Judgement Day, Print Room

Judgement Day is a new version of Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken”, adapted very comprehensively by Mike Poulton and staged, for the first time at The Print Room. Ibsen is not my favourite playwright, and I often find myself expecting the worst - lengthy and wordy, his plays can be quite overwhelmingly full on. Judgement Day runs at only eighty minutes and, without an interval, is a dramatic and consuming piece for the audience.

Ibsen’s play gives a creepy insight into the life and preoccupations of a tortured artist, Arnold Rubek. After creating his ultimate, highly regarded work, the master sculpture ‘Judgement Day,’ Rubek has become deeply unsatisfied and consequently angry. He resents his young optimistic wife and searches desperately for inspiration. Holidaying away in a spa hotel, his past love and muse Irena appears, mysteriously dressed in white and accompanied by a nun. She reignites his passion and he hopes for the future of his art now he has again found his inspiration, however Irena seems unable to give him what he so urgently desires. This is a poignantly autobiographical piece, and like Rubek, Ibsen is critically examining and scrutinising his artistic output.

The production is engrossing and powerful, though at times a little too melodramatic, with little thematic journey. Michael Pennington is compelling and impressive as the frustrated artist. He manages to portray a weary man with a crazed fire in his eyes, and his devotion and energy onstage is commendable. Penny Downie plays the impossibly possessive Irena, Downie commits to the role but seems a little daft at times, wafting around the stage wide eyed. I loved watching Sara Vickers as the young trapped wife of Rubek, she is suitably feisty and works beautifully with Pennington.

Despite the attractive adaptation and some intuitive directing from James Dacre, no one can deny that this play is bizarre and perhaps a little self indulgent. As ever, the Print Room is brave with its programming choices and luckily here the acting is superior enough to pull it off.

Judgement Day continues until 17 December, book here.

Victoria Station/ One for the Road, Print Room

Pinter is never easy to produce or perform, but the Print Room proves its worth with an affecting evening of two of the playwright's shortest pieces. One for the Road and Victoria Station have not been performed together since 1984, and though some may doubt the pairing, I thought it worked remarkably well. They are poignantly split by only a few seconds blackout.

This dark double bill will shock but is also surprisingly funny. Both plays focus around disturbing power struggles. For Victoria Road this is between Driver 274 and the increasingly frustrated cabbie controller who is unable to persuade his colleague to cooperate on a job. In One for the Road the actors are reversed and we see a more vindictive and scary partnership between victim and controller, a tale of torture. Rather more concentrated and uncomfortable than the first play.

The Print Room space has a sensible adaptability about it, which enables the theatre to produce highly diverse and ambitious productions every time. For these plays the room is cleanly set out in a minimalist fashion, a few necessary props become crucial to the action, and the empty space between allows the tension to hang in the air.

Keith Dunphy and Kevin Doyle are utterly mesmerising as the alternating duo. Both actors are able to switch, in an instant, to an entirely different character and frame of mind. Doyle, transforms from terrified and bewildered cab driver to sinister interrogator, questioning and terrorising Nicolas (Dunphy) and his family. While Dunphy goes from a commanding controller to a nervous bullied and beaten wreck in the second play. Anna Hewson adds another dimension with her painful rendition of the suffering wife, and Thomas Capodici is very convincing as the young son.

Press night was a roaring success, a completely full theatre (I was sandwiched between two other young reviewers) and a very positive and lively drinks party afterwards. Thanks to Jeff James’ insightful direction and a small cast of clever and committed actors, this double bill is fresh and exciting and brings a new perspective to two of Pinter’s rarely performed plays.

One for the Road and Victoria station will be at the Print Room until 1 October, and at the Young Vic from 6-15 October, book here.

Devil's Festival at The Print Room

After a successful first year The Print Room present to you The Devil's Festival, an eclectic mix of dance, music, theatre and art projects. This two week summer bonanza brings together all aspects of the creative world in some exciting contemporary pieces, celebrating the inspiring new work of talented young artists, choreographers, and performers. I went along to the final invited dress rehearsal to check it out before anyone else.

