The Mousetrap – a triumph of whodunnit legend over drama (Grand Opera House until Saturday 2 March)

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is like a historic rodent that has been trapped in amber. It’s an artefact that people come from far and wide to study. A blast from the past that has escaped the confines of the West End and is travelling around the UK and Ireland on its 70th anniversary tour. But being old and successful doesn’t automatically make something good. The play’s attraction is clearly its longevity.

Back on the 27 November 1952, the Guardian’s critic – back then, the Manchester Guardian – wrote a scathing review that dissected the play like a pathologist looking for answers at a post mortem. “… as the snow piles up around the isolated guesthouse in The Mousetrap at the Ambassadors Theatre, the false clues drift across the stage, deluding the less alert in the audience and appearing to deceive characters in the play who ought to know better. Agatha Christie's comedy-thriller, like a more expensive production which Miss Tallulah Bankhead once commented on, has ‘less in it than meets the eye’. Coincidence is stretched unreasonably to assemble in one place a group of characters, each of whom may reasonably be suspected of murder in series … Yet the whole thing whizzes along as though driven by some real dramatic force, as though the characters were not built entirely of cliches and situations not all familiar.”

It’s hard to disagree with the unnamed reviewer. As new proprietors of Monkswell Manor Guest House, Mollie and Giles Ralston (Neerja Naik and Barnaby Jago) are still getting to grips with the heating system and how best to handle their guests. Christopher Wren (Shaun McCourt) leaps around the stage and throws himself on the sofa like Frank Spencer after three cans of Red Bull. If Wren was any more cliched, his costume would include a badge spelling it out. Mrs Boyle (Gwyneth Strong) is an irascible killjoy who could turn a bottle of milk sour even if it was sitting outside in a snow drift.

Major Metcalf (played by Todd Carty who escaped Eastenders 21 years ago when Mark Fowler rode off on his motorbike) leaves no door handle unturned as he explores the country house like a military man on a mission. Mousy Miss Casewell (Amy Spinks) has booked in for a spot of mysterious letter writing. Mr Paravicini (Steven Elliott) and his strong Italian accent drops in unexpectedly hoping to find a bed for the night when his Rolls Royce hits a snowdrift. And before too long, the oppressively shouty Detective Sergeant Trotter (Michael Ayiotis) is shaking the snow off his skis as he arrives to investigate a murder with his notebook, pencil and an ability to join dots that no one else would think to connect.

With one cast member found dead at the end of the first act, after the interval everyone’s alibi is undermined, and the woodworm-infected backstories are supposed to cast doubt in every direction … bar the one you’ll already be looking. Flukes and coincidences mount up like the drifting snow outside the guest house. Directors Ian Talbot and Denise Silvey allow the play’s tone to skid between the verges as banter and giggles totally ignore the dead body now lying out of sight. The cast wholeheartedly inhabit the ill-assorted characters who create the so-called melodrama. But the gruel is thin and lacks substance … and is much less witty than the recent film See How They Run which was based in the world of the long-running London production of the play.

In my days of working in London, I walked past St Martin’s Theatre countless times on the way to dinner with a colleague in the nearby Café Rouge. It’s good to have finally seen the play, even if it proved to be an anticlimax. This time two years ago, another troubled whodunnit graced the stage of the Grand Opera House. Catch Me If You was a star vehicle for Patrick Duffy (better known for playing Bobby Ewing on TV), but like 2:22 A Ghost Story, pulling off surprises in a theatre can be challenging. It all adds to the bulging evidence file that proves beyond reasonable doubt that constructing an entertaining one room mystery for the stage is a stretch even for an expert in the field like Agatha Christie.

The Mousetrap continues its run in the Grand Opera until Saturday 2 March. 

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

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Granny Jackson’s Dead – join the mourners at this sad time of loss (Big Telly Theatre Company as part of NI Science Festival) #NISF24

“Sorry for your loss” accompanied by a firm handshake seemed like the most appropriate thing to say as I stepped out of the mizzle and walked inside a house on the Malone Road to meet a line-up of grieving relatives.

