Physician Semmelweis (Harold Pinter Theatre, London)
Verdict: Scrubs up effectively
Cuckoo (Royal Court docket Theatre, London)
Verdict: Sport of telephones
Having fought Covid as the remainder of us may battle vampires — with garlic and Vitamin C — Mark Rylance returned to the West Finish this week to play a Nineteenth-century Hungarian physician who fought mom and toddler mortality with nothing greater than hand hygiene.
The Oscar-winning actor’s present, first seen at Bristol’s Outdated Vic in January final yr, charts the lifetime of oddball doctor Ignaz Semmelweis who found the realisation that clear arms may cease childbirth infections.
For his life-saving revelations, he was rewarded by being run out of city and pushed mad.
And in a merciless coincidence, he finally died of sepsis, due to poor hygiene within the psychological asylum the place he wound up being incarcerated.
PATRICK MARMION: A lot of the foreboding in Tom Morris’s murky manufacturing hails from Adrian Sutton’s angular, typically discordant chamber music. Pictured: Dr Semmelweis being carried out on the Bristol Outdated Vic
This was, in fact, in a time when germs and micro organism weren’t understood; and Stephen Brown’s play (written with Rylance), extols Dr Semmelweis with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight — and the standard scorn for Victorian males.
That mentioned, Rylance is completely suited to the half. His bashful gynaecologist is neatly embodied, along with his hair combed ahead earlier than his ears and backwards behind, setting off mutton chop sideburns and a waxed ’tache. Narrating his story to his spouse in later years, he comes throughout as a nervous dogmatist who’s weirdly uncertain of himself.
His tactlessness and hair-trigger mood usually invite the distrust of others. And but he additionally has the vulnerability of a quaking schoolboy in a Victorian borstal.
Affecting childlike concern and surprise, Rylance appears to fumble for his traces and shifts furtively in regards to the stage, typically groping for help on the close by pillars.
He appears as if he’s away with the fairies, but he at all times has one eye on the viewers.
His unease is effectively positioned, as he runs up in opposition to Johann Klein (Alan Williams), the belligerent bulldozer who runs the Viennese maternity hospital; and Karl von Rokitansky (Daniel York Loh), an adjutant of an anatomist. Senior midwife Anna Muller (Pauline McLynn) is a touchstone of excellent sense, amid the docs’ strutting egos.
A lot of the foreboding in Tom Morris’s murky manufacturing hails from Adrian Sutton’s angular, typically discordant chamber music. A ghostly refrain of useless moms dance alongside, swaying like underwater weeds in invisible currents. And a shiny black flooring beneath a wrought iron balustrade lends a suitably gothic ambiance.
There’s little pressure in a narrative the place the result is rarely unsure. And as for the message — ‘now wash your arms’ — effectively, that didn’t even make it to the gents’ loos within the interval.
However as an opportunity to witness Rylance’s peculiar stage magic, it is a present to not be missed.
PATRICK MARMION: Telephones are nothing new in theatre. However in Michael Wynne’s new stage sitcom, Cuckoo, they’re like Greek Gods, issuing reversals of fortune and unwelcome verdicts on our lives
PATRICK MARMION: Truly, it’s about as deep as an episode of Gogglebox — right here with a household of three girls and a teenage woman, holding forth in Birkenhead
Telephones are nothing new in theatre. However in Michael Wynne’s new stage sitcom, Cuckoo, they’re like Greek Gods, issuing reversals of fortune and unwelcome verdicts on our lives.
That doesn’t imply it’s deep, thoughts you. Truly, it’s about as deep as an episode of Gogglebox — right here with a household of three girls and a teenage woman, holding forth in Birkenhead.
{The teenager} is combating anxiousness, which has been introduced on by hormones and local weather change . . . with a bit of assist from her hard-bitten single mum.
And although her well-meaning instructor aunt tries to assist, it’s her Nan (who’s busily flogging her worldly items on eBay) who actually makes a distinction.
The play opens in silence over fish and chips, whereas all 4 stare upon their telephones.
I solely want Wynne confirmed extra ambition, taking up the query of if (or how) the units harm their lives.
For no apparent motive in Vicky Featherstone’s manufacturing, the lounge includes a pool of water to 1 facet. By no means thoughts. Emma Harrison manages to elicit nice sympathy as the teenager, regardless of being virtually fully silent.
And because the end-of-her-tether mum, Michelle Butterly is as onerous because the M53 motorway. In any other case, the pity goes to Jodie McNee, because the instructor aunt who falls head over heels for a sizzling dentist.
But it surely’s Sue Jenkins who guidelines the roost as gran Doreen: plucking her chin and dancing to Tina Turner, in preparation for a secret date.
