An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre

TLDR: An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre was excellent and you should have gone.

Now for the full story ...

I first came across Dan Rebellato (a playwright and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London) via his play Beachy Head at Jackson Lane in 2011 which I described then as "one of the very best things I have ever seen in a theatre.". Since then I have seen and heard more of his plays and followed him on social media which tells me that we have been to many of the same plays but never at the same time.

It was because of his knowledge and love of the theatre that I followed his advice to go and see Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel at Battersea Arts Centre in 2023, and I loved it.

When he recommended An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre I bought tickets immediately, wife and sister having no say in the matter!

White Bear Theatre in Kennington used to be one of my fairly regular venues but that was when I was working in Kings Cross and it was more-or-less on my way home. Times change and I had not been there for almost four years, May 2022 for Harold Pinter's The Dwarfs. It was good to go back.

With the three of us travelling separately it made sense to meet and eat in the pub and that worked well. We sat in the large dining area where the theatre used to be before it moved upstairs,

It was unallocated seating and being very experienced at that I was first in and we claimed three seats in the middle of the long side of the "L" shaped seating.

And this was our view of the stage.

Clearly this was a modern production though just how modern was let to be seen.

At the core of the play was Oscar Wilde's flamboyant quote-laden script from which I give just one example to make the point "Lord Goring, I never believe a single word that either you or I say to each other."

The Oscar Wilde script alone was enough to make the evening good.

An Ideal Husband is a play with little action (apart from moving form one formal room to another) and so its need strong dialogue and characterisation. Wilde's script provide the base and this was built on substantially by the cast of actors who made each character distinct and interesting. Again, to give just one example to prove the point; one of the English gentlemen was played as an American complete with cowboy hat and shades.

The staging was the final element and there was a great deal going on here from amusing props (e.g. a roll of sticky tape for a diamond broach) to the off-stage characters watch intently from the sides. As always with clever staging there is a balance to find between adding to the play and distracting from it and for me the staging definitely worked.

All this meant that you could simply enjoy the play as written, or go a bit further and appreciate the way that the actors brought the characters to convincing life or go a bit further still and understand how the whole production (I forgot to mention the lights!) worked together to deliver a good play brilliantly.

An Ideal Husband at White Bear Theatre was excellent and you should have gone.

After Sunday at Bush Theatre

My theatre going changes over time due to factors like where I am working, artistic directors changing and, obviously, Covid but whatever the reason Bush Theatre in Hammersmith had drifted slightly off my radar and I only sent to see After Sunday because an email from the theatre said that it had a good review from Morning Star!

The synopsis on the website included "Ty, Leroy and Daniel have signed up to a new Caribbean cooking group. But when you’re locked in a secure hospital, too much food for thought can be a bad thing.". This sounded exactly my sort of thing so I am surprised that I had not picked up on it earlier.

Still, no serious damage was done and I got seat A6 fort £20, very much in the no need to think about it price range.

It was good to be back amongst the buzz at Bush and back to a seat in the front row.

While the basic premise of the play was simple, four inmates in a secure hospital attend weekly cookery classes with an Occupational Therapist, the insight to group therapy sessions was unpredictable and engaging.

With the five characters having different pasts and expectations their stories went in different directions and, as with therapy, some of them had significant moments but none of them ended.

Over an hour and a half we had interesting stories rich in all sort of emotions. Stories and characters that I cared about.

After Sunday sounded exactly my sort of thing, and so it proved. I loved it.

The Truth About Blayds at Finborough Theatre

It was nice to have a good excuse to go back to Finborough Theatre and a play by A A Milne was certainly a good excuse.It also helped that it included William Gaunt who I have fond memories of from The Champions in the late 60's.

All that was easily worth £28.

Visits to Finborough have a routine and that started with a pint in Courtfield, opposite Earls Court Station, then a small meal in Cafe du Coin before walking down the incredibly busy, and fast, Redcliffe Gardens to the theatre.

That routine got me to the theatre early enough to claim a seat in the front row somewhere close to the middle.