Granny Jackson may be dead, but she’s living on in the hearts of her family, the folks who live next door, and the many audience members mourners who are turning up at her wake during NI Science Festival. It’s a Big Telly Theatre Company production, so expect to be whisked between bedrooms and the kitchen, given a plate of ham sandwiches to deliver elsewhere in the house. Expect to be gently involved – perhaps even emotionally – and then expect the unexpected as the cast move from their individual stations to construct the dramatic denouement.

The deceased’s daughter Susan (Shelly Atkinson) is agitated now that she’s been shaken out of the distance she clearly maintained from Granny Jackson. Grandson Darren (Gavin Pedan) and his business partner Chad (Aidan Crowe/Michael Curran Dorsano) have set up a digital memorialisation company and Granny Jackson was the first person whose memories have been captured for posterity. But that’s not to everyone’s taste in the family circle.

Ronnie (Emily Tracey) is taking a more spiritual approach to wishing farewell to the old dear. Maureen (Rosie McClelland) from next door is sitting quietly beside the coffin in the good room, remembering better times with the lively 83-year-old. Meanwhile Joe (Ciaran Nolan) sees the mourners as potential housebuyers for a property that he is trying to sell with undue haste.

Granny Jackson’s Dead asks its audiences to consider how and why and what we remember about people we cared for. Do we want to be able to forget aspects of their lives and character? Do we want to hear their voice again? Do we realise that modern technology could put words into the mouth of someone who is deceased? Are the dead being monetised? The concept of digital memorialisation isn’t laboured – though there are a rich set of technology demonstrations and artefacts woven into the storytelling. (Do check out the creepy jars in the downstairs en suite.)

The cast are constantly adapting, injecting storylines into the narrative while ad libbing around the fertile imaginations of each new group of mourners. An interdisciplinary team from the National Centre for Social Research and Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Theatre and School of Digital Art have been involved in the development of the production. They correctly credit Big Telly director Zoë Seaton as “a hijacker of the familiar”. A good 45 minutes after the wake ended, a majority of those in attendance were still sitting in The Harrison’s front bar next door discussing what had just happened.

At the best of times, death and control of the rituals that follow can be sources of tension, as relatives wrestle for control over the choreography and the narrative. Secrets are spilled rather than shared. Big Telly accentuate those divisive moments and neatly needle Susan from being a digital sceptic to someone who suddenly appreciates what (selfish) comfort it could offer. And since it’s a wake, do expect a bit of a singsong.

The show has been so carefully crafted to gently explore our attitudes, tolerances and reaction to death, grief tech, and the ethics of loss. Attending any wake or funeral can involve a bit of acting: there’s often a vocabulary, a tone, a measured way of unexcitedly addressing the communal grief. Waiting in the queue outside the venue, even before we entered the building and met the family, another audience member mourner and I began to discuss our imaginary backstory for the unknown woman at the heart of our evening’s entertainment. The more you enter into the spirit of the event, the more your mind will engage with the themes and challenges it presents. Conscious that I have friends and colleagues who have experienced loss very recently, it’s probably also important to add a reassurance that it’s all done in the best possible taste.

Big Telly’s Granny Jackson’s Dead continues at NI Science Festival until Sunday 25 February, and there are plans for a wider (UK) tour. It’s good to see that so many will get the opportunity to pay their respects to the women who one family member quipped was such “a wild ticket”.

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Madame Web – the one about a man with spidery superpowers who takes violent action because he feels threatened by five smart and principled women (cinemas from 14 February)

Madame Web’s multi-threaded plot is fairly knotted and the act of mentally untangling it distracts from enjoying the film.

A pregnant woman searches for an elusive spider in the Peruvian jungle.

A paramedic (Cassie played by Dakota Johnson) starts to have premonitions after a near-death experience. Her ambulance partner’s name (Adam Scott as Ben Parker) sounds familiar … but wash your mouth and mind out with soap as this is absolutely nothing to do with Spider-Man no siree.

