Single Spies at the Rose Theatre

An Alan Bennett play is always going to attract my interest and when it's on at my local theatre then missing it is not an option.

I like to combine my theatre trips with other treats and this time I went to the nearby Riverside Vegetaria to eat before the show. I started with a soup that was so crammed with chick peas that it seemed more like a stew and I was a little worried that I would struggle with the main course. I didn't. I went for a curry, always a lazy option to make but the choice was bewildering, which was delicious with a broad range of flavours and textures.

I am still struggling to become comfortable with the layout of the Rose Theatre and I thought that I would give the Circle a try. This decision was helped by the lack of availability of my preferred seats in the Stalls and the opportunity to sit in the front row of the Circle, one of my preferred locations in several theatres. I sat myself down in A16 which had an excellent view and was well priced at £28.

Single Spies is actually two plays, or one play with two very different acts. That they have different names, An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution, suggests the former. They were also written at different times (1983 and 1991). Their connection is that the first is about Guy Burgess and the second about (Sir) Anthony Blunt both of whom were members of the Cambridge Spy Ring. The other famous spy in the ring, Kim Philby, got a mention but was not seen.

In An Englishman Abroad the Englishman was Burgess and the abroad was Moscow. Burgess had a chance meeting with a touring actress, Coral Browne.

They formed an unusual relationship (he was gay) and as part of this she did some shopping for him in London for some of the creature comforts that he missed. This showed us how England reacted to his defection and in the best scene his tailor was more than happy to make a new suit and to ship it to Moscow for him, the relationship between tailor and client being sacrosanct. Not all the shops took the same attitude.

An Englishman Abroad was a short whimsical look at Englishness. As a Slovak told me in the interval, this was how the English like to look at themselves, not as they actually are.

During the interval I spoke to several people that I bumped into including the previously mentioned Slovaks who I had bumped in to previously at many BCSA events, and also at the Young Vic. I like it when that happens.

The second play, A Question of Attribution, was a similar kettle of fish in one way in that the main theme was a chance conversation between Blunt and the Queen on the subject of the attribution of paintings in her collection but the story was made more complex by contrasting this, in a succession of quick changes, with his interrogation by MI5. Two sets of conversations with two sets of difficult questions.

The mood of the conversation between Blunt and the Queen was as whimsical as that between Burgess and Browne but the other conversation, being an interrogation, added a darker tone to the play.

Both plays relied heavily on the observation skills of Bennett and as that is what Bennett does best both plays worked well. The performances were assured and believable. The set did a few clever things in changing quickly from one room to another but that was almost unnecessary as the play was all about dialogue and that just required the actors and a stage.

As a subtle and gentle play I would have preferred to see it somewhere more intimate, somewhere like the Orange Tree perhaps. That said, The Rose played its part well enough and the view and the sound from the Circle were fine.

Single Spies was as charming and as English as you would expect from Bennett, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Untold Stories at the Duchess Theatre (perfectly charming)

I expected Untold Stories to be charming, I did not expect it to be perfect.

Alan Bennett has a supreme way with words and he also has a beautiful way of speaking them, as his seminal readings of Winnie the Pooh amply demonstrate.

These Untold Stories have been told before in a book and an audiobook read by Bennett. The play goes one step further and adds some gentle images to the text and sounds.

Technically it lacks Bennett himself but Alex Jennings is so close to the original that it is had to believe it is an act. Everything about Jennings as Bennett is perfect; the school-master dress,  the slow steady movement, the accent and the measured delivery.

Jennings' performance is both masterful and delightful. Only at the end, when the loud applause rang through the theatre, was the mask removed and a smiling and lively Jennings took Bennett's place.

The two short plays were essentially monologues, and I would have been content if that was all that they were, but in Cocktail Sticks Bennett was joined by other people in his life, notably his mother and father, who chipped in with a few words occasionally to give their perspectives on events in Bennett's life.

Quite a lot was said about their ageing and deaths which twinged the sentimental narrative with sadness. It was utterly moving and I was utterly moved.

I suppose that there might be English people out there who do not know, or get, Bennett but for those of us that do this was a worthy homage to his language and life.