The stage was set as a period study and this is where everything happened.

The titular Blayds was an elderly man and a famous poet. He lived in a fairly grand house with several members of his immediate family, one of who acted as his carer and another who managed his affairs.

The first half of the play covered the preparation and execution of Blayds' birthday and the second half covered the aftermath of his death soon after and the deathbed revelation (the truth) he made.

It was an interesting, if simple, plot whose real purpose was to be the framework for the interactions between the family members who were very different people and had very different perspectives on the situation. The truth was elusive, disputed and modified.

It was the mix of characters and their viewpoints that made the play interesting and entertaining while the truth in question raised a few points to ponder over. An entertaining play that makes you think is always good.

Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre

I am still determined to see every production of a Philip Ridley play that I can so a revival of The Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre was a no-brainer, despite (or because of) having seen it twice before, in Brighton in 2023 and Shoreditch Town Hall in 2017.

The King's Head Theatre has moved from above a pub to far below a new mixed-use development nearby and that has had an impact on ticket prices so my seat C21 was £42. That's not actually that much for theatre these days but my price expectations are sill somewhat set (unreasonably) by pre-covid pub theatre prices.

My keenness meant that I was quick to book and got a seat in the centre of the main seating with a perfect view of the stage.

All the action takes place in this messy sitting room with its many door locks.

Here we meet the odd twenty-something twins Presley and Haley. They argue over chocolate and medicine and tell each other exaggerated stories about being chased by dogs and being in a dark wasteland. These are stories they have told each other many times, just like one repeats stories to young children.

These stories are also typical Ridley monologues and so have their own value despite not being directly related to the main story.

Then they see two people outside, one of whom leaves, and after some argument they allow the other one in. That is Cosmo Disney and everything changes. Cosmo is a loud force of purpose and certainty which the meek and subdued twins can do little to contain.

The tone changes from retelling favourite stories to a barrage of questions as Cosmo tries to work out what is going on with the twins and they struggle to find out something about Cosmo. This is where the cockroaches in the poster come in. Here Cosmo's swagger dominates the play and William Robinson's acting is relentlessly powerful, questioning and in command. Cosmo has to carry the play and with William Robinson it does so assuredly.

The final short section introduced the other man seen outside, Pitchfork, who is monstrous in appearance and sound. While the Cosmo character is recognisable, if exaggerated, there are no similes for Pitchfork in real life.

It is a short sharp shock that bring the play to a magnificent conclusion.

The Pitchfork Disney at King's Head Theatre was an excellent production of an excellent play.

Blood Wedding at Omnibus Theatre

This was as close to mandatory as any theatre production gets for me.

The original play, also called Blood Wedding, is by Lorca a giant of theatre. I had seen and loved various Lorca plays over the years, including two versions of The House of Bernarda Alba.

I had also seen his Blood Wedding before, oddly at my only other visit to Omnibus Theatre on the south-east corner of Clapham Common.

This version was by Barney Norris and I have seen so many of his plays over the years at various locations that we chat a little whenever we meet.

This Blood Wedding moved the story from historical Spain to contemporary Salisbury (if you know Norris' work you will have guessed that!). That relocation helped to make the story more relatable and relevant. 

The story was the same (no spoilers, though the title is bit of a clue) but the richness in the play was the characters all of which were believable, had depth and were brought to convincing life by an excellent ensemble cast. For example, while the centre of the play was a bride and groom and her former lover, I found myself particularly interested in the bride's mother and her motives.

Clearly I had high hopes for this production and it is fair to say that they were met and possible exceeded. This was an absolute belter of a play thanks to those characters and Norris' dialogue that described them to us.

Tarantula at Arcola Theatre

I have a Google Alert running for Philip Ridley and I believe that I have seen every production of his plays in London over the last ten years or so (and one in Brighton too) so I was always going to go to see Tarantula and it was a nice bonus that it was on at Arcola Theatre, one of my very favourite theatres and where my love affair with the works of Philip Ridley began in 2014.

