The Homecoming at Trafalgar Studios was tense, brutal and surprising

One look at the poster gives you some idea of why I was interested in seeing The Homecoming, it was the names.

John Simm was my biggest name in that list followed closely by Keith Allen, both of whom I had seen on stage before. Emma Chan was an attractive name also because I had enjoyed her performance in C4's Humans. And the Harold Pinter name helped too.

But is was Gary Kemp who swung it for me.

My interest in the names was not sufficient to make me fork out Trafalgar Studio prices to see it initially. Then Gary Kemp was on the podcast of Robert Elms' BBC Radio London show and what he said about the play, and his role in it, convinced me to see it. So much so that I went for top price seats in the front row, Row A  Seat 18 Price £69.50.

The main reason that I show a picture taken from my seat and give my seat number is so that I can judge which seat to go for next time I am at that theatre, At most medium or large sized theatres the front rows are to be avoided as they mean looking up at a raised stage but my last visit to the Trafalgar had shown me that the stage is not that high and the front row seats are set back a bit leaving something like a 2m gap between seats and stage. Plenty of room for my work bag too!

On that stage was a sparsely furnished living room.

The armchair belonged to Max an elderly man and head of the household. Living with him in the house were his camp brother Sam and his sons Lenny and Joey.

The homecoming was that of Max's other son, Teddy, who arrived unexpectedly with his wife, Ruth, on there way back to the USA from Italy where they had been on holiday.

The story that followed was dark and impressionistic, as if Edvard Munch had done My Family. This mad darkness was presented as if normal and that gave the play its edge, just like the Munsters' belief in their normality gave that show its comedy. To pick just tow examples, Lenny describes how be beat up an old woman in frustration at not being to help her to move a mangle and on first seeing Ruth, Max called her all sorts of nasty things that nobody batted an eyelid to, not even Ruth.

That was the canvas on which the characters roamed and those characters were the play's other main element.

John Simm as Lenny shone throughout. Immaculately dressed, slow speaker, touches of menace, great performance. Keith Allen as Sam was the one touch of brightness in the dark situation. He drifted above family matters camply enough for us to know why he had never married but not too camp for Max to catch on. Gary Kemp surprised me, pleasantly, as Teddy the prodigal child who did not fit in. Ron Cook's Max was aggressive, foul-mouthed and very much in charge. Gemma Chan as Ruth carried on from her role in Humans and showed little emotion when being sworn at or propositioned. She seemed a natural match for Lenny with their mutual calculating manners and menace. John Macmillan as Joey was dim-witted and happily did what he was told.

The Homecoming is a play that needs a strong ensemble and this production most certainly had one.

What happened in the play was of little importance, what mattered was the setting and the people in it. It was like a fly-on-the-wall documentary of an unusual and somewhat disturbing family. What they said to each other was sometimes funny, sometimes nasty and always fascinating.

With everything set in one room there could have been little for the backroom people to do but they contributed strongly to the evening. Obviously keeping the living room fairly dark all the time helped the mood but there were other neat tricks that I liked. In a play all but devoid of action it was the words that mattered and also the spaces between them. In one memorable tense seen Max and Lenny stood still staring at each other darkly for a long time before either of them spoke. The spaces added to the hint of menace and also regulated the pace of the play adding further to the tension.

The Homecoming gripped me from the beginning and never let go. It was quite an experience.

Ibsen's Ghosts at Trafalgar Studios

My interest in Ibsen's Ghosts was peaked by a recent radio adaptation but it took an offer from Hot Tickets to get me to see the same production on stage.

My "no thinking required" price-point is around £20, above that needs some justification, so an offer for a seat at £16 with a face value of £50 was an easy one to accept. I guess there must have been some returns as I was able to get a seat in the second row (B26), albeit somewhat to the left of centre.

I had only been to Trafalgar Studios a couple of times, and not always to the main studio either, so I had forgotten what it is like. It is a little odd.

There is no gap between the seats in the front row, they are bright red bench seats with high backs, the front rows are curved slightly at the ends {somewhere between "]" and ")"} and are nicely raked. I was in one of the curves which meant a little less space that usual but I was helped considerably by the no-show in an adjacent seat. This also got me past the problem of the tall woman in the front row.

The set was nicely done and nicely used.

For most of the time it was a normal reception room but the back wall was translucent so, with the correct lighting, we could see through to the dining room and the front door. I am sure that it was no coincidence that the people in that room had a ghostly appearance.

The story was what it is. Ghosts is very clunky in places, e.g. the belaboured conversations about insurance and then about candles, but there also a few points of solid drama - not quite twists but unexpected developments none the less.

