The Spoils at Trafalgar Studios

I hadn’t fully appreciated the wealth of talent that makes up the lanky frame of Jesse Eisenberg until watching him perform in his third play, The Spoils, at Trafalgar Studios.  Of course I’ve seen his acting abilities displayed in various movies, most famously, The Social Network, but he is even more accomplished on stage.  His latest manifestation is a dope-induced bundle of twitching energy, with a distinct lack of focus and an acerbic tongue.  Written partly as an indictment of the lazy non-directional offspring of wealthy parents, who have no need or desire to do a proper day’s work, Jesse Eisenberg’s Ben could be one-dimensional.  But so accomplished is this playwright’s dialogue and acting skills, that his character is so much more.  He may be loathsome on the page, but, in performance Ben illicits sympathy as much as dislike.

Actually each of the five characters is tightly drawn (no caricatures here) and brought realistically to life by Kunal Nayyar, Alfied Allen, Katie Brayben and Annapurna Sriram.  The quick, snappy dialogue Is realistic and, although the action only covers a few days of these young peoples’ lives, much is learned about them and what makes them tick.

Thanks to his wealthy father, Ben owns his own Manhattan apartment and shares it with Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar) a Nepalese business student who he subjects to much verbal aggression.   Kalyan, living rent-free with this would be documentary film maker, who in truth has been kicked out of film school and spends his days doing absolutely nothing apart from rolling joints, is the antithesis of Ben.  Sweet natured and hard working he has become Ben’s spiritual carer, constantly having to listen to his whiney meanderings.  But, unlike Ben, the “immigrant” is in a relationship.  The girl in question is a pushy medical student called Reshma (Annapurna Spiram) who doesn’t hide her dislike of her boyfriend’s landlord.  The status quo is compromised when Ben bumps into Ted (Alfie Allen), an elementary school acquaintance of his.  Now a Wall Street trader, Ted has become engaged to Sarah (Katie Brayben) on whom Ben had a crush when they were eight years old. 

Following an excruciatingly awkward dinner party, with Kalyan, Reshma and the two new found friends, we discover the extent of Ben’s arrested development and problems.  Engineering a meeting alone with Sarah, Ben cringingly re-lives in graphic detail a childhood sexual dream he had about her.  Cringeworthy in the extreme, this recollection makes the audience wince and laugh in equal measure.  Not the way to win the girl!  

Increasingly coming apart at the seams, Ben’s isolation intensifies and Eisenberg allows you to see the loneliness that underpins the constant jibing and jokes at everyone’s expense.  He is the ultimate social misfit for which one can almost feel sorry.

All five characters are well drawn and believable and, the contrast between each one, helps to highlight the ineptitude of the compelling Eisenberg.  All in all this character driven play with an ending that just manages to be unsentimental, is one I highly recommend.

Sunset at the Villa Thalia at The Dorfman

Sunset at the Villa Thalia is one of those plays that promises more than it delivers.  The playwright, Alexi Kaye Campbell, was brought up in Athens, the son of a Greek father and British mother, so has every justification to be concerned about Greece’s economic woes.  His new play, however, doesn’t examine this country’s present problems, but is set in 1967, opening on the day the right-wing military junta seized control and closing a couple of years after the transition to democracy.

The Villa of the title is a small white house in Skiathos currently being rented out by a young, rather ineffectual English writer, Theo (Sam Crane) and his self righteous wife Charlotte (Pippa Nixon). They become friendly with an American couple, Harvey (Ben Miles) and June (Elizabeth McGovern) who are visiting the island.  It turns out that Harvey is an extremely pushy CIA operative whilst June, a bit of an air head, is not as happy as she appears and is a little too fond of a drink. 

The English couple are persuaded by Harvey to purchase Villa Thalia from Stamatis (Christos Callow) and his daughter Maria (Glykeria Dimou).  Desperate for cash, the reluctant Maria is persuaded by her father and Harvey that selling the house is the correct decision and the sale goes ahead at way below the market price.  This decision is obviously the catalyst for the devastating consequences that the play’s synopsis talks about.  But it is devastation for the Greek couple rather than the main characters in the play.