Tarantula was a new piece for the stage (it had been done online) but I had some idea of what to expect as it was part of a series of monologues that I saw in 2018. One of the actors then was Georgie Henley and it was pleased to see that she was doing Tarantula.

Some of his other monologues from that period are still on line at We Are Tramp and are well worth watching.

These monolgues are of various lengths had the usual Ridley mix of darkness, surrealism, real life, comedy and savage twists, all the things that make me love the plays so much.

Tarantula is narrated by a young woman (or man, it does not matter which) who lives at home with her parents, an elder brother and a much younger sister. She falls in love, twice, and we here the details of chance encounters, first hesitant dates and the consequences of unexpected events.

The first romance ended particularly badly, thanks to the spider, hence the need for the second. 

The play was incident rich and had me fully engrossed for ninety minutes, so much so that the lights going off came as a complete surprise. The way the scenes were string together reminded me a little of Under Milk Wood with the first romances being used as the thread to link the stories. Each romance was a major plot line across the stories with the first ending violently and the second ambivalently (much as Gators had).

Tarantula was sold out so I guess there are quite a few Ridley fans out there and we saw a play that had all of his hallmarks, which is all that I hoped for. We also saw an astonishing solo performance that included a lot of emotion, movement, expression and words. It was award winning stuff and I suspect that the awards will come.

Tarantula was a reminder of what makes Philip Ridley so special and also of how good and actor Georgie Henley is and why Arcola Theatre is such a good venue. Three out of three.

Twelfth Night at Orange Tree Theatre

I had not been to Orange Tree Theatre for a little while, by my standards, for various reasons but Shakespeare is always tempting so I forked out £29 for a seat in the second row (B45).

The billing for the show included "Oliver Ford Davies, one of the leading Shakespearean actors of his generation, returns to the OT to play Malvolio, opposite Jane Asher as Maria" and they both made the poster but while it is always good to see fine actors that was not part of my decision making.

This Twelfth Night was set in the 1940s and featured music and songs played on a piano in the middle of the stage. That might sound a little extreme, perverse even, but I found it to be a fairly honest version of the play and it was all the better for being so with the original words doing all of hard work.

Well, nost of the hard work - those words needed good actors to deliver them and with this cast we had them. In an ensemble performance I will pick on just two for special mention, Patricia Allison (also in the poster) as an earnest Viola and Robert Mountford as a gloriously funny Andrew Aguecheek.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's funnier and more approachable plays and this version was a lot of fun.

Parlour Song at Golden Goose Theatre

For various reasons, including not working in Central London anymore, I do not go to the theatre as much as I used to and it is always good to have a solid excuse to get back to one of the smaller theatres and that excuse came with a Jez Butterworth play at Golden Goose Theatre.

I am not necessarily a big Butterworth fan and the final push to see this came from having seen his The River recently (at Greenwich Theatre) and loving it.

It was also good to be able to go back to Golden Goose Theatre in Camberwell (probably) which I had only been to once before.

Oddly, I have been to both Greenwich Theatre and Golden Goose Theatre just twice (so far!) and in both cases it was first to see a Philip Ridley play and then to see one by Jez Butterworth.

Small theatres are kind to the pocket and my (unallocated) seat cost just £17. I could actually have paid less but I declined the old person's concession to support the theatre.

First I had to get there and find somewhere to eat.

Getting there was the easy part with a bus to Norbiton Station, a train to Vauxhall and a pleasant walk of about half an hour down to the theatre.

A quick look at a map beforehand suggested there was an Indian restaurant a little further along the Camberwell New Road so I went for that. I arrived at New Dewaniam just as they were opening (6pm) and was ushered into a large comfortable room. This was something of a find as the food was excellent and a little unusual, e.g. I had a pumpkin dish, and the service was friendly and attentive. I do not often find myself in Camberwell but if it happens agaain I know where to go to eat.

Golen Goose Theatre is a little odd in that it is quite integrated into the pub of the same name and the waiting area for the theatre is, I presume, the former lounge bar of the pub.

