James McAvoy is magnetic in caustic class comedy

DIGITAL SPY
By Kate GoodacreWednesday,
Jan 28 2015, 7:01pm EST

Serena Evans as Lady Claire, James McAvoy as Jack and Kathryn Drysdale as Grace

Originally penned in an era between the Profumo and Jellicoe political scandals, Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class is a caustic, uncompromising and deeply underrated character study. Anyone who may have feared that its notions of rigid hierarchy, polite expectation, jumped-up patriotism and reactionary politics would be outdated in the 21st century need not worry.

Trafalgar Transformed's artistic director Jamie Lloyd has reunited with James McAvoy for The Ruling Class following their successful reinterpretation of Macbeth at Trafalgar Studios in early 2013, and McAvoy's troubled Jack - who becomes the 14th Earl of Gurney after his father dies in an unusual accident - is a supremely skilled orator.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, the 14th Earl believes he is another kind of Lord entirely, returning to the family seat after seven years away proclaiming himself to be the resurrection and the life. Jack argues his case with the skill and duplicity - deliberate or otherwise - of a politician on the Radio 4 Today program, most notably when he's trying to convince his family that his fictional wife actually exists in a bid to avoid being married off.

McAvoy clearly relishes the opportunity to work with a surreal script packed with puns, innuendo and intricate wordplay, and his silver-tongued delivery and performance oozes with the kind of easy charm that these days wins votes and election to the seat of power. He breaks the fourth wall at regular intervals with a glint in his eye, at one point quipping: "What a lovely crowd. God bless you."

Mental illness doesn't care for class or background or breeding, and for all of the mania so skilfully and physically portrayed by McAvoy, it's the quieter moments that leave the greatest impact.

When Jack laments that his greatest regret is his "many wasted years", it's sentiment that may well resonate with many who have experienced the black dog's indiscriminate grip first-hand. The 14th Earl's quiet crisis at the end of the first act as all his safety mechanisms collapse around him, his responsibilities as a husband and father really hit home, and the brutal, real world around him reveals itself, is utterly chilling. You can't help but feel for him in that moment.

Elsewhere Joshua McGuire - recently seen as John Ruskin in Mike Leigh's Mr Turner - is note-perfect as simpering, snivelling, self-serving Conservative politician Dinsdale, Jack's cousin, while Anthony O'Donnell (as communist Gurney family butler Daniel Tucker) and Elliot Levey (Jack's psychiatrist Dr Herder) also turn in magnificent performances.


Read more: http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity/review/a624851/the-ruling-class-review-james-mcavoy-is-magnetic-in-caustic-class-comedy.html#~p2NjOlEBkshhBH#ixzz3QFSgP7fd 
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London Theater Review: ‘Coriolanus’ Starring Tom Hiddleston

VARIETY
David Benedict
@eggsbened



Making enthralling theater out of one of Shakespeare’s best-known titles is one thing. It’s an achievement of an altogether higher order to take the austerely forbidding “Coriolanus” — an argumentative tragedy discussing the demands of politics and the power of the people — and turn it into a theatrical triumph. But that’s exactly what Donmar Warehouse a.d. Josie Rourke has done. Thanks to an ideally dovetailed ensemble led by a scorching Tom Hiddleston, tension builds, fills the theater and never flags throughout an all-consuming evening.

The 250-seat Donmar is an intriguingly confined space in which to stage a play springing from the idea of a man in opposition to the crowd. Having almost single-handedly won the war against the enemy Volscians, victorious Coriolanus (Hiddleston) returns to Rome where he is to become Consul. To do so he must accede to the crowd’s demands to show his wounds and, as he sees it, beg for their approbation — an idea he finds abhorrent. Whipped up by manipulative senators, the people grow increasingly enraged until Coriolanus’s arrogance overcomes him. Banished from Rome and his family, he fatally joins the opposition headed by rival General Tullus Aufidius (Hadley Fraser).

 On the stage, bare but for a stark single row of twelve chairs and a towering ladder casting a deep metaphorical shadow, Coriolanus’s young son Martius (Joe Wills at the performance reviewed) patiently outlines a diamond-shaped acting area on the floor in blood-red paint. A sign of things to come, it’s also an immediate indication of the production’s tight focus which, from the very opening scene, yields dividends. Rourke’s cast is successfully lean with just the four named citizens skillfully deployed about Lucy Osborne’s set to conjure crowd scenes. The pitch of the crowd’s hunger-fuelled anger — and the mounting hostilities between them and proud Coriolanus — leads most productions towards shouting. But rather than the generalized rage and loss of control that shouting creates, Rourke maintains tension by keeping a lid on everything. As a result, characters’ reasonings are unusually clear and the all-important urgency and dramatic momentum is sustained.