Three young women (Isabela Merced as Anya, Sydney Sweeney as Julia, Celeste O'Connor as Mattie) don’t realise that a strange man (Tahar Rahim as Ezekiel) is tracking them down.

The women all share a connection with the paramedic but that’s totally redundant within the plot.

45 minutes into the film, you’ll be asking whether it’s a story about spiders, a story about changing the future through déjà vu, a story about a man with superpowers who takes violent action because he feels threatened by three (actually at least five) smart and principled women, or whether the lovely scene-stealing stray cat who slurps milk will turn out to be really important.

The four parentless stars of the show are well-drawn and interesting characters. Cassie is reluctantly maternal; Anya is rational (and copies of her t-shirt “I eat MATH for breakfast” are available online!); Maddie is impetuous; Julia is shy and thus wears her name as a necklace in case she doesn’t introduce herself. But the plot weaves a tangled web around their potential to shine.

Ultimately, a lot of unacknowledged innocent people die in a bid to save the lives of three young women. Pepsi turns out to be bad for your health.

Hard to believe that paramedic Ben doesn’t hesitate when asked to swallow Cassie’s tall tale and immediately agrees to look after her young charges. At the end, I must have blinked and missed the moment that Cassie sustained the injuries that transform her sight and mobility before the final scene. It feels like a lot

The cat and the use of The Cranberries’ song Dream over the credits are the film’s best moments. There’s no end-credit scene … probably for the best that no one extends this miserable arachnoid universe or speaks of it again.

Madame Web is playing in local cinemas from Wednesday 14 February. Is it a tense thriller? Is it a Marvel superhero film? Is it a giant pile of spider poo?

 

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American Fiction – a misrepresented author fights back against the system and realises that he’s also misrepresenting himself (QFT and other cinemas)

American Fiction is a well-painted takedown of the tendency to pigeonhole culture and the creatives behind it into simplistic categories without examining the actual art. In this case, middle class, middle of the road academic Dr Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison’s worthy literature is filed under African American Studies rather than its true subject.

Acting out of frustration and spite, he writes a book under a pseudonym that professes to be based on his experience of life as a gangsta who’s on the run from the police and has witnessed serious trouble in his life in the ghetto. It’s made-up poverty-porn with an unhealthy sprinkling of violence, but it excites publishers, publicists, award judges and mass market readers in a way he could only dream of for his true work.

But success brings its own stress. As the deception grows in scale, Monk is faced with a continuing dilemma of whether to fess up or whether he should run with his unwanted but lucrative success. All the while, drama within his own family adds to the pressure.

Jeffrey Wright shows versatility as Monk’s mood and body swings between depression, futility, hope and occasionally happiness. Screenwriter and debut director Cord Jefferson wisely makes Monk a failed hero. While Monk is angry about the literary world’s injustice, the author is also faced with the reality that he is a flawed son, partner and colleague. Playing his sister Lisa, Tracee Ellis Ross makes a very positive but all too brief contribution to the film’s setup of the Ellison family dynamic with blunt conversations that wake Monk up to his responsibilities.

The film’s finale acknowledges that film producers and audiences expect a neat ending that will resolve any remaining threads of uncertainty. In a neat albeit meta device, several conclusions are offered, but – bravely and deliberately – none that quite scratch the itch that the 117 minutes of cinema has created as we watch Monk’s act of absurd revolt.

The satire at the heart of American Fiction is the cause of great hilarity. It’s also unsettling as you start to wonder whether you’re being played as you sit watching the film. Are you participating in a piece of reductionist art misrepresenting the source work? (I’m off to read Percival Everett’s novel Erasure to understand the translation between the page and the screen.) Who’s making money out of this story of misrepresentation and ill-treatment? All questions that I think the director and original author will be glad to crowd your thoughts with as you watch the film.

American Fiction is playing in Queen’s Film Theatre until 12 March as well as a limited number of other local cinemas.

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Little Women – four sisters break away from the paths the world would prefer them to take (Lyric Theatre until 2 March)

It’s not often that I sit in the theatre and can forget everything else around me and be entranced by the storytelling on stage. It’s much more likely to happen in the cinema. Theatres are much more chatty places, particularly on press night, full of buzz and distraction, long before the curtain goes up.