Simon Godwin’s production is beautifully staged and well acted.  Ben Miles’s Harvey is suitably obnoxious as one of those cringey Americans who loves the sound of his own voice, whilst Elizabeth McGovern’s role as June is a huge improvement from her turn as Lady Cora.  Clad in a distinct blonde wig, she is the epitome of a dumb blonde, turning in a very amusing performance.

What I am unsure about is why Harvey is so desperate for Theo and Charlotte to buy the villa.  Is it because he has dastardly plans of which no good will come?   Apparently not, for we are persuaded to believe that he has a crush on them both, platonically speaking, of course!  Or maybe it is just a plot device to make the American the fall guy for all that’s gone wrong in Greece (and everywhere else come to that)?

Rather than being a politically daring production about how the Greeks have been and are being displaced in their own country, Sunset At The Villa Thalia appears to be more of a contrived morality tale about how the majority of us skew the truth to salve our conscience at the way we’ve managed to achieve what we want.

Thanks to Hildegard Bechtler, Sunset at The Villa Thalia is beautiful and evocative to look at with the smell of pine and taste of ouzo palpable, but this isn’t enough to elevate the play from anything more than lightweight.

The Threepenny Opera at The Olivier

Musicals aren’t really my thing but one with Rory Kinnear in the cast changes all that.  Simon Stephen’s new version of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill ‘s The Threepenny Opera, based on John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera sees the great actor playing the leading role of Captain Mackheath, aka Mack the Knife or Mackie.

Full of bawdy humour and risqué language, Rufus Norris directs the large cast with aplomb and it is, for the most part, brilliantly entertaining.  Written as a political indictment on capitalism, this version of The Threepenny Opera doesn’t ram the politics down the throat, just highlights the lives lived by the irrepressible hoodlums who inhabit the less than salubrious areas of nineteen twenties London.

Mackheath, the anti-hero, is something of a ladies man as well as being a master criminal and violent leader of a gang of thieves.  Rory Kinnear isn’t the obvious choice for playing a villain who can get any woman he wants into bed, but he does fulfill the criteria laid down by Brecht who suggests that Mackheath should be a “short, stocky man of about 40”.  What Kinnear may lack in sexual magnetism, he more than makes up for in his acting and vocal ability and is the perfect unemotional psychopath.

There are plenty more noteworthy cast members, not least Nick Holder’s corrupt Peachum, another member of London’s criminal fraternity who runs the city’s beggars.  Horrified on discovering that the sinister Macheath has married his daughter, Polly, he is determined to wreak revenge.  The rotund and dandyish Holder is dressed as a grotesque, complete with heels and black wig, whilst his wife, Celia, a deliciously over the top Haydn Gwynne, is clad head to toe in a clingy red dress, the perfect vamp.  The vocals from Rosalie Craig as the sharp-witted and canny Polly, Debbie Kurup’s Lucy Brown, Polly’s main rival for Mackie’s affections and Sharon Small’s drug addicted prostitute, Jenny Diver are all spot on. 

Vicky Mortimer has designed a set within a set, comprising flimsy movable screens and scaffolding, easily demolished and depicting the insecure lives these poor unfortunates are forced to endure.  Their existence is neither cheery nor sunny.

That’s not to say that The Threepenny Opera is all doom and gloom.  There are many laughs in this vulgar satire that cocks a snook at various modern social ills, and the casting of the disabled and speech-impaired actor Jamie Beddard as Matthias, aka The Shadow is inspired. 

Whilst there were a couple of moments during Act I when I doubted my attention could be held for the entire play, Act II more than lived up to expectations.  Rufus Norris is onto a winner with this unusual and exuberant musical that mixes cabaret with jazz and delights and shocks in equal measure.  And let’s not forget Musical Director David Shrubsole, whose use of an eight-piece band, in action on stage rather than an orchestra pit ensures that the songs propel the action perfectly.