WOYZECK

“Bartender, Please Make That a Double. Everyone should see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? once, but is it better the second time? This question occupied my mind last week and had me in a spin - ‘should I or should I not go?’ On one hand, it really is quite hard on the nerves, but how could I resist such an all-star cast - Gillian Anderson at her finest. Ultimately it felt bad to be rude, so I decided to go, and as we walked to the theatre I merrily joked with my co-curator about straitjackets being carefully stowed under the seat in case of emergency. This production is certainly worthy of the hype. Under the direction of Marianne Elliott, this incredible cast was agile enough to go beyond the script’s machine-gun fire of killer lines to give a superb performance of nuanced sensitivity that gave humanity, coherence, poise and even moments of tenderness to the seriously sick see-saw of George and Martha’s marriage. My one criticism is that the characters did not seem drunk. The energy (and God knows where they get it from) was exhilarating, and if the performance was torture - it was of the most divine kind. My decision to take a whisky in the first interval was inspired “audience participation”, and one which I would fully recommend. The quick change in relationship dynamics and brutalisation of truth, which cut through comforting lies to the heart of the characters’ vulnerability, made compelling theatre, and on Friday the entire cast was superb. This raw exposure of private wounds was reinforced by the slowly turning stage - surely emphasising that there were no hidden corners, when in fact a significant part of the audience response was the collective wish that there could be, just one. About halfway through, I excitedly grabbed my fellow cultural commentator’s notebook and scribbled the words “Francis Bacon”, and we silently nodded in conspiratorial agreement. Was it the colour of the mid-century modern set, the circular stage, the flayed emotional rawness of the script, or the fact that my consciousness is currently farmed out to that particular artist? Or perhaps, because I am an art writer, it was the best way for me to convey what I understood. But it was almost as though Bacon had painted an unlikely heteronormative group portrait in which the conflicting energy was so potent that it unfurled itself off the canvas and played out before our eyes in three and a half hours of measured sickness. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not me - I am ready for the drink-along matinee!”

“Phwoar, there is nothing like the almighty power of an excellent ensemble cast, all performing to bring out the best in each other. Such is the case in this revival of Golden Boy, which had me thoroughly invested for its entire two-and-a-half hours. Josh O'Connor is a marvel — so gentle and yet perfectly volatile in his depiction of the young boxer Joe — but it was Daniel Mays as Moody and Zubin Varla as Fuseli who put down some insanely cool character work, owning a scene with the slightest flicker of expression. There were a few on-the-nose directorial choices; a violin case stuffed with cash to illustrate the arts-versus-commerce debate was definitely not necessary. But Odets' 1937 Great Depression play is no easy beast, the script is fairly on-the-nose itself. A gripping watch, heightened by a haunting live string quartet, that I would genuinely want to see again. ”