The Lyric Theatre’s production of Little Women has an incredible intensity right from the off that held my attention with a vice-like grip. The four March sisters are gadding about the house and within minutes we’ve learned that Meg (Ruby Campbell) is the eldest, sensible, very conscious of her good looks (“her face will be her fortune”), a teacher and a wannabe homemaker. Jo (Marty Breen) is a writer at heart, a self-confessed tomboy with a beautiful sense of non-conformity,  and Meg’s wingman when they head out together. Beth (Maura Bird) is forever tinkling the ivories on the family piano, a shy homebird who is essentially honest and good, enjoying an incredible bond with big sister Jo. Amy (Tara Cush) is the youngest and least mature, delightfully mixing up big words, quite unfiltered when expressing opinions, not quite sure how of how to define herself but in the meantime very keen to be seen to please and quite jealous of her sisters.

This version of Little Women is very character driven. Based on the original books by Louisa May Alcott, Anne-Marie Casey’s witty – and sometimes a bit barmy – script creates generously proportioned scenes that allow time to explore the sisters and establish their quirks and motivations, rather than bouncing the audience through lots of quick scene changes in race to the plot’s end. While it adds to the run time – and the pre-show warnings are a little daunting* – it also adds to the enjoyment of the storytelling.

* Just don’t drink in the hour before the show starts and nip to the loo when you arrive and you’ll be fine! It’s no longer than Greta Gerwig’s film which didn’t have an interval.

Little Women is Emily Foran’s main stage debut as director. Her back catalogue of work on smaller productions has always impressed. Ploughing through the script and giving every scene the time it deserved must have been a Herculean task during rehearsals and tech. But the finished product has such a quality feel. Foran’s direction is delicate and detailed, and begs the question why she has only got this opportunity now. The second act scene featuring a family death will be hard to forget in years to come, with the emotion in the moment of loss handled with such sensitivity.

Tracey Lindsay’s two storey set serves the story well, and the layers of scenery which drop down in front to temporarily take the audience to parties and New York are very neat. The backdrop visually supports the change of seasons, along with some delicious dustings of snow and an icy adventure. Altogether, it makes for another great main stage debut. Stuart Robinson’s soundscape is at its strongest in the first act with some lovely flourishes like when it takes over from Beth’s piano playing, but the string pads between some scenes feel laboured rather than setting a clear mood for what’s coming next.

While the whole play revolves around the four sisters, their journeys are supported by five other characters. Allison Harding’s Aunt March is agreeably abrupt, a decisive and a disruptive influence each time she marches on stage. Marmee (Jo Donnelly) is the matriarch who is all stiff upper lip uttering truisms as she cares for her daughters on a meagre budget while her absent husband is off being chaplain for the Union Army in the Civil War. As the run progresses, there’s definitely room for Marmee to develop a few more rounded mannerisms to go alongside the straitjacket of duty that requires her to be deadly serious so much of the time.

Cillian Lenaghan allows next-door neighbour Laurie’s heart to be melted every time he’s in the presence of Jo. Shaun Blaney plays Laurie’s tutor and overcomes obstacles to cement his role as Meg’s love interest. After the interval, Friedrich finally introduces Jo to European culture, and Ash Rizi very quickly establishes his character’s respect for Jo as a peer, and his abject disappointment that she continues to write pulp fiction for money rather than pursuing her true talent. (Go and see American Fiction in the cinema for another take on the value of different types of writing.)

Meg and Amy embrace their femininity: after all, they have been brought up to believe that the game they’re playing means “men have to work, women have to marry for money”. But from the first moment Jo shoves her hands into the very practical pockets in her dress we get a sense of her nonconformity. At every point in the story, she wants to be fully human, not constrained by stereotypes. Without laying it on thick, this production does allow – perhaps encourage – a queer reading of the story, albeit one with a marriage that is maybe borne out of friendship and respect rather than romance. Breen delivers a mesmerising performance, a tender triumph that continues to fill out Jo’s sense of self all the way as the character grows up throughout the play.

