Pericles - Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Scene of a Shipwreck

Shipwrecks and pirates and brothels, oh my! If Bar Mitzvah Boy suffered from too little plot, Pericles suffered from too much. No sooner did the titular Pericles, Prince of Tyre, set foot on a ship than a storm began a-brewing and he ended up stranded and friendless on foreign shores. The shipwrecks and coincidences and comings back from the dead and Marina's ability to talk herself out of ANYTHING might have made this play farcical and Comedy of Errors-esque, but it had such a strong fairytale quality and atmosphere it was easy to suspend disbelief and take it seriously. I felt that one wasn't supposed to see it as taking place in this world, but in a mystical, magical, ancient otherworld. Having never seen Pericles before but knowing it wasn't an oft-performed play, I was apprehensive. But I found this production beautiful and moving.

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse may have an irritating name (must everything at the Globe be a paean to Sam Wanamaker?) but it's a wonderful, unique theatre and I would thoroughly recommend seeing a performance there. Each time I've gone I've left feeling as though I've just had a vivid, intense, amazing dream. Because it's so small it's easy to forget about the other members of the audience and absorb yourself fully in the play. And the candlelight! It's always used to good, dramatic effect and, again, it somehow helps you feel as though you're the only person in the audience.

Pericles started off a bit weirdly, with Pericles (played by Globe stalwart James Garnon) leaving town on discovering an incestuous relationship between the woman he plans to marry and her father. It was weird because you assumed that this elaborately set-up plotline would go somewhere (e.g. that the woman would materialise later in the play at an inopportune moment), but it didn't. However, I appreciated the randomness of it.

My favourite scene had to be Pericles' first meeting with the woman he would marry, Thaisa (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). It's Thaisa's birthday and a party is held in her honour, to which various knights are invited (and which Pericles gatecrashes). It's all very festive and they play a game where Thaisa has to guess the Latin mottoes inscribed on the backs of the knights' shields. Entertaining. Original. The bedraggled, recently-shipwrecked Pericles doesn't have a shield but gives her a branch instead. And there is a dance! Excellent. THIS was when I was expecting the incestuous woman to turn up.

I loved the character of Marina (Jessica Baglow), a young woman of great integrity, who managed, with words alone, to get herself out of every single undesirable situation. And she faced many such a situation, from an evil adoptive mother to pirates to brothel-keepers. The scene in which she was reunited with her long-lost father, Pericles was genuinely touching. The subsequent appearance, from the rafters, of none other than the goddess Diana, in Pericles' dream, was the crowning moment in the play. 

photo credit: Scene of a Shipwreck via photopin (license)

Next: Wallis

Bar Mitzvah Boy - Upstairs at the Gatehouse

The Torah

Bar Mitzvah Boy The Musical: the musical that says exactly what it is on the tin. Bar Mitzvah Boy The Musical - a musical about a boy preparing for and undergoing his bar mitzvah, right? Yes. That is exactly what it was. A simple story maybe, but the appeal of this show lay in its well-drawn, endearing characters, strong humour and heart-warming nature. 

One of the things I love about Upstairs at the Gatehouse is the fact that its smallness and compactness encourages companies to put extra effort into making their sets as detailed and authentic-looking as possible. Bar Mitzvah Boy is set in the 1970s - this was actually the first staging of the musical since the original 1978 production - so there were shag carpets, beaded curtain/doors and orange and brown wallpaper with geometrical patterns galore. The costumes and hairstyles were also delightfully and convincingly 70s. I have a tendency to romanticise the idea of 70s fashions, so watching this was a reminder that many outfits of the time were indeed hideous.

Adam Bregman was excellent as Eliot Green, the titular Bar Mitzvah Boy, who was very conscientious about his bar mitzvah preparations and annoyed with his family for only caring about what he regarded as superficialities. His agonisings over the meaning of becoming a man and the spiritual element of the ceremony struck me as very true to life and understandable - typically earnestly teenagerish, maybe - but commendable.

While Eliot was the focus of the action, the other characters and how they related to each other played an important part in the story. All the characters were likeable and sympathetic to some extent. The parents, Rita and Victor, were a typical 70s North London couple; Rita (Sue Kelvin) was a housewife and Victor (Robert Maskell) a taxi driver. Rita's extreme anxiety over ensuring that the bar mitzvah passed off without a hitch and impressed the myriad of guests provided much of the humour of the show. Despite her frustration over her husband's lack of interest in the plans (and his reluctance to help out more generally around the house), and his irritation with the non-stop bar mitzvah preparation discussions, it was clear that their marriage was, overall, a happy one.

The relationship between Lesley (Lara Stubbs) and her boyfriend Harold (Nicholas Corre) was more modern in terms of gender roles, but unfortunately that was in a large part due to the fact that Harold was simply a pushover and willing to do anything in order to be liked. Harold was my favourite character; yes, he was a pushover but he was genuinely helpful, optimistic and perpetually good-natured. He also had a song and a dance of his own that he performed while doing the cleaning up. It was clear that Lesley and Harold's relationship was on the rocks and it was interesting to see how/whether their relationship situation would be resolved by the end (it wasn't). Lesley's caring and protective attitude towards her brother was sweet.

One of my favourite scenes was the bar mitzvah scene where Eliot's granddad and Victor had to recite their different parts in Hebrew. The granddad (Hayward B Morse), a very amusing character, was overcome with emotion, while Rita was less than impressed with Victor's reciting, loudly muttering 'appalling'.

It was good to see a musical I was unfamiliar with - I don't think I'd heard any of the songs before. I would've liked a bit more overt klezmer, maybe, but there were klezmer elements incorporated into the music.

This musical has been criticised for not having enough of a storyline, but I really enjoyed it. It was a true 'feel-good' show and I left feeling happy and musically sated. I also learned that 'bar mitzvah' can be used as a verb, not just a noun (well, it was in this show, anyway).

photo credit: Mikraot Gedolot with yiddish commentary - Lekh lekhah - here: Pirush LeTorah Elokim #yiddish #chumash #torah #commentary #perush #bereshit via photopin (license)

Next: Pericles