- A model of the primary evaluation was made out there completely to Mail+ subscribers on Wednesday.
The Wizard Of Oz (London Palladium and touring)
Verdict: Pleasingly zany
Many will really feel a chill wind blowing by their souls once they hear that producers have been meddling with their beloved classics. Devotees of The Wizard Of Oz might even really feel it’s like tampering with their childhood.
However concern not. It’s true that Nikolai Foster’s re-boot, starring Georgina Onuorah as Dorothy and Dianne Pilkington because the Depraved Witch, does flip the analogue, Technicolor story right into a cross between a online game and a Las Vegas amusement arcade. But it surely’s additionally good, respectful enjoyable.
Perhaps it’s misplaced some innocence (haven’t all of us?), however we are able to nonetheless admire Foster’s staging, combining a Tremendous Mario-style Yellow Brick Street with animations of the highways and byways of Kansas, Oz and the Emerald Metropolis.
Onuorah has a crystal voice harking back to each Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli. However her streetwise Dorothy isn’t any ingenue, and I did miss the vulnerability that is among the character’s obstacles to beat.
PATRICK MARMION: Many will really feel a chill wind blowing by their souls once they hear that producers have been meddling with their beloved classics. Devotees of The Wizard Of Oz might even really feel it’s like tampering with their childhood
Neither is Toto the Cairn Terrier of legend. As a substitute, he’s a puppet of combined ancestry, masterfully dealt with by Ben Thompson: sitting, leaping, yapping and watching with head tilted.
Louis Gaunt cuts a cute scarecrow, and Jason Manford is a properly goofy Lion, however Ashley Banjo is excellent as an animatronic Tin Man.
Gary Wilmot is a shoo-in for the deeply bizarre Wizard, whereas Christina Bianco’s good witch Glinda is sort of a stick of pink, warbling candyfloss.
No contest for who’s having essentially the most enjoyable, although. If Dianne Pilkington had been allowed to steal the present because the Depraved Witch, they’d be staging it in Rio — to the ghost of Ronnie Biggs.
The present’s extra songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, together with If We Solely Had A Plan, add a bit of additional (fashionable) sauce.
There are moments of close to raucousness, too, in Shay Barclay’s typically giddily kitsch choreography. The one factor it has to compete with is the conductor’s lengthy fringe under the stage, which flips up, down, left and proper, inflicting an intermittently restricted view within the entrance row. P.M.
Giffords Circus (Touring)
Verdict: Roll up, roll up
By Georgina Brown
The location has the vibrancy of a village inexperienced. From one wagon, Tweedy, the clown, serves Circus Sauce’s mouth-watering burgers (strive the pork stomach with rhubarb). Wisp-slender, an orange quiff spraying from the inexperienced velvet cone on his head, Tweedy has a model of sauce all his personal. Outdoors he’s trailed by excited, babbling youngsters. Inside this intimate Large High, by Keef, his pet iron.
Tweedy’s clowning is a matter of constructing magic by mending issues. When the members of the viewers are too sluggish to ring their goat-bells, he attaches tapes to their arms and pulls them himself. When his dummy’s jaw drops off (jaw-dropping actually is the phrase) — adopted by his head and limbs — Tweedy turns into a reside marionette.
Director Cal McCrystal’s inspiration for this yr’s present is Les Enfants du Paradis, a nod to the well-known movie’s ambiance of demi-monde Paris the place younger Clair de Lune (one other character is known as Hugo Victor) finds herself in a derelict theatre. Helped by a broken-hearted ballet-dancer (superior Antoine Cesar) and Tweedy, she summons professional performers who carry the stage to fabulous life. Romance blooms, to the accompaniment of a band, Quelle Fromage, singing outdated favourites by Blondie and ELO.
GEORGINA BROWN: Giffords Circus combines sequinned sophistication with sawdust and slapstick. Each death-defying, life-enhancing act celebrates abilities honed by years of observe, dedication and grit
Les Garcons Abyssinia climb poles and shoot by rings, with the bounce of superballs and swoop of swallows; Marie Meggiolaro spins hoops on every limb independently, whereas hanging bat-like; daredevil flying trapezist Alexander Saint-Michael skywalks the wrong way up — with no security internet.
Florentine Le Febvre’s quartet of miniature noticed ponies resemble tubby dalmatians and dance to her tune. Lovely, however simply upstaged by human performers making music on glass bottles and conjuring a shadow-play snogging couple, backlit by a tricycle torch.
Giffords Circus combines sequinned sophistication with sawdust and slapstick. Each death-defying, life-enhancing act celebrates abilities honed by years of observe, dedication and grit. A lesson of types, coming with buckets of allure — and candyfloss.
Go to giffordscircus.com for tour dates and particulars.
