LETTER FROM LONDON #4

MY FAVORITE PERFORMANCES IN APRIL: Part One

I have seen so many wonderful performances that it is hard to pare them down to one of these lists with the number TEN in the headline but then I thought: Why enumerate them and fence yourself with a finite number? But I purposefully used the term FAVORITE, not BEST. I just feel more comfortable with that description because it denotes the discernment of personal taste and not just the woebegone bent for judgment. I often say that if I drove a car that my bumpersticker would read NEVER JUDGMENTAL/ALWAYS DISCERNING.

(Above: Suzie Parker, who wrote Prima Facie, and its star, Jodi Comer. Photo by Helen Murray.)

(1) JODIE COMER

That said, here’s some judgement to start out the list to get this smidgen of it out of the way and put the lie alas to that bumpersticker - not to judge myself too harshly. I hate-watched Anatomy of a Scandal on Netflix which was set here in London. It concerned an Oxford-educated MP being accused of rape by a young woman in his office with whom he’d been carrying on an affair. It starred Rupert Friend as the MP and Sienna Miller - the Lily Rabe of London, half the time I thought I was looking at Lily - as his wife. They shared a posh kind of put-upon privilege but I felt as if I were the one being put on. Michelle Dockery played an earlier friend of theirs from uni who prosecutes him but it took them four or five of the six episodes even to begin to recognize her. I realize the upperclass here can be kind of dense but not that downright dull. It was a dumb show about a very serious issue here in London so because of that it finally pissed me off.

The Office of National Statistics last week released data that showed that the number of rapes in London rose by 19% in 2021 to a new peak of 8,873, a rise of 1409 from the year before. That comes out to an average of 24 rapes a day. The Met Police and the City of London also reported an all-time high of 23, 848 sexual offense cases. That was up 26%. Across all of England and Wales 67,125 rapes were recorded with another 183,587 sexual offenses. Both are also record highs. This has set off a national outcry since paired with these statistics is the near record low prosecution rates because of such a severe backlog in the courts. Moreover, it is difficult to get convictions in rape cases because of how the rape law is written: “If a person (“A”), with A's penis – penetrates to any extent, without (1) another person (“B”) consenting, and (2) without any reasonable belief that B consents, either intending to do so or reckless as to whether there is penetration, the vagina, anus or mouth of B then – A commits an offence, to be known as the offence of rape.” Reasonable belief leads to reasonable doubt in juries. And then there is the issue of entitlement here on this class-obsessed isle so that if an accused rapist comes from the upperclass the very constructs of this place conspire to think of what transpired as just part of the libertinism that limns the conservative bloodlines of men, once braying with their bratty privilege, who carry more quietly the buried braying within them all their lives.

The law is highlighted in both Anatomy of a Scandal and the far more superior sold-out one-woman drama, Prima Facie, at the Pinter Theatre in the West End Written by Suzie Miller and directed Justin Martin, it stars Jodie Comer who is giving a stellar, heart-stopping performance. I have loved her on Killing Eve in which she both appalls and appeals, disturbingly concurrently so. Many screen actors, however, can’t sustain the physicality it takes to command a stage - much less one all alone. Therefore I was apprehensive about going to see her on the stage. But Comer is mesmerizingly comfortable within her own body as she initially roams the stage with such grace and humor and swagger in this play about a barrister who is raped by a fellow barrister in her own office with whom she has been having a little fling already. There is an interesting layer to the performance when we begin to witness the character who had been so comfortable in her own body as well losing that comfort after the rape. And yet Comer, the actor, has to go even deeper into her physical comfort of being on a stage - deeper into her own body - to find that discomfort. It is stunning, layered work. I was not prepared for her brilliance in this role.

I was having a ginger ale at Kettner’s in Soho the other day with a producer friend from New York who is in town for the Sondheim: Old Friends celebration and to have meetings at the National Theatre about a co-production they are talking about based on a recent hit of his on Broadway. He asked if I thought Prima Facie starring Comer could work on Broadway. I think audiences there are smart enough - and have watched enough dumb Netflix series set in London courtrooms - that it would. And New York audience would be thrilled to see such a performance from such a remarkable actress.

(Above: Nicola Walker and Iwan Davis in The Corn is Green at the National Theater. Photo by Johan Persson)

(2) NICOLA WALKER and IWAN DAVIS in director Dominic Cooke’s reimagined The Corn is Green anchor it in a roughhewn reality that rips at our hearts by refusing to be subsumed by what can become the tweeness of Cooke’s conception of embedding playwright Emlyn Williams into the play’s action. Williams in Cooke’s conception is a bit of a toff in a tuxedo seemingly drenched in sweat from dancing and imbibing too much at a party - more imposed libertinism to dramatize the corrupting reach of the upperclass - but not enough of one not to be bored by the party he’s attending so that it sends him to his typewriter to escape his own toff-ness and perhaps even to justify it. He begins reciting the play’s stage directions, its character and set descriptions. He hovers within the construct of his own dramatic construction becoming a construct himself. There is even a chorus of miners which also creates a hovering hum with its presence, sometimes rousing, sometimes quietly, but always with an harmonic loveliness. It is an aural manifestation of the coal soot on the faces the miners as it adds a noted tinge to the action.

