‘King Charles III’ – REVIEW ☆☆☆☆

The culture: King Charles III, Wyndham’s Theatre

The cheap seats: £17.50 Balcony seats. Ok so these weren’t that cheap but they were the cheapest. At least the view is face on and central (unlike the cheap seats at Wyndham’s miserly neighbour the Noel Coward). The seats are far comfier, too.

I missed the Almeida run of Mike Bartlett’s acclaimed King Charles III, a dark and cheeky imagining of our future with Prince Charles as King, and spent quite a bit of the summer lamenting the passing of its Islington incarnation. So I was over the moon to hear it had been given a West End transfer to Wyndham’s Theatre – which has just been extended until the end of January – and booked tickets straight away. By the time Dominic Cavendish from The Telegraph said “attendance is compulsory” my excitement was pretty much unbearable.

King Charles III is one of the most intelligent pieces I’ve seen in a while. It’s riddled with Shakespeare references for those who choose to appreciate them but even without the allusions to the histories or Macbeth it’s a brilliant and biting satire, more relevant than ever today as the Scottish Independence Referendum looms.  The set vaguely resembles a privy chamber of an Elizabethan court, either a nod to old Bill Shakespeare or a snarky observation about how outdated the monarchy is. This Queen Elizabeth – II not I – has just died, leaving the man we call Prince Charles King. Tim Piggott-Smith plays the perpetually waiting Prince finally given his time to rule and he is sublime. The entire cast get their mannerisms down to a tee.

The post-Elizabeth England that Bartlett presents is very dark indeed. We assume that the role of a modern monarch is all the pomp and ceremony with little of the responsibility but as we watch Charles struggle to take the reigns and, err, rein, we see that the head of state is the linchpin of our British identity and not just an empty figurehead. At the helm of the national ship as it sails into an uncertain future, Charles declares himself a map. The people always come back to a map when the modern, techy sat navs go wrong, he believes, because a map is traditional, tried and tested. But a map is also really only a piece of paper and paper is very easy to tear. The first rips come early on when Charles is asked to sign off on his first laws. In King Henry IV Part II, the King says “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”. Charles’ head lies so uneasy that he struggles to raise it for the constitutional nod needed for Parliament’s demands – and that’s even before the weighty symbol of responsibility and power is ceremoniously plonked on his furrowed brow. Refusing to sign the privacy bill that would censor the press, he sets off the chain of events that form King Charles III and his own downfall.

But if Charles is the map then what is the sat nav that the people turn to instead? Parliament, perhaps? The play says no. I won’t give away its twists and turns for fear of spoiling it but, incredibly, its very real warning imagines a world worse than King Charles’ in a way that is incredibly provocative and very clever, if a bit far-fetched. Prince Harry is up to his usual caddish ways and falls in love with a common-er Commoner than Kate Middleton was, a back chatting art student in Doc Martens. Kate herself, meanwhile, is elevated beyond a pretty face atop a tiny, heir-producing body, becoming an ambitious and scheming Lady Macbeth figure. The unlikely voice of wisdom is a man in a kebab shop who doesn’t mince his words as he compares the state of the country to a slab of doner meat, sliced down further and further until nothing remains. Clever, very clever.

As the audience leave, Lorde’s ‘Royals’ is played. Does Bartlett say we don’t need a monarchy, “that kind of luxe just ain’t for us”? Not exactly, though King Charles III appears to flirt with the idea in places. Although his plot is a bit unfeasible and heavy handed the issues of fragile identity and an unknowable future are anything but. Ultimately the play asks: What becomes of our country when it is no longer the country we know? We may be forced to face that tough question sooner than Bartlett, or any of us, thought.

‘SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE’ – REVIEW ☆☆☆☆☆

The culture: Shakespeare in Love, Noël Coward Theatre, London

The cheap seats: £10 side view Grand Circle seats. Beware: these seats require a lot of leaning.