It was pouring with rain, and visitors to the Print Room were huddled in their tiny foyer pleased to be somewhere dry. First up in the rehearsal was the dance piece, 'Kanaval' choreographed by Hubert Essakow. The routine is inspired by the photographs of Leah Gordon and the film The Devine Horsemen, some of which are on display elsewhere in The Print Room vicinity. It is performed by Benny Maslov, Benjamin Ord, Hannah Rudd and Fukiko Takase and is the longest of the four featured festival pieces. There is something instantly aggressive about the movement and gestures we are watching, the dancers are almost animalistic. It is striking and in some places quite harrowing to watch such force, but I found it moving and gripping, and was hugely impressed with the dancers' unfaltering stamina.

The next two plays were'Swan Song' by Anton Chekhov and 'Fewer Emergencies' by Martin Crimp. The Chekhov piece is only 18 minutes long, and the playwright claimed to have written it in just one hour and five minutes. The play shows a brief encounter with aging actor, Svetlovidov and is pretty much a monologue, an afterthought of his life in the theatre and his love of the stage. Malcolm Rennie gives a stunning performance as Svetlovidov, nuanced and believable and carefully thought through. Despite its brief length it felt like we were being given a real insight into this characters life.

The second dramatic piece is a short play from trendy and fiercely modern playwright Martin Crimp. Don't expect to understand it, I couldn't, we listen to bursts of conversation excerpts that are entirely abstract and bizarre. The acting here is impressive too, with particularly convincing performances from the two girls Emma Dallow and Nicola Harrison.

Finally we are treated to Petra Jean Philipson's incredible sound and light installation. While we wait in the foyer a huge white tent is put up in the theatre, filled entirely with white fluffy pillows. We are invited inside, but not until we have slipped into more appropriate outfits: all in one white paper boiler suits complete with hoods and booties! After everyone stopped giggling and got over the novelty of the idea it was quiet and contemplative in the tent. ‘Of the things we do not see’ is an experience that is supposed to heal your body using creative stimuli. Amazing Mongolian singing and music sooths you gently and the vibrations melt peacefully into your body. It is an amazing concept and the 20 minutes of meditation were not enough for me, I soon fell asleep and would have been quite happy to spend the night in this wonderfully calm structure.

The Festival is on now, for two weeks until Saturday 2 July. Only on Saturdays will all four pieces be available to see, on weekday nights the shows will alternate, each pair showing every other night, book here.

Kingdom of Earth at The Print Room

I was not around in the 1960s to know what it was like, but ‘Kingdom of Earth’, a primal and strikingly bleak 1968 play by Tennessee Williams, feels to me as if it is set much earlier. The Print Room are staging this forgotten play for Williams’ centenary year.

We are first confronted with a statuesque mount of clay, so big it covers a substantial area of the room, and casts an imposing shadow over the audience, a constant reminder of the characters' impending doom. This play has only three players, just as the previous production at the Print Room did. Young and wildly energetic on stage, there is an enthusiasm in this cast that transfixed me in my exhausted post-work state. All three are impressively assured; I detected no faltering despite the intimidatingly intimate layout of the stage and the obvious daunting nature of ‘press night’.

Lot, a scrawny dying transvestite returns to his family home in the Mississippi Delta with his new TV wife, eccentric Myrtle. Here his animalistic half-brother, Chicken has been left to tend to the property, but is given no payment or recognition for his work, although he does have signed proof that when Lot dies the house will be his. A great flood is coming, threatening their lives. As Lot deteriorates he hopes to steal back the farm for his wife, while also desperate to pay tribute to his mother’s memory.

Of the three actors, I was most amazed by Joseph Drake, who I annoyingly recently missed playing the title role in ‘Vernon God Little’ at the Young Vic. Dressed in a vintage white suit and clinging pathetically to his ivory cigarette holder, he perches languidly on his mummy’s gold chairs, and gives a performance that is strange but brilliantly executed and oddly believable. His TB stricken rendition is painfully realistic and as he groaned and writhed about the floor tangled in a white dress I couldn’t help but shudder and turn away. Brother Chicken is performed as the exact opposite, a brute of a man, coated in a layer of mud. David Sturzaker seems to take it in his stride and roams about, menacing and yet strangely enticing. Showgirl Myrtle is taken on by fabulously confident Fiona Glascott, who has a difficult role playing the chatty blonde between the brothers. She could give a masterclass in southern accents, hers is so convincing, even managing to keep it up when speaking at great speed. She loses not a moment's concentration, and shows a real understanding of the role particularly towards the end of the production as she learns the truth about her situation.