I was rather shocked to read that this is Wales native Davis’s professional stage debut. He plays Morgan Evans, the self-possessed young miner who is “seen” by Walker’s Miss Moffat, the teacher who comes to the Welsh mining town to educate all the young miners who are willing to learn from her. But it is Morgan who is a special case and gets accepted to study at Oxford. I am not giving anything away by citing that plot point because this old warhorse of a play - I can understand Cooke’s re-mining it which ultimately pays off by the end - is really just a retelling of an older warhorse, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I am a huge fan of Walker’s work on the television series Unforgotten which I’ve watched on PBS in America. She has developed a kind of patented performance that could be summed up as, “I am flinty, I do not cry, oh, fuck, I am crying.” Or, put another way, there is not a sentimental bone in her actor’s body so that when she does tear up - or we tear up at what she is making us feel - it is full of real sentiment and not an iota of sentimentality. Roles can seem retrofitted for that aspect of her talent, an aspect that a play such as The Corn Is Green needs in order to work for us now. And it certainly works in this production that begins with a heightened tweeness but ends so movingly by surrendering to Walker’s unsentimentally settling so deeply into the role and this production.

(Above: Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House. Photo by Tristram Kenton.)

(3) It is difficult to single out a single performance in the production of Wagner’s LOHENGRIN I saw at the Royal Opera. The chorus - which can sometimes seems muddy and under-rehearsed as it did in my second viewing of La traviata when Pretty Yende sang Violetta after I had seen an earlier version of her sung by Angel Blue - was magnificent under the direction of WILLIAM SPAULDING and the orchestra was playing at its highest standard under the baton of JAKUB HRUSA. This DAVID ALDEN production is rather legendary with opera aficionados and I understand why now that I have seen the revival spiffed-up by director PETER RELTON. Bravoes to the cast which included GABOR BRETZ, ANNA SMIRNOVA, JENNIFER DAVIS, and BRANDON JOVANOVICH. I bought a standing room ticket for this Saturday just to see the first act all over again. That is how much I loved it.

(Above: Angel Blue in La traviata at the Royal Opera House. Photo by Catherine Ashmore.)

(4) And while we are talking about the Royal Opera, I have to give a shout out to ANGEL BLUE in that first version of Violetta I saw. Blue was able to personify the attributes of Destiny and Loneliness last fall at the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones - not sure who else but such an Angel could have done so with such believability and magnificence mixed with humility and even, when called for, hauteur - all those, well, attributes she brought to the third character of Greta, the lover-who-was-not-the-needed-lover of the opera’s protagonist. Her Violetta in La traviata was something I will never forget. She is not only a great singer, but also a great actress. She doesn't sing prettily. She doesn’t preen even when preening (which is where the great acting comes into play). She delves into a role without shirking her diva-ness to do it. Lying on the floor at times for her third act aria “Addio del passato,” was both an astounding act of physicality as well as artistry. Unforgettable. She will be doing the role in Verona in July. In August, she will be giving a concert in Saratoga, New York, at its Performing Arts Center. And in September she’ll be back in London to perform as part of the BBC Proms.

(Above: Tamara Tunie as Vice President Kamala Harris in The 47th at the Old Vic. Photo by Marc Brenner.)

(5) It would be easy to portray Vice President Kamala Harris as a Black diva within the heightened parodic confines of Mike Bartlett’s The 47th at the Old Vic since the title refers to her ascending the presidency and becoming America’s 47th one after Biden becomes mysteriously incapacitated after shaking Trump’s hand during a meeting the egregious previous occupant of the office insisted on having. Trump then runs with Ivanka as his running mate in 2024 against Harris. Tamara Tunie as Harris digs deep down not only through the muck of Trump in her scenes with him but also the mire of parody that Bartlett expertly employs along with iambic pentameter as distancing devices so that the action that takes place in the not-distant future won’t overwhelm us with distress at such a supposition. The first act was a bit too glib. The audiences laughter did distress me. I don’t find Trump funny. And finally Bartlett doesn’t either. Bertie Carvel has rightly gotten raves for his uncanny portrayal of Trump - a caricature painted in oils - but it is Tunie’s performance, so finely delineated, that has stayed with me. Carvel captures the spectre of Trump - another presence that hovers over the construct of a narrative that he has embedded himself in so that he has become a construct himself - but it is Tunie as Harris who haunts for it is her dignity that - thank Goddess - will not die. A glibness has lately glommed onto our body politic as it threatened early on to glom onto this play. But it is dignity that will save us, just as the dignity that Tunie mined in the role of Harris saved the play. We are all miners now.

PART ONE OF THIS LATEST LETTER FROM LONDON IS UP FOR EVERYONE - FREE AND PAID SUBSCRIBERS ALIKE BECAUSE I WANT YOU ALL TO GET A TASTE OF THIS RUNDOWN OF FAVORITES. NEXT UP IN PART TWO OF MY FAVORITE PERFORMANCES IN APRIL IN MY NEXT “LETTER FROM LONDON” ARE ACTORS FROM TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, STRAIGHT LINE CRAZY, CABARET, BONNIE & CLYDE, COCK, AND DADDY - AS WELL AS DANCERS FROM THE ROYAL BALLET. PART TWO WILL MOSTLY BE BEHIND A PAID SUBSCRIBER WALL. SO PLEASE CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING FOR ONLY $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY. THANKS.