That’s epitomized by Hiddleston’s performance. Out goes roaring military might, the thunderous soldier, and in comes the diamond-bright gleam of attack-ready energy. Yet from the few tiny glimpses of the power he’s keeping damped down, the threat of what Coriolanus will unleash remains ever-present, adding immeasurably to his all-important status. Not blowing his stack too early makes him appear far more dangerous and exciting to watch.

Furthermore, Hiddleston fascinatingly makes Coriolanus a man who chooses not to listen rather than someone shouting too loud to hear. With his thought processes so legible, his arrogance becomes less of a foregone conclusion and, therefore, properly tragic.

The control of stagecraft is everywhere apparent, not least in the added, silent scene in which Coriolanus, released from public display and privately exhausted from battle, stands alone. Caught center-stage in Mark Henderson’s ferocious white light, water from high above the set surges down onto Hiddleston’s bloody body, spraying into the dark like sparks off steel. A magnificent image in its own right, it’s actually making audiences see and feel the character’s brutally defiant self-determination.

READ MORE HERE:http://variety.com/2013/legit/reviews/london-theater-review-coriolanus-starring-tom-hiddleston-1200969320/

Matthew Macfadyen: Review: Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, Theatre Royal Brighton, until Saturday October 26

SUSSEX EXPRESS
October 24, 2013

I was interested to see how a theatre adaption of Jeeves and Wooster would be updated for modern times.

Would it appear a bit dated perhaps? Would the jokes still be funny? And would there be enough laughs?

I need not have worried because this adaptation starring Stephen Mangan (Green Wing) and Matthew Macfadyen (Spooks) was an absolute riot from start to finish.

Humour has been injected into this play at every possible opportunity.

The performances from Mangan (Wooster), Matthew Macfadyen (Jeeves) and Mark Hadfield (Seppings) are side splittingly funny and the trio boast brilliant comic timing.

While Mangan plays just one character, Matthew Macfadyen and Hadfield play a multitude of different characters, including women.

And Hadfield plays a seven foot man, which involves standing on a chair in a very long coat.

Plus Matthew Macfadyen plays both a man and a woman at the same time, thanks to some inventive costumes, where he is split down the middle - one half man other half woman.

The stage too is used to create yet more humour. The clever Jeeves uses a bicycle to power a revolving stage and change the scenery. He has made furniture on wheels to move about.

This was the most imaginative use of scenery I have ever seen in the theatre - not only was it creative but it set up lots of the jokes in the play too.

The relationship dynamic between Jeeves and Wooster is of course filled with comedy.

Matthew Macfadyen is cool and collected as Jeeves, while Mangan plays Wooster like an over excited young chap who takes child like delight in the world.

And watch out for the lightning speed costume changes and some improvisation along the way.

Oh and they finish with a 20s flapper style dance which is so much fun.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/review-jeeves-and-wooster-in-perfect-nonsense-theatre-royal-brighton-until-saturday-october-26-1-5621695

Judi Dench: Peter and Alice, Noel Coward Theatre, review (TELEGRAPH)

Peter and Alice, starring Skyfall's Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, is a moving theatrical chamber piece which couldn't be further removed from the Bond blockbuster, says Charles Spencer.

By Charles Spencer7:00AM GMT 26 Mar 2013

If you had to imagine a work that was the complete antithesis of the brilliant Bond blockbuster, Skyfall, it might resemble Peter and Alice, a moving, 90-minute theatrical chamber piece about childhood, growing up and the pressure of literary immortality.

Yet it has been written by John Logan, one of the scriptwriters on Skyfall, and stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw who play M and Q in 007’s latest adventure.

They both give beautiful, heart-catching performances in this haunting play that sounds profound notes of loss and grief.

The piece was inspired by a small footnote in literary history. In 1932, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, who was the model for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, met Peter Llewellyn Davies, one of five brothers into whose lives JM Barrie insinuated himself, and who inspired Peter Pan. Barrie wrote that he created the young boy who never grew up “by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame” but it was Peter who bore the name of the character that was to haunt and trouble him throughout his unhappy life.

The play shows Peter and Alice meeting in the dusty backroom of a bookshop where Alice is to open an exhibition celebrating Carroll’s centenary. Peter is there because he is a publisher and hopes to get a book out of her. At first Alice, now 80, is haughty. “You’re presumptuous,” she tells Peter, and no actress is more capable of suggesting withering disdain in just two words than Dame Judi. But Peter perseveres and they talk about the way their lives have been marked and to different extents marred by the writers and the books that trapped them in immortal youth.

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9952907/Peter-and-Alice-Noel-Coward-Theatre-review.html