It also lacks somewhat for characters. The main players are either thinly portrayed or are not that nice. It was difficult to feel any sympathy for any of them despite none of them being particularly bad people and some particularly bad things happened to them. This was a fault of the play and not the acting which was superb throughout. A special mention goes to Jack Lowden as the ailing Oswald who is most punished by the ghosts of the past.

The big surprise for me was the ending. Not only was this markedly different from the other stage version that I saw earlier this year but it also seemed to be different from the radio version of this production!

The play ends on the dilemma Helene Alving faces on how to deal with her son. At the Rose it was deliberately ambiguous but slightly positive, on the radio it was ambiguous but negative and here she made a clear decision and it was very negative. On the stage this was shown in her actions so I will have to check the radio version again to see what difference, if any, there was in the words.

I still have misgivings about Ghosts as a play, and I do not expect to see it ever again, but this production made the most of what it had to play with and was thoroughly entertaining. I am glad that I got an offer on it though.

When Did You Last See My Mother?

When Did You Last See My Mother? is, apparently, Christopher Hampton's first play and recently returned to the West End after forty years.

The West End in this case being the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall. Or, to be more precise, the diminutive Studio 2 there.

This was my third visit to Trafalgar Studios but the first to Studio 2. It is, not surprisingly, much like other small theatres, it has just 100 seats, in its layout with rows of benches around the three sides of the stage but, unlike the others, it has numbered seating.

The usual rule of going for the front row in small theatres was followed and I booked a seat next to one of the aisles on the grounds that would guarantee legroom and might also mean being close to some theatrical exists and entrances. I was wrong.

The aisle was blocked by a chair on the stage which meant that some of the audience had to squeeze between me and the chair to get to their seats and I had to be careful to avoid interfering with one of the actors who spent a lot of time sitting in that chair.

I like being close to the action and this was really close. I was not watching people living in a bedsit, I was with them in the bedsit.

Some care and attention had been spent getting that bedsit right and it was realistically frugal and period. The furniture and furnishing were a joy to behold.

In this bedsit are Ian and Jimmy. Two young men, fresh out of school, desperate for sex and short of money. They are "living together" in the biblical sense but Jimmy also has lots of sex with other boys and girls.

Ian is left with his pain and confusion and it is this that drives the play forward with vigour, humour and pathos.

Ian talks incessantly and honestly. Rather like House, he says what he feels and care not one whit who this offends. There is no malice or snideness in his remarks, he is just saying what he things. He comes across as a nice enough fellow but the frustrations and jealousies cloud his thinking.

Jiimmy, in contrast, is smart, confident and is not worried by money or sex. Life flows around him and he takes what he can along the way. He's shallow and carefree while Ian is deep and in pain. They are also in love, of a sorts, though they never directly admit to that.

There dialogue sparkles and spikes in equal measure. Again one is reminded of House talking to Wilson, and that is a good thing.

Into this emotional pot descends Jimmy's mother for whom the phrase MILF could have been invented. She is mature, assured and smartly dressed. She also feels for Ian. This is, or becomes, more than maternal and they have sex.

Later Ian excuses himself for this by saying that he only did so because she reminded him of Jimmy. She does not understand what he means by this and you have to remember that the play was written well before gay became an accepted and public lifestyle.

But the play is not about the plot. It's about Ian's emotions and the way that he reveals them in his dialogue. And now it has the added attraction of being a glimpse in to the past.

The acting is excellent too. Harry Melling (who was in Harry Potter, apparently) plays Ian and dominates the play simply because that is the way that it is written and he does all that is asked of him in that role. I especially liked his Young Fogey look with Tweed jacket and thick black glasses.

As a result it's a fantastic performance that was genuinely appreciated and warmly received by the audience who were a reassuring mix of ages, genders and races. Theatre needs to attract a wide range of people to survive and it's good to see plays that can do this.

When Did You Last See My Mother? is an enthralling and exhilarating swim in young emotions. Excellent stuff.

Elling is a joy

Like a lot of people I guess, I was interested in seeing Elling at the Trafalgar Studios because it stars John Simm, famous for his lead role in Life on Mars and, more recently, for playing The Master in Dr Who, and it proved to be an excellent choice.

John Simm plays a "mummy's boy" who spends some time in a mental institution following the death of his mother before being released back into the community. And he played the part brilliantly.

His portrayal of the character gave a clear focus throughout the play and made it worth watching by itself.

But to make things even better, the story is rather good too.

It's the simple story of two misfits' gradual and problematic return to society and it's the detail, rather than any major events, that carries the plot. It is warm, sympathetic and very human. It is also funny.

It's a rewarding and entertaining experience that was enthusiastically applauded by the packed audience.