The York Realist at The Donmar

 

The intimate Donmar Warehouse lends itself perfectly to the equally intimate kitchen setting of Peter Gill’s play, The York Realist.  Set in the sixties, this understated, but pitch perfect play concerns a gay couple with totally different lifestyles.  George (Ben Batt), a farmer, lives with his ailing mother (Lesley Nicol) in a remote part of Yorkshire, whilst John (Jonathan Bailey), an aspiring theatre director from London, is temporarily in York directing a production of The York Mystery Plays.  They get to know one another as George has a small part in the production.  Surprisingly it is the working-class country boy who is completely at ease with his sexual proclivities from the get go (at least in John’s presence).  Whereas shy, middle-class John is more hesitant in accepting the sexual charge between the two of them. 

When the play opens, George’s mother has just died and he receives an unexpected visit from John who is back in York for a week working at the Theatre Royal.  We then go back in time to try and explain the palpable tension that now exists between the two men and why, despite the release from being at his adored mother’s constant side, George is still unable to fly his rather ramshackle nest and move to a different existence with his lover.  It’s not just the class divide that prevents the two ending up happy ever after, but the spiritual ties that tend to bind us to our roots, however much we often refuse to admit it.

Robert Hastie directs the play with subtlety and charm and, unlike so many plays with a gay theme, there is no physical sexuality on stage.  Looks and words are all that is needed to produce the obvious sexual chemistry between the two men.  And due to the short distance between audience and cast, we’re privy to every nuance between Batt and Bailey, who are so beguiling in their roles, that their chemistry doesn’t just smoulder but ignites.

Ben Batt is every inch the beefcake farm labourer who only really comes alive when his friend is around.  In the presence of his sister and son-in-law and, more importantly Doreen (the equally impressive Katie West) who so obviously carries an enormous torch for him, he retreats into his shell, becoming laconic and brooding.  At the end of the play, his repressed agony at letting John go, is desperately moving. 

The equally well cast Jonathan Bailey, perfectly captures the rather more uptight townie, all oohs and aahs at the rustic charm of the cottage kitchen, especially the old-fashioned kitchen range.  All nervous laughter and ‘rabbit in the headlight’ stares, his timidity causes the two men to swap roles and allow George to take the ‘director’ mantle.

Whether or not George’s mother realises her son’s preference for men is never entirely sure, but Lesley Nicol infuses her character with warm, no nonsense Yorkshire charm.  Equally affecting are the remaining cast, Brian Fletcher as the impudent, head in the clouds nephew and Lucy Black playing George’s obviously unfulfilled married sister, Barbara, married to Matthew Wilson’s Arthur.

The play will soon be transferring to the Sheffield Crucible, where I’m sure it will get the appreciative Yorkshire audience it deserves.  Before it does, for ninety-five minutes, we southerners are transported to the hills and dales of their county in the most realistic way possible.

Long Days Journey Into Night at Wyndhams Theatre

One wonders if Eugene O’Neil would have written such wonderful plays if his childhood had been secure and happy.  Or, come to that, whether he would have written plays at all.  For he is a playwright whose works largely rely on the dysfunctional family dynamic; none more so than Long Day’s Journey Into Night currently at Wyndhams Theatre, the play which most closely illustrates his tortured upbringing. 

With a superb cast of five, Richard Eyre directs with great style and aplomb.  Leading the way is the incomparable Lesley Manville, so very fine in everything she does, especially when period angst is required.  Here she plays Mary Tyrone, wife of James and mother to James Tyrone Jr and Edmund.  Recently returned from a stint in a sanatorium, the family are celebrating the fact that this time she has returned stronger and more positive.  Or has she?  The excellent Jeremy Irons, playing cigar smoking, Shakespeare quoting husband James, continually mentions how plump and well she looks.  But there are tell-tale signs that this imperceptibly nervy woman has problems she is trying to hide.  From the constant touching of her hair to bursts of rapid dialogue (much of it “on repeat”) the “once an addict always an addict” rings true.  As the morphine once again takes hold, the tenuous struggle to appear normal fails and the forced happiness turns to nervous disappointment and eventual drug addled blankness.  There is no doubt that she is loved by James and her sons, exasperated as they are by her inability to kick her habit, but years of resentment at never being able to call anywhere home, the loss of their middle child and constant worry that Edmund has far more wrong with him than the mere cold she insists he has, have left her vulnerable to the numbing effects that morphine brings.