It had been a couple of years since my last visit there and I was impressed that Executive Director Michael Kingsbury remembered me, admittedly I had also known him at the nearby White Bear Theatre and had spoken to him a few times before.

The theatre was laid out differently from how I remembered it, though that could have been a false memory, with three rows of raked seats on three sides of the performance area. I was one of the first in and was able to grab a seat towards the middle of the front row, always my preferred location in small venues.

The backdrop was a plain sheet and the prop looked like a couple of crates inside of which were two men. The crates were some sort of Ikea magic and they were reassembled as other things and moved several times during the performance. They were the sole prop which suited my love of simplicity.

This was the story of two men, neighbours in an estate on the edge of town (good views of the motorway) and the wife of one of them, One of the men, Ned, works in demolition and the play starts with him showing videos of some of his projects to his neighbour, Dale, who has seen them all before.

From there the play flows in several directions that include familiar domestic issues to the surreal disappearance of objects. Ned's wife, Joy, appears to lead the story to other places. Their relationships go through cycles of constructions and deconstructions echoed by the props. These cycles have no clear beginning or ending and so the play ends, just as it started, with a nondescript moment. And this is fine.

Parlour Song is an interesting and entertaining view inside three fairly ordinary lives that occasionally collide in unusual ways.

Here in America at Orange Tree Theatre

I try to support Orange Tree Theatre as it is one of my nearest and while its programming is not always to my taste there was a lot going for Here in America, the phrase "multi award-winning plays for the RSC and National Theatre" as did the presence of Shaun Evans the star of Endeavour.

That said, Orange Tree Theatre is proving to be quite popular these days and when I finally got around to booking my options were limited and I had to settle for a high stool in the third row, Lower Floor C30, at £35. The late booking also meant I ended up with a distanced performance (first introduced immediately post-Covid) which was just as well as my third row seat would have had poor visibility if not for the spaces in the first two rows.

Here in America looks at McCarthyism through the eyes of playwright Arthur Miller and his frequent collaborator director Elia Kazan. Their discussions, and actions, were mostly around whether to give the names of other possible communist sympathisers when they were interrogated. 

And that was about it. The play was essentially a documentary on a specific part of the proceedings of The House Committee on Un-American Activities and while it was interesting to hear the views of Miller and Kazan it was a story with little drama.

I also felt that in setting the play wholly in America in 1952 the opportunity was missed to say something about the echos of McCarthyism in modern politics, such as the way that all criticism of Israel is called unpatriotic, despite the very obvious genocide and war crimes.

The lack of any real drama or message was a shame as the production was very good in all other aspects. I very much appreciated the theatre of the show and the skills of all those bringing it to the stage but I was left wondering what the point of it all was.

The Band Back Together at Arcola Theatre

I do not get to Arcola Theatre in Dalston as much as I did when I worked within walking distance but it is still something of a favourite and I welcome any reasonable excuse to go there. The very reasonable excuse this time was a new play by Barney Norris. My first exposure to his work was also at Arcola, Visitors in 2014, and since then I have seen productions of his at Bush and Bridge theatres as well as Arcola again.

It was very early in the run and my preview ticket for front row seat A11 was just £20. 

Dalston may be gentrifying but my pre-theatre eating operations have reduced over the years, e.g. I had been to Farr's before and their website was promising but on that night they were not doing food. Not for the first time I was forced into The Speakeasy, a semi-outdoor space, where the food and beer did the job nicely. It is really time that I started thinking of this place as a proper option for eating rather than a fall-back.

The play was downstairs in Studio 2 which has a nice cosy feel in which the front row seat added to the intimacy.

The simple premise behind the play was that three people who had been in a band eighteen years ago (half their lives) were coming back for a once-off performance having had no contact in the meantime. 

The eighteen years of catch-up provided a lot of rich material. They had parted as little more than children and had become adults in the meantime with adult jobs and adult families. Their experiences had been mixed and there were both light and dark stories.