I was initially very, very dubious when the stage production of one of my favourite films ‘Shakespeare in Love’ was announced. Play to film adaptations are ten to a penny but it very very rarely works the other way round. When they’re good, they’re good (LION KING!) but when they’re bad, they’re catastrophic (see Fatal Attraction’s brief run at Theatre Royal Haymarket earlier this year). But Disney soothed my furrowed brow when they announced that they were working with the brilliant Sonia Friedman on Shakespeare in Love.

The production gets top marks for authenticity. The wooden set is effortlessly a tavern, a playhouse or two, the bedchamber of a lady who yearns to tread the boards, or the court of Elizabeth I. It is adorned with candles at some points, bearing a striking resemblance to my favourite theatre space in London – the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – and later transforms into the Globe herself (my second favourite, and my spiritual home). The creatives have really gone to every effort to make this look good and they’ve done a great job. One of the film’s main appeals for me is its evocation of Elizabethan London and, while one stage set can’t quite achieve such a full-scale re-enactment, I loved the clever compromise.

The cast are absolutely faultless. The casting of Tom Bateman as Will Shakespeare is inspired: I first saw him as a charismatic, sexy Dante Gabriel Rosetti in ‘Lizzie Siddal’ at the Arcola Theatre and here he reprises the role of brooding artist. Typecasting? Maybe, but his Shakespeare had me (and every other woman in the audience of the first preview last night) swooning. His leading lady Viola De Lesseps (a surprisngly good Gywneth Paltrow in the film) is played with angst, tenderness and a lot of fizzing chemistry by Lucy Briggs-Owen and there’s further strong support from Doug Rao as Ned Alleyn and David Oakes as Marlowe.

The stage version of Shakespeare in Love retains all that I admired of the film – its wit, its comedy, its intricately woven Shakespeare references and its conveyance of the creative process – then adds some nice touches including beautiful choral arrangements of the sonnets, a very funny real-life dog and a poignant, musical refrain created from one of my favourite speeches: Feste’s “youth’s a stuff will not endure” from Twelfth Night.

At almost 3 hours long for the preview I saw it rivals Shakespeare’s own work in length and I would say that there are a few patches that could be tightened up or condensed down towards the middle. Overall, though, this is a stunning production. What everyone loves so much about Shakespeare’s Globe on Bankside is the atmosphere and Shakespeare in Love brings the unique spirit of that Wooden O to the West End. A triumph.

‘Henry V’ – review ☆☆☆☆☆

The culture: Henry V, Noël Coward Theatre, London

The cheap seats: £10 balcony seats. The stage was so far away and I had a side view but really not unbearable for the price. £10 day tickets also available if you want to queue but hurry – this production ends on 15th February

If the thought of Jude Law striding about in very tight trousers, brandishing a sword, and generally being all manly isn’t quite enough to convince you that this Henry V is a must-see then there is some good news for you: it’s actually a wonderful  production of Shakespeare’s history play too.

I have an ambivalent attitude towards  stars on stage. While I applaud anything that can widen participation in theatre wholeheartedly, there is always going to be a small voice in my head questioning the casting: was this celebrity just plonked on the cast list to put bums on seats? Thankfully, recent star-studded performances have proved that little voice wrong. David Tennant’s stunning, ethereal Richard II at the Barbican was a triumph. I was rather fond of Gemma Arterton as The Duchess of Malfi. But it can go horribly wrong – I heard some very bad things about Michael Grandage’s last Shakespeare at the Noël Coward, A Midsummer Night’s Dream starring David Walliams and Sheridan Smith.

It was with trepidation, then, that I took my vertigo-inducing seat in the same theatre last week, fingers desperately crossed that Mr Law would be marvellous. He was – a good fighter but a better lover and the perfect King Henry, delivering the role like he delivers the famous ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends…’ speech: with an understated but deeply felt passion.  Henry V follows the king into battle and finds itself in a very problematic situation, celebrating the valour of the fight and the victory but also presenting the inevitable brutalities of war, the physical and emotional pain. It’s my favourite presentation of battle in the Shakespearian canon and the cast really do it justice, respecting its tears of sorrow as much as its war cry.