The words, “Mama is back on the morphine” is never actually spoken out loud, although we’re left in no doubt that the eldest son, James, never believes she can be cured.  Edmund and his father grasp at straws that this time the sanatorium has done a good job but they eventually have to admit the truth.  Jeremy Irons perfectly captures his character’s dismay at the knowledge that he has once more lost the love of his life to the insidious drug.  The accusing glance he gives her on realising she is sliding back into her old ways is both chilling and full of sorrow.

It’s not just Mary’s state of mind that is sliding.  The whole family is hurtling downhill and their unloved holiday house is full to the rafters in lost hope.  The men reach oblivion by drinking far too much, everyone picks holes in everyone else and the unhappiness that pervades this dysfunctional quartet is palpable.  And it’s not just this long day that brings forth such disappointment.  It has been brewing for some time.  Cheapskate James senior has a lifetime of regret that his acting career, although lucrative, was filled with mediocre work.  His eldest son’s self-loathing is never far from the surface, whilst Edmund (for his character read Eugene himself) retreats from his illness into the world of morbid poetry.  

And it’s not just Mary who exists within a bubble of emotional inconsistency.  It’s the family's default button. James senior, having decided that Edmund be assigned to a cheap state sanatorium, declares that, as money is no object, “within reason”, he will have the best treatment possible.  James junior praises his younger brother’s literary efforts in one breath and in another derides them.  For the Tyrone’s life is an allusion.

What is real is the fact that there is no weak link in this production of O’Neil’s autobiographical masterpiece. Manville and Irons have terrific support from Rory Keenan as the boisterous degenerate James and Matthew Beard as the romantically inclined Edmund, who looks so skinny and pale that it takes no leap of faith to believe he has TB.  The former fails to take on board anything anyone says, whilst Beard turns attentiveness into an art form.  Add the welcome touch of comedy from Jessica Regan’s Irish maid, and the three hours, twenty, whilst not actually flying by don’t drag for a minute.

Girls & Boys at The Royal Court

It’s quite something for a lone actor to hold an audience’s attention for a whole play and for a playwright to provide the material to make it work.  Girls & Boys, Dennis Kelly’s latest offering, now playing at The Royal Court ticks both boxes.

Carey Mulligan, barefoot and dressed in smart trousers and silk shirt, is a tour de force.  Affecting an estuary accent, she opens proceedings, almost in the guise of a ballsy, stand-up comedienne who uses her lifetime experiences as material.  Her dialogue throughout isn’t so much splattered as deluged with expletives as she treats us to a very witty, frank and rude account of her life thus far.  We lean forward, anxious not to miss one snippet from this superb story teller.  

Firstly, we learn how she met her husband in the queue to board an Easy Jet flight and took an instant dislike to the man.  Following the transformation from dislike to love and marriage, children Leanne and Danny arrive to make her life pretty near perfect, especially as her career trajectory has risen until she ends up a successful documentary maker.  In the meantime, her husband’s furniture importing business goes bust.  And this appears to be the catalyst for her cosy existence going belly up.   On arriving at the point where everything goes catastrophically wrong, the gleam in her eye fades, her upbeat façade crumbles and we long for her not to share with us the horrors she has had to endure.

Every so often Mulligan moves from downstage to Es Devlin’s magnificent set behind the curtain.  In the couple’s modern designer home, we are treated to Mulligan, the mother, going about the daily grind of trying to manage her two young, unseen children.  The whole set is shrouded in an icy blue light and thanks to the narrative and Lyndsey Turner’s subtle ratcheting up of the tension, we begin to realise that maybe something terrible has happened.

I’m not going to give the game away by letting you in on the plot.  Just suffice it to say that this play may be short in length but this doesn’t stop it hitting home with incredible and shocking force.