It was a touching story of three people leading three separate lives each with their own joys and frustrations. The way those stories were told was intelligent which kept me engaged and natural so it felt real. That realness helped to hide the clever things going on in the script, which only reinforced its cleverness.

The play was set in their rehearsal sessions and we got a reasonable amount of music which was a bit punky and interesting lyrically and musically. It was a far step from the standard fare delivered by most musicals. I liked it.

Barney Norris was there to see how things went and it was good to be able to share a few words about this and his other shows. The chance to speak to a creative is one of the joys of smaller theatres.

The Band Back Together was my sort of play in my sort of theatre. A wonderful evening!

Sputnik Sweetheart at Arcola Theatre

Arcola Theatre (in Dalston) is harder to get to for me since I stopped working by Kings Cross, when I could easily walk there after work (and, occasionally, during work), but I still think of it as one of my regular theatres and I like having an excuse to get back there. Sputnik Sweetheart was such an excuse.

I liked that it was an adaptation of a Japanese novel with weird elements and I very much liked that it was directed by Melly Still whose work I first encountered with Coram Boy at National Theatre in 2007. Since then our paths had crossed a few times at Glyndebourne and Rose Theatre.

My first visit back to Dalston for a while met an immediate problem in that the regular eating place, Route, was (still) hidden behind scaffolding and was closed. A quick replan took me to a nearby pub, Farrs Dalston, which had decent beer and excellent tacos with a Pakistani twist.

The rest of the usual plan worked and I was seated in the front row of the central section, seat A14, which I had paid a modest £27.5 for. Lots of other people had bought seats too and the theatre looked to be sold out.

Sputnik Sweetheart was both weird and delightful. Weird because it jumped around time and space, and delightful because it was a love story, albeit an unusual one.

There was a lot going on with the dialogue and the staging and I am sure that, not being heavily versed in this culture, that I missed much of what was intended but what I could follow and understand was lovely.

Wolfie at Orange Tree Theatre

I saw Wolfie at Theatre503 in 2019 and it made quite an impression on me. So much so that when recently I was asked by somebody which of the many plays I had seen at Theatre503 was my favourite, Wolfie was the first play that came to mind (quickly followed by several other contenders),

So when I heard that it was coming to Orange Tree Theatre I could hardly wait. But wait I had to as it took a few months for it to appear in their booking system, and even then it was buried with other plays under the heading Greenhouse Festival. I managed to find the booking form and eagerly grabbed a seat for £12.

The reason it was so cheap was that the festival plays were performed by graduating LAMDA students. If anything, that was a plus for me as I have a high regard for recent graduates having seen so many young actors over the years, often in small theatres across London, places like Theatre503.
 

This was a very different Wolfie visually because of the different stage layout and this one used more props than I remembered. The main prop was actually the shopping trolley on the left.

Wolfie is the story of twin girls, the Sharkey twins, who we follow from just before they are born, their birth being through the shopping trolley.

Soon after birth they are separated with one getting a wolf as her new mother and the other a woman who stays in the bath all the time. After that things get weird.

The situation may be a little strange but the story is a simple one of two girls growing up apart and in different ways. What lifts the play far above the simple story is the way that it is told and the language used. 

The story was brought to us by the two girls taking it in turns to tell theirs with the other girl playing characters in her sister's life. They also talked to each other about how they would tell the story, e.g. "It's my turn now.". A novel approach (for me) and it worked.

The language was the highlight with throw-away comments all the time, something like Wilde but also not like Wilde. To give just one example from the many that flew past, one of the sister's said that she and her daughters had not been anywhere recently, apart from a trip into space. There was also something about using Cillit Bang to clean the ocean. You get the idea.

The language also flowed poetically with a rhythm that carried it effortlessly through two hours.

A play like this requires good actors and both women were very good. I would like to namecheck them but the Orange Tree website does not give their names (as far as I can see).

My memory was of something special and it most definitely was.

The Swell at Orange Tree Theatre

There has to be a very good reason for me to miss an Orange Tree production and no such reason existed for The Swell, indeed the opposite was true as this was a new play (I like new plays) which promised "a gripping story spanning decades of love, sacrifice and betrayal.".