Director Lucy Bailey triumphs, as she always does with these morbid pieces... I suggested to the Print Room that they attempt a musical next, but the idea was sneered at! This is a theatre that wants to say something new, always challenge themselves and the audience. The set, complete with dripping water from the ceiling and fresh clay, was being watered for the next performance as we left. This imaginative design comes from Ruth Sutcliffe, winner of the 2009 Linbury Prize for Stage Design; she is one to watch.

I sat next to Tom (who owns the Tennessee Williams estate) and he preached to me before the show, “there is so much more to him that just Streetcar, everyone wanted another Streetcar, but Williams at his second best is still better than most.” And with this production I think he might be right.

Kingdom of Earth continues until 28 May, book here.

Les Dennis in 'Drowning on Dry Land' at The Jermyn Street Theatre

Alan Ayckbourn seems to be a fashionable choice for independent theatres at the moment, with the Print Room staging ‘Snake in the Grass’ and now Jermyn Street Theatre presenting ‘Drowning on Dry Land’. There are many Ayckbourn traits and characteristics that the two plays have in common, most obviously the mysterious outdoor settings: SITG is set in an old tennis court, DODL takes place in the protagonist’s garden. I felt frightened and unnerved by the Print Room’s production, and though there are still eerie undertones in ‘Drowning on Dry Land,’ it is predominantly a harmless comedy.

This is Ayckbourn’s 66th play, written in 2004 about the idiocy of celebrity culture. B-list star Charlie Conrad has caught the public’s attention by continually failing, and over seven years has transformed himself from approachable likeable guy to aloof megastar, with no time even to attend his six year old son’s birthday party. Fame seems to bring him little joy and slowly everything worth having slips away from him.

The attraction for many going to see ‘Drowning on Dry land’ will be the appearance of Les Dennis who takes on the role of Charlie’s kind, smooth-talking agent Jason Ratcliffe. Much to my surprise he steps up to the challenge and comes across convincing and at times quite hilarious. Christopher Coghill has a tricky job playing the ignorant celebrity, and he mostly succeeds though is occasionally a bit lacklustre. Emma Swain seems nervous as the princess wife, Linzi Conrad. Helen Mortimer is awkward as Marsha Bates the young woman entertainer, who turns into freakish clown, Mr Chortles. Her alter-ego clown becomes the focus of the play.

The real laughs come in the second half from Mark Farrelly and Russell Bentley as the two snappy lawyers Hugo de Prescourt and Simeon Diggs. Farrelly has a charming eloquence that immediately adds heat to the on stage debate, and catches the audience’s attention in a way not achieved previously. Bentley is an instinctive comedian who thrives with Ayckbourn’s humour, when he entered I found I was leaning forward in my seat to enjoy the hysterical banter.

Apart from the unpleasant heat this boutique theatre is truly unique in its layout and well worth a visit. You immediately feel involved - a quality perfect for Ayckbourn drama. Be warned though – toilets are on stage, so be sure to go before the lights go down.

Drowning on Dry Land continues until 19 March, book here.

Snake in the Grass at The Print Room

The Print Room continues on its quest to present obscure, controversial and exciting theatre to audiences in the capital with their production of Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Snake in the Grass’. At their dinky little premises in Notting Hill the company hopes to shed light on this dark forgotten gem. If their version of ‘Fabrication’ didn’t prove their worth then this run of ‘Snake in the Grass’ certainly will.

Alan Ayckbourn is a much celebrated playwright, though this work is little known, and rarely performed - indeed it is the London premiere. The play introduces us to two sisters, Annabel and Miriam who have recently lost their father. It soon transpires that Miriam was in fact responsible for his sudden death, and consequently spends the duration trying to escape prison while being blackmailed by her father’s former nurse, Alice Moody. Her big sister, Annie is preoccupied with fears of her own and is reluctantly dragged into the mess, weighed down with guilt for leaving her family so many years earlier. This macabre ghost story takes many terrible twists, resulting in an unexpected and chilling conclusion.

