London Calling

Photo by Hugo Glendinning

Although the West End’s heart, Piccadilly Circus, was certainly pulsing last Friday night, it was hardly host to the usual suffocating crush of humanity. Two months after 9/11, London is still experiencing a marked drop-off in tourism, and publicists are making it clear that Americans, more than ever, are welcome in theaters here, from the fringes of Hampstead to the plush venues of Shaftesbury Avenue.

Still, there isn’t much evidence of adventurous new work. Old, solid paths are being retrod in a plethora of revivals — and even by Britain’s finest young writers, such as Joe Penhall and Mark Ravenhill, each with new plays performing in the West End.

 

THE ROYAL FAMILY (West End). Ethel Barrymore threatened a lawsuit after George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s dubiously affectionate rim-shot comedy parodied her theatrical clan in The Royal Family, a portrait of narcissist men and cloying divas. Some charismatic performances notwithstanding, the recorded ragtime music commissioned by director Peter Hall for the act transitions can’t really make up for the lack of bounce between the actors themselves. There is, however, the diversion of Anthony Ward’s spectacular set, with its arching staircase and cushy ottoman. And there’s national treasure Judi Dench, wasted here but lavishly costumed by Christine Rowland and Louise Dadd in an array of opulent gowns and necklaces so bulky and ornate, Dench requires a strong back just to stay upright. Meanwhile, the audience requires strong coffee to do the same. Haymarket Theatre Royal; Haymarket, SW1; Piccadilly Circus Underground; through February 2. Call 011-44-207 344-4444.

 

MOTHER CLAP’S MOLLY HOUSE (South Bank). Playwright Mark Ravenhill spins all the ideas from his Shopping and Fucking (seen last year at Hollywood’s Celebration Theater) into a brilliant and bawdy fantasia with music — by Matthew Scott — set in an 18th-century London apparel shop that morphs back and forth into a contemporary gay sex club: Imagine a blend of Timberlake Wertenbaker, Caryl Churchill and Tony Kushner. The shop owner (Iain Mitchell) is torn between his carnal appetites and his responsibility to the business; meanwhile, his apprentice (Paul Ready) keeps wandering off down Sodomite Lane. Then, when the proprietor manages to actually die of lust, his neglected, dour and dutiful wife (Deborah Findlay) assumes the name “Mother Clap” and takes over the trade (so to speak). Recognizing the profits to be had from pleasure, Clap closes the Puritan gap between duty and desire by opening a “Molly House” in which men (including that randy apprentice) pay to dress in women’s clothing and play at family life. By Act 2, Molly House has transformed into a modern sex club, the activities at which are videotaped by a porno director. Clap’s epiphany, “Business doesn’t judge,” carries a message that keeps Ravenhill’s play playing in the brain — that Free Trade is fundamentally amoral, as liberating for the jaded and callous as it is tortuous for those in need of real human connection. The National Theatre’s newly appointed artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, has staged a riveting production, even though Act 2 slips on the soapy opera. Excellent performances throughout. National Theatre, Lyttleton; South Bank, SE1; Waterloo Underground; in rep indefinitely. Call 011-44-207-452-3000.

 

BLUE/ORANGE (West End). From Shaw to David Edgar to David Hare, British playwrights excel at capturing with precision and poetry the toxic malevolence of modern bureaucracies. Here, Joe Penhall carries the torch in his new play, set in a mental institution, about a black patient, Christopher (Shaun Parkes), under the “care” of two Caucasian men: a rumpled senior consultant (David Threlfall) and a preppie student intern (Neil Stuke). Christopher, who’s convinced that his father is Idi Amin and that the oranges on the plate before him are actually blue, may or may not have had a run-in with some skinheads, which may or may not have driven him over the edge. As the intern’s convictions turn to arrogance and insubordination, Penhall’s detective story — as neatly balanced as a gyroscope on a string — reveals not only the insanity and the racism of all three characters, but how their torrents of self-protective verbiage are only marginally related to what they actually believe. Though the play may overstate this point, the taut dialogue and potent arguments are presented with honed and calibrated sarcasm, slashing with the ferocity of razor blades. Roger Michell’s staging of three performers in top form makes for a crackling play of ideas. Duchess Theatre, Catherine Street, WC2; Covent Garden Underground; through January 5. Call 011-44-207-494-5076.

 

THE GRADUATE (West End) is adapter-director Terry Johnson’s stage version of Calder Willingham and Buck Henry’s screenplay, based on Charles Webb’s novel, for the 1967 film about a pathologically bewildered young man whose affairs with the wife of his dad’s best friend andher daughter lead to a showdown at the altar when the young woman tries to marry another, comparatively stable fellow. The message: Settling down ain’t much fun, and conformity is grotesque — rallying cries for a generation now balding, graying, and juggling their stocks and 401(k) plans for the best returns. Johnson’s Simon-and-Garfunkel-laced adaptation is a kind of Madmagazine redux of the film script, which wasn’t all that trenchant to begin with, but did have its soulful moments, here wanting: The attraction between Linda Gray’s jaw-clenched Mrs. Robinson and David Nicolle’s kvetching stalker is quite beyond belief. Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, W1; Piccadilly Circus Underground; through February 2. Call 011-44-207-494-5065, or visitwww.thegraduate.uk.com.