People at the National Theatre (charming)

People has been recalled to the National Theatre after the initial run sold out. I was late to the game initially and missed the first run but I realised my mistake in time to get a ticket as soon as the second run went on sale.

Hence I managed to get a dead-centre seat in the Circle at a price about twice that I am used to paying for theatre tickets.

People has Englishness draped over it like a flag of St George during a football tournament. It is written by Alan Bennett, two of its main themes are the National Trust and the Church of England, and it stars National Treasure Frances de la Tour.

The theme is Chekovian. Lady Stacpoole's family have lived in the house since 1456 but now she lives in squalor and is trying to arrange a sale of heirlooms to raise some money. Her younger sister, a Deacon, has a different plan and that is to gift the house to the National Trust so that they can restore it while allowing the owners to carry on living there. Lady Stacpoole, who is close to being a recluse, objects to the NT plan because it would bring People in to the house.

Those People may be where the play gets its title but its energy and purpose comes from the People in the story. And there are a lot of them. Lady Stacpoole has a companion and an old flame who makes porno films. We also meet the cast and crew of one of these films, also a Bishop, an auctioneer and a terribly enthusiastic assessor from the National Trust.

Some of these people have dubious morals but they are all essentially nice.

The play is incredibly rich with so much going on, though all the action takes place in one room.

It would spoil the surprise to say much about what all the People talk about or do but I can say that the story is full of surprises and that none of these are unnaturally forced in to the situation just for effect.

This is the story of Lady Stacpoole and Frances de la Tour carries that burden with casual ease. She is stubborn, a little eccentric, and has retained her lover for life as characterised in the little dance shown in the official poster. There are a few leg waving dances to pop songs and each one brings smiles to the faces of the audience.

That audience knows that the play is targeted at them and they conform to their expected role laughing self-deprecatingly at all the witty comments about the National Trust to which they all belong.

People is maddeningly entertaining. We are skilfully manipulated to fall in love with the characters and despite knowing that we are being manipulated we willingly do so. The charm is effusive.

History Boys at the Rose Theatre

Only three months after visiting the Rose Theatre in Kingston I was back there to see another comedy.

Somehow I had not seen History Boys before, on stage or on screen, but I knew some of Alan Bennett's work (and not just his readings of Winnie the Pooh either) so had some idea of what to expect.

The Rose Theatre as a venue still disappoints. The reception area gives every appearance of being an odd area left over after the theatre was built that could have housed props or costumes but somebody decided to put a bar in there instead. They should have put one or two more bar staff and a wider choice of drinks as well so that I would not have to wait so long just to get a bottle of Beck's.

Inside the theatre itself a reasonable, but not full, crowd ignored the unfinished look that other venues manage to carry with more confidence and settled down to be entertained.

History Boys tells the story of a class of boys at a grammar school who, having got good A Level results are now trying for Oxford. The school does not have a strong record here and so the desperate Head brings in an additional teacher just to coach them for this.

Their current history teacher, Hector, wants the boys to gain knowledge for its own sake and also wanders wildly off the curriculum. In one extreme example the boys act out a visit to a brothel in French.

Hector also has a reputation for fondling the boys as he gives them lifts on his motorbike but they accept this (and even enjoy it in some cases) and they take it in turns to ride with him.

The new teacher, Irwin, admires the boys' knowledge but calls all their essays dull, or worse, as all they have done is regurgitate facts. He encourages the boys to look at historical events from another perspective and even gets them to question the standard assumptions about the Holocaust, for which he gets a written complaint from a Jewish boy's parents.

The play explores themes of knowledge, sexuality, honesty, race and class. Rather what you would expect from Alan Bennett.

The story flows nicely. It's mostly linear but with a couple of flash-forwards to let us see how some of the characters developed.

Irwin is the strongest single character but the stretch of the play is in the ensemble of boys who speaking intelligently and wittily and who also do some song and dance routines that entertain and also provide a break from the relentlessly quick dialogue.

History Boys is amusing throughout and is often funny too in a laugh-out-loud way and while there is nothing especially consequential in any of its musings its also serious enough and intelligent enough to keep the Guardian reading Radio 4 listeners very happy.