Turning the spotlight momentarily from Jude Law’s show-stealing conflicted King, Ron Cook is brilliant as Pistol and Ashley Zhangazha is a surprising highlight in the usually minimal parts of Chorus/Boy. He becomes a curious uniting force in modern-day clothes and lies on the stage in the interval reading the playtext, posing some fascinating questions about the power of the imagination.

The best, and funniest, scenes come after the interval. First we are treated to Princess Katherine of France (Jessie Buckley)’s English lesson with her maid (Noma Dumezweni) which features a very crude ‘c word’ pun from the Bard that had the audience howling. Then comes King Henry’s endearing, nervous courtship of Katherine, and finally the hilarious leek scene with Pistol and Fluellen (Matt Ryan). I did enjoy the comedy than the battle scenes but the production does these well too. The set is beautifully designed in battered wood panels to become the ‘wooden O’ mentioned in the first few lines that would originally referred to The Globe. When the soldiers fight all of the drama and heat of war and fire is conveyed effectively with simple red lighting. This Henry V is proof that simply done theatre is the best kind. It’s the type of production you would expect to see at The Globe which speaks volumes about how good it is.

So don’t just go for Jude Law, go for some great Shakespeare. Those trousers are quite something, though…

‘Peter and Alice’ – review ☆☆☆☆☆

The Culture: Peter and Alice at The Noel Coward Theatre, London

The Cheap Seats: (not technically seats) £10 day tickets, standing.

At least the first fifteen minutes of ‘Peter and Alice’ is a conversation between the eponymous protagonists. Alice (the fabulous Dame Judi Dench) is Alice Liddell Hargreaves the inspiration for Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Peter (recent Best Actor BAFTA winner Ben Whishaw) is Peter Davies of Barrie’s Peter Pan. Their conversation is fascinating to begin with as the magical situation of a chance meeting between two immortalised children as adults transpires but of course adults come with baggage and conversation quickly descends into depressing musings on the human condition. Looking at my watch (this scene dragged), I felt horrified that I had queued (I tried previously with no luck – this was my third attempt) outside the theatre in the cold and the rain at 8.30am to get these coveted tickets only to have to stand for 1 hour 30 minutes of rambling. As if to scold me for judging too quickly, the set sprang to life revealing a glorious children’s book illustration set behind. Flashbacks from their extraordinary childhoods began and the audience was transported to a world of imagination and childhood memories both fond and dark.

John Logan’s play is an inspired study on truth, reality, identity and childhood and how these are affected by our memory, the input of others and, above all, growing up. The much loved children’s classics behind the play and its characters are skilfully interwoven at the moist poignant moments. What the audience witnesses in both Peter and Alice is a kind of double coming of age: the traditional progression from childhood to adulthood and the reclamation of a childhood so influenced by fiction, a reappropriation of an identity to a large extent crafted by someone else. It is truly beautiful.

‘Peter and Alice’ exposes the tragedy of life in a way so touching that it moved me to tears. The fictional characters (Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up and Alice in Wonderland) materialise and point out their real-life, grown-up counterparts’ many flaws and their difficult lives. Peter’s emotional cry for his lost childhood evokes that sense of loss that all of us still feel. No one likes to be reminded that the sun has set on the ‘golden afternoon’ of their formative years because then we are reminded that we are in the cold, dark night of adulthood. The ways Peter and Alice deal with this are heartbreaking. Gone are the idealised children of the fiction. In their place stand two very fragile individuals torn by the cards life has dealt them. The stage was red and white and chequered, reminding me of the chess in Alice Through The Looking Glass – a game which, like the lives of Peter and Alice, was not fair or conventional.

I left the theatre with tears in my eyes and a strong desire to call my mum and then rediscover the magical children’s books days of my own childhood. I want to re-open Alice in Wonderland and still feel that magic but I’m a little scared to because when I don’t then I’ll be an adult. Logan presents adulthood like death – as a sad reality which makes me want to cling onto childhood forever. Someone pass me the bottle that says ‘Drink Me’.