That was more than enough to tempt me to fork out £26 for a seat in the front row.

Entering the auditorium the raised stage made a striking impact. During the play some holes were opened, and closed, in the stage to suggest different settings to allow the players to sit.

I like the way that worked but it was a shame that the stage was raised in the first place as that made viewing from the front row a little awkward at times, as the photo hints.

The Swell was a love triangle set then and now with three actors playing the young women and anther three the older ones. There was no attempt to physically match the young and older actresses but that did not disturb the play in any way.

The story starts with two young women very much together then a very bouncy friend returns from distant lands and inadvertently throws a few spanners in the works, Decades later we see how things turns out. There is a massive twist there which I certainly did not see coming and that was the point of the play.

Or rather, the twist lets the play tackle an unexpected situation and ask some not very simple questions about trust and loving.

Most of the dialogue skimmed over me, that is I cannot remember any of it now, which may look as though the play lacked something but it did plenty to keep me engaged for ninety minutes.

The Swell was a perfectly fine play delivered in a compelling way. A good enough result for any night at the theatre.

The Circle at Orange Tree Theatre

Orange Tree Theatre is an easy 45 minute walk away so it is one of the theatres that I manage to see almost all of their productions. I skip a few for various reasons but I was not going to miss something by Somerset Maugham.

Their pricing system has changed a little and, for reasons that escape me, the seats in the corners are a little cheaper than the rest even though I would argue that the view is better there (the stage looks narrower) so I went for seat A19for £26.

The Circle is a will-she, won't-she story about a young woman considering leaving her aristocratic and parliamentary husband thirty years after his mother had left his father. The mother and hew new love had moved to Italy and had not been since.

Unexpected circumstances have thrown all six players together in the young MP's country home. This allows Maugham to play with different combinations of the six very different characters as they, and we, explored the current situation and learned more about what had gone before.

Lightening the mood a little were a few comedy vignettes (they were not big enough to be called gags) such as the authenticity of an antique chair and a game of bridge. Small though they were they did change the mood and the pace of the play which is a good thing, if done correctly.

The casting was a little strange. The play was very clear about people's ages so it was a little odd to have three people well into their 70s playing people under 60. It just about worked because the older generation were all around the same age and also because the tree actors, Jane Asher, Clive Francis and Nicholas Le Prevost, were all very convincing in their roles.

I said that this was a will-she, won't she story and the she was perfectly played by Olivia Vinall.

The Circle never tried to do very much other than be light entertainment and it was very entertaining so that is a good result.

Duet for One at Orange Tree Theatre

Orange Tree Theatre is a modest bus journey away (even when they are on diversion) so I have to have a pretty good reason not to go there and that means I see almost everything. Booking is a routine thing and so I grabbed my seat for Duet for One, A22 in my usual area, for £26.

The diverted bus got me there in good time and I was able to get a beer in the bar beforehand to soothe my worrying cough. I was attracted by the familiar Adnams Ghost Ship brand and it was only after I had paid for it did I realise that it was a low alcohol beer at 0.5%. The beer did its job as a throat lubricant but I felt robbed of the alcohol.

 

The premise of Duet for One is simple enough, a top-flight violinist contracts MS and the impact of this on her leads her to seek the help of a psychiatrist, the play is their conversations over a number of weeks.

That sounds a bit dry and in a way it is, these conversations and measured (one os a professional after all) and cover the fairly predictable areas of the violinist's relationships with her parents and her husband.

There was a lot of depth to some of those conversations, depending on the mood of the violinist at that time, so there was quite a lot of interest but there was also a lack of progression, the play had a beginning but not much in the way of a middle or an ending.

I was also put off somewhat by the obvious comparison to Jacqueline Mary du Pré and Daniel Barenboim. There are significant differences, e.g. du Pré played the cello, but there are too many similarities for this to be a coincidence. I wish that it had been the du Pré story or, if something different then something very different.

From the previous comments you can tell that this was not really my cup of tea but there was plenty going in for me to enjoy and it was a positive experience.