This production of Little Women is a good story very well told. It might be set in the 1860s, but I was drawn into the sisters’ world through the quality of their accents, their interactions and the decisions they each make to break away from the paths the world would prefer them to take. It was an absorbing evening of exceptional theatre. 

Little Women continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 2 March. Tickets are scarce – just a couple of single seats available for some performances – but well worth seeing.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Belfast Girls (An Táin Arts Centre and Quintessence Theatre at Lyric Theatre) – fleeing famine, seeking freedom in the face of yet more subjugation

Ireland has a lot of shameful history and another part of it from mid-1800s has been captured in theatrical form by playwright Jaki McCarrick. Belfast Girls is the story of women who boarded the Earl Grey ship in Belfast Harbour to set sail for a new life and better opportunities in Sydney, Australia.

Judith (Donna Anita Nikolaisen), Hannah (Leah Rossiter), Sarah (Carla Foley) and Ellen (Fiona Keenan O’Brien) have barricaded themselves below deck at one end of the sleeping quarters and built a wall of cases to keep the unruly girls from elsewhere on the island out. While they all joined the ship in Belfast, only Ellen is local and the rest come from further afield. For Judith, this is the second voyage of relocation in her short time alive.

They’ve faked their way on board the vessel that was supposedly transporting 200 fair maidens from the Emerald Isle down under to start new lives in the male-dominated country that needed wives and workers. But most of those on board are fleeing a life of being bought and sold by rich pimps, and escaping from starvation brought on by the famine. And they may not be as free as they think. They’re soon joined by a pale and sickly Molly (Siobhan Kelly) who is also hiding her own secret past.

Can they throw off their histories to “become mistresses of their own destiny”? Or are they caught in other people’s plans, as free as wasps caught in a sticky jam jar?

(The British Secretary of State for the Colonies – Earl Grey – ran the Female Orphan Emigration Scheme which sent over 4,000 “morally pure” young women aged 14-18 to Australia on board 20 ships between 1848 and 1850.)

Dramatically there’s a lot to play with. The characters are cooped up below deck, fighting the waves and the weather, other occupants, a scary matron, and each other. Their resilience is tested beyond breaking point. They have time to explore Marx and Engels, forge alliances, develop mistrust, and let a spot of bloodletting spiral out of control.

Director Anna Simpson creates a real feeling of claustrophobia in the wood-panelled set. The cast skilfully veer from harmony to hysteria in seconds. In a well-choreographed scene, the women are convincingly tossed around their living quarters and left feeling queasy. The dialogue is suitable antiquated though the coarse language is very familiar: patterns of swearing seem to have outsurvived many other idioms.

The passage to Australia is long, and that’s also reflected in the play’s run time (well over two hours which caught out an audience member who answered a call from a taxi driver out on Ridgeway Street disturbing a later scene).

Elongated scene changes involve slow-motion dancing and songs that don’t always advance the plot or change the mood. On the whole I found them to be a distraction from the otherwise gripping acting. Despite the unrushed movement on stage, there are some jarring transitions in the soundscaping when tracks aren’t allowed to gently fade from one into the next. A moment of tenderness between Judith and Molly seems to exist in McCarrick’s script simply to advance the plot a few scenes later and deserves further examination.

Belfast Girls is a story of making choices for yourself while others choose on your behalf. Understanding how and why the famine occurred – and was allowed to have the devastating impact it had on the poorer classes – is a recurring theme. Dialogue about powerful landlords applies equally to today. The motivation of churchmen and those with control over women in 1850 is questioned. Modern-day audiences can apply those same questions to more recent times and ask whether much has changed. Much of the play’s exploration of class and womanhood is pertinent in the run up to the Irish constitutional referendums in March 2024.

Having finished its short run at the Lyric Theatre, An Táin Arts Centre and Quintessence Theatre are now touring Belfast Girls through Drogheda (Friday 9-Saturday 10 February) and Navan (Friday 16-Saturday 17). Not to be confused with the other Belfast Girls (which is back in The MAC in May).

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