TO HAVE AND TO HOLD - REVIEW - HAMPSTEAD THEATRE

‘[A]ll I could see was this generation of baby boomers who had the opportunity of going to university, did so, and then never came home’. So writes playwright Richard Bean, talking about the premise of To Have and to Hold, a play about Rob, a London-based writer, and Tina, a Somerset-based businesswoman, returning to see their nonagenarian parents in Hull. They are the first generation, the play points out, where their parents will live out the end of their lives without their children close by. Caring duties fall to Pammy, a cousin, and Rhubarb Eddie, a local who lavishes them with rhubarb in return for use of their allotment. When Rob and Tina find out that someone has been scamming their parents, they try to take action.

Yet what could easily become a straightforward mystery, or a soapbox tale about elder abuse, becomes much more than that. When Rob and Tina eventually find out who did it, there is no great sense of retributive justice. They murmur that the police are investigating; it’s a lie. Instead, their discovery is tinged with melancholy, because they cannot help but feel that it is their fault; as Pammy frequently tells them, they are never here to notice. The melancholy isn’t enough to be total regret – they have lives that they cannot abandon, jobs and families – but is the quiet sadness of generations suffering the cost of social change. The hangover of guilt leads them to jump to all sorts of conclusions – no, Eddie is not smuggling their father porn, he just accidentally turned on Naked Attraction – to make themselves the good guys in a story that is, we know, a lot more complicated than this.

Top plaudits, though, must go to Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey as parents Jack and Flo. Making cup after cup of tea and bickering back and forth inside James Cotterill’s detailed replica of their house, we get the strange melange of love, antipathy and claustrophobia that characterises so many long-running marriages. This laugh-a-minute banter suddenly turns to moments of real heart, like when Jack suddenly turns to ask Flo if she will wash him when he dies. Directors Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson do a good job of balancing humour and heart on what feels at times like a knife’s edge. If this production is guilty of anything, perhaps, it is mugging slightly too hard to the audience; the opening gag of Flo going up and down on a stairlift at painstaking speed when she can walk perfectly well is a good example of a moment that gets a laugh from the audience but belongs more in a Buster Keaton film than in this play, where it serves neither character nor plot. Yet most of the time that balance is struck beautifully.

A final point worth noting is that like the character of Jack, playwright Richard Bean’s father was a policeman, and all bar one of Jack’s anecdotes of his time on the force are really his. In a play which worries so much about the disconnect between generations and the loss of not just our parents but our memories and culture, it is moving to see those stories play to a full, laughing house, staying alive across both time and place.

{🎟 AD – PR invite – Tickets were gifted in exchange for an honest review}

A WOMAN WALKS INTO A BANK – REVIEW – THEATRE503
by Tom Carrao
The title of this winner of Theatre 503’s 2023 International Playwriting Award by Roxy Cook may seem like the set-up to a joke, but the narrative that unspools is instead an affectionate, gently barbed and at base quite sobering portrait of three ordinary souls (and one restless feline) adrift in modern Moscow. There is much affable, satirical back-and-forth commentary on the accepted myths & stereotypes of the Russian spirit & soul. Beset by the indignities of age, opportunism, graft, fatigue, the characters orbit one another, doomed to play out their roles in an unjust, predatory and saturnine universe. The play opens … More A WOMAN WALKS INTO A BANK – REVIEW – THEATRE503
PETER PAN GOES WRONG – REVIEW – LYRIC THEATRE
by Amy Rye
Peter Pan Goes Wrong first premiered in London at the Pleasance Theatre in 2013, and earlier this year the show made its Broadway debut. Now the production is back in the West End for the Christmas season. Following on from The Play That Goes Wrong, in this production, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is staged by the fictitious Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society and goes awry, disastrously so. The meta-comedy is filled with slapstick comedy, sometimes the humour may be predictable and silly, but it’s universally funny throughout – there is something for everyone here, and the laughs come thick and fast … More PETER PAN GOES WRONG – REVIEW – LYRIC THEATRE
GHOST STORIES BY CANDLELIGHT – REVIEW – SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE
by George Rennie
Drawing heavily from the classic canon of the British supernatural, High Tide’s trio of contemporary Gothic narratives uses traditional storytelling formats to address contemporary themes. Directed by Elayce Ismail, reverent musical interludes accompany tales of apparitions and nighttime conjurings that speak of women from the East of England. Unfortunately, the effect is less chilling and more lightweight, with conventional structures, predictable plot twists and an over-reliance on external forces to drive narrative shoring up some of the less relatable aspects of the genre. Nicola Werenowska’s The Beach House, perhaps the cleanest of the three tales, tells of a mother and … More GHOST STORIES BY CANDLELIGHT – REVIEW – SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE
CINDERELLA – REVIEW – LYRIC HAMMERSMITH
by Jenny Skuse
Drum roll please…(Cue a literal drum rolling across the stage.) The Lyric pantomime is one of traditions with the return of many well-loved jokes and skits. Costumes and sets are all made at the Lyric itself by Good Teeth, with set pieces being reused year on year. This year Cinderella gets the Hammersmith makeover, with some success. The costuming is fun and vibrant, with the ugly stepsisters’ equine pyjamas and hoop-skirted ball gowns giving all the wrong kinds of extra you need for those characters. Cinderella’s on stage dress transformation is magical and really well-timed. The Dame, Lady Jelly-Bottom’s, outfits … More CINDERELLA – REVIEW – LYRIC HAMMERSMITH
INTERVIEW – LINUS KARP – DIANA: THE UNTOLD AND UNTRUE STORY
by Amy Rye
Amy catches up with Linus Karp ahead of his performance of Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, at London’s Clapham Grand. Linus and Joseph of Awkward Productions are also the masterminds behind the new show Gwyneth Goes Skiing. Hello Your Majesty/ Candle Entrepreneur, how are you feeling coming back from a hugely successful fringe and triumphant tour across your kingdom, ahead of performing in front of 700 of your loyal subjects, and before (the list never ends!) opening a brand new show, which has recently gone viral? Exhausted, exhilarated and alive. We’ve had the most ridiculous year – I feel … More INTERVIEW – LINUS KARP – DIANA: THE UNTOLD AND UNTRUE STORY