The icing on the cake for me was being able to say a (very) few words afterwards to Robert Lindsay, who had been at the show.

The Game of Love and Chance at Arcola Outside was very jolly

My return to theatregoing is still tentative but Arcola Theatre is one of my favourites and I was keen to get back there. The Game of Love and Chance gave me the chance to do that with the promise of some easy laughs.

But first I had to get there.

The familiar routine of going to the Arcola was partially forgotten and things had changed too. Arcola had opened up a new performance space, Arcola Outside (where Arcola Tent once was) to give performances in a highly ventilated space with distanced seating.

The new bar did not do food but one of the staff recommended the pub across the road, The Speakeasy, and that did the job brilliantly, albeit at the price you would expect of a bar full of young Dalstonians.

The seating looked little more than wooden boxes, providing useful space underneath for bags, but it proved to be surprisingly comfortable.

The other surprising thing was the lack of mask wearing. I had mine on all the time but only a small number of other people did.

The play itself was a simply constructed farce where only two of the players and we, the audience, knew what was really going on. The trick was people swapping roles to great comic effect.

The acting was beautifully exaggerated and special praise must go to Ellie Nunn as the minor royal falling in love with a chauffeur for her expressions and looks to the audience, and to Michael Lyle for his enthusiastic son-of-a-billionaire chasing a maid.

It was all extremely jolly and I laughed a lot. It was just the sort of exuberant pick-me-up I needed after a long period without theatre or anything else very much.

Won over by The Sugar Syndrome at Orange Tree Theatre

As always these days I booked to see The Sugar Syndrome with some trepidation due to my mixed reaction to the current programming at Orange Tree Theatre. I did not help that it was written by Lucy Prebble who is famous for writing The Effect which I have listen to a couple of times on the radio and find the portrayal there of medical trials so wrong that it annoys me.

All that said, I do go to everything at Orange Tree Theatre so I booked a ticket for this too. Since my last booking, not that long ago, the system there had changed and they offered different price bands in different parts of the theatre - remember that there are only three rows of seating downstairs and one upstairs. My usual place in the front row was considerably more expensive that the second row so for the first time in many years I went for the second row and paid a ridiculously low £15 for seat B23.

The play did not get off to a good start either. I found the first scene to be too brutal (a couple having casual sex) and this was not helped by the harsh lighting and loud music.

I had problems with the aggressive staging throughout and that really hurt my enjoyment of the play

Luckily the story got much better and very quickly. Perhaps the first scene was just meant to shock us before the real story began.

The story was about psychologically troubled people trying to come to terms with the real world, whereas The Effect was about normal people trying to cope with a psychologically manipulated world. I think that this worked better.

The story wove around a young anorexic woman and a couple of people who she met in a chat room (the play was set in the near past when people used dial-up modems and had demon email addresses). One of these was a convicted paedophile and the other, never formally diagnosed, had problems forming relationships. Her mother also had absent husband issues so nobody in the play had an easy or a "normal" life.

From that fairly simple, if unusual, mix of ingredients Lucy Prebble crafted a story that gripped, enthralled, entertained, informed and stirred. It was powerful without being oppressive, dark without being gloomy and tense without being scary. For two hours I loved it.

Jessica Rhodes as the young woman did a great job but the performance that grabbed me the most was by John Hollngworth, the paedophile, who knew exactly who he was and how bad his life was always going to be because of that, and who had come to terms with this. He was a very sick man who you could feel a lot of sympathy for.

I felt that the final scene, like the first, let the play down. A natural conclusion had been reached and the dialogue ended with a nice simple every-day phrase. The play could have ended then. No more words were spoken but there was a final scene that I found to be too final and somewhat unfitting with what had gone on before, this was not a situation that you could have a simple ending. If this play makes it to the radio too then I guess it will have to end where I wanted it to end so that is something to look forward to!

The Sugar Syndrome was a fine play that managed to shine through the treatment it was given and through my preconceptions. I would like to see, or hear, another production of it one day.

