of presenting uneasily reconciled, real-life issues in ways that were easily recognisable.
‘OTVETKA’ BY NEDA NEZHDANA (THEATRE OF PLAYWRIGHTS IN KYIV/ POPDIPINGDI PRODUCTIONS IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE FINBOROUGH THEATRE—VIEW NOW) · Jun 3rd
(Chris Wiegand, 5/31, the Guardian; Photo: of Neda Nezhdana, Litgazeta.com.ua)
Neda Nezhdana’s urgent exploration of war is a collaboration with the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv. Otvetka had its premiere in Ukraine weeks after Russia invaded. Kate Vostrikova performs the tale of a pregnant woman in a study of war’s psychological impact.
Presented by Popdipingdi Productions in association with the Finborough and available on YouTube. (Read more)