Losing Venice at Orange Tree Theatre lacked substance

Losing Venice sounded like an interesting proposition with a contemporary relevance as it addressed themes like "A nation with delusional ideas of its place in the world, making poor choices, involved in clumsy foreign adventures, constantly on the edge of war.". Sadly it fell short of my modest expectations.

It was a play of two halves. The first was flimsy but had enough good lines and exotic characters to be entertaining. The second descended into political commentary and despite being only 45 minutes long it dragged. I looked at my watch several times.

At the end I struggled to see what the point of the play was. It was a bit funny, a bit political a bit absurd but not much of anything.

Rising above the play's limitations were the excellent cast, which is why I have chosen a cast photograph to accompany my words.

Tim Delap (top right) as the Duke led the way with everybody else a close second in emphasising their characters' silliness. I even forgive Tim for almost stabbing me (A30 is a risky seat) and the stand-in (presumably) for having to read from a script.

Walking home I tried to make sense of what I had just seen and failed to find the point of it. It lacked gravitas to make any political points and lacked sufficient humour to be a comedy. It lacked substance.

Black Mountain at Orange Tree Theatre was tense and satisfying

Recently I seem to be moaning about Orange Tree Theatre more often than I have be praising it but I keep going there anyway. Black Mountain reminded me why.

Being in the round is the distinctive feature of Orange Tree and that means that any front-row seat downstairs will do for me. This time I found myself in A31 for just £22.5. That sort of price encourages experiment,

Black Mounting was in a season with Out of Love which meant sharing the same minimalist set (there was just one prop) and the same small cast. The stories were very different though.

Here a couple were staying in a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere trying to repair their relationship after he had a fling. The flingee followed them there.

What followed was a dark psychological drama where the truth was always questioned and rightly so. It was all very tense and the tension was nicely magnified by the lighting and sounds. This was a mighty fine production all round.

The story developed darkly and interestingly while I tried to work out what was going on. I was interested in all three characters and was struggling to choose whose side I was on. I may have chosen the wrong one.

Hasan Dixon again shone though Katie Elin-Salt was far from eclipsed and Sally Messham did the little she had to do well enough.

At seventy minutes Black Mountain only just about crept into full-length but it was the right length for the drama. It would have been hard to increase the tension even further and any let off in the mood would have been a mistake.

Black Mountain was my sort of play and I was delighted that Orange Tree chose to present it.

Out of Love at Orange Tree Theatre

I may have fallen somewhat out of love with Orange Tree, as I have grown to love places like Theatre503 and Southwark Playhouse more, but it is still my nearest small theatre and I still feel some loyalty towards it because of the many years that I have been going there.

While some visits had a sense of duty about them I was looking forward to this one because it sounded like my sort of thing, "A tale of friendship, love and rivalry over thirty years from award-winning playwright Elinor Cook."

It was a promising start too with the most minimal of stages, just a circle drawn on the ground. I like minimal.

Moving in and out of that circle were two women, the close friends, and one man who played all the men in their lives. Again, nothing wrong with that.

The story of their friendship was told in a series of short non-chronological scenes. Nothing wrong with that either as a concept and one I had come across before but this time I found it poorly executed. My main complaint was there there was little to say when each scene was set and there was no obvious reason for the timeshiftimg either.

The confusion was annoying but was not my main problem with the play. I completely failed to engage with the characters or to find anything interesting in their lives. To be honest, I struggled to stay awake at times.

There is a reason that I do not do star rating and that is because art is completely subjective and I am not conceited enough to think that my view matters very much to anyone else, I am writing this for myself. Other views are available and this time an actress that I know and respect went the following night and loved it. She could relate to the characters and their situation in a way that I could not which was good for her but not so good for me.

I left the Orange Tree trying to work out what the point of the play was, that is how we were meant to be entertained or enlightened, and I could not work it out. I felt that it put too much emphasis on the structure and not enough on the content. There were a couple of laughs along the way and a tender moment towards the end but that was a poor return for seventy minutes.