The play is thrilling, and for those less hardy, quite terrifying. The theatre space has little air and is quite claustrophobic; the seating arrangement allows the performers to be very close to the audience - it is an intimate affair.

The all-female cast of three are brave, brassy and beastly, each of them vile in their own way. I was most impressed by Sarah Woodward as the delusional and calculating Miriam, she is scarily convincing and seems fully absorbed in the character throughout, never losing concentration. I realised, after reading the programme, that many years back I acted alongside her in Stephen Fry’s ‘Bright Young Things’, a surprising if quite cool coincidence. Susan Wooldridge acts as the lonely older sister Annabel, she genuinely seems battered and worn out, bitter and resigned to her failures. Wooldridge acts with real bite, though occasionally stumbled over her lines. The bullying nurse Alice is played by Mossie Smith. Looking at her sweet photo in the programme it is hard to believe she is the horrible girl who stomps onto the stage. In her tacky attire, she spits and grimaces and comes across as a truly awful human being, I soon detested her. Brilliant direction comes from the talented Lucy Bailey. She obviously had a very clear vision for this production, and luckily with such an experienced cast it is well realised, her passion for the job is evident just from watching her actresses perform. Eerie lighting and music made the play even more affecting.

The Print Room have William Dudley to thank for the phenomenal set. Dudley, who has picked up seven Olivier awards for his designs, transforms the plain space into a decrepit old tennis court complete with attendant detritus: it is hauntingly atmospheric and mysterious. The floor is covered in real green moss, the walls are made of wire fencing, and scrub and bushes crowd the entrances and exits. The remains of a tennis court are clear to see in every little detail.

The Print Room is evidence that theatre does not have to have money thrown at it to thrive and produce dynamic drama. I look forward to its next offering - perhaps something a little more cheery?

Snake in the Grass continues until 5 March, book here.

Fabrication at The Print Room

London’s newest and quirkiest theatre The Print Room launches its first season with the UK premiere of ‘Fabrication’ (‘Affabulazione’) by Italian film maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, translated by award winning poet Jamie McKendrick.

This play has been turned down by theatres before, most likely because of the shocking extreme nature of the material. It is a powerful piece that explores the relationship between a father and son, focusing also on a reverse of the Oedipus myth and the thoughts of philosopher Sophocles, that at times completely possess and poison the father’s mind. He is tormented by finding an answer and desperately tries to negotiate reason with his gradually deteriorating mind.

I found I was disturbed at times by the play, but this emotion was quickly overtaken by my amazement at the superb acting and the realisation of this tricky subject matter and script. Fabrication is a vehicle for a male actor to showcase everything he has got, and Jasper Britton steps up to the task as the father. He is both physically and emotionally very energetic, acting the self-destructive man with intelligent insight. I also very much enjoyed Max Bennett’s acting as the abused son, his concentration makes the role totally believable from start to finish.

Lucy Bailey’s staging is physically noticeable from the moment you sit down in this small theatre space. I have seen The Print Room as an exhibition room and could barely believe the transformation it had undergone. Immediately you feel claustrophobic and lost. A central black box gradually separates to reveal the almost bare ‘stage’, covered in grit and glistening with raw heat from the surrounding burnt umber walls. It is imaginative and unique, I have never seen anything quite like it. The passage that the audience looks through is narrow and I found it really focused my attention. It echoes with the all-important moment in the play when the father observes his son through a keyhole. There is a theme of obsessive voyeurism and this is definitely felt by the audience too, thanks to the innovative staging.

While others might sneer at this daring debut, I think it a brave feat and am impressed by The Print Room’s first steps into the world of London theatre.

Fabrication continues at The Print Room until 4 December, book on 08444 77 1000, or book here.

THE PRINT ROOM - The Imaginary Painters Workshop

The Print Room, a new venue hidden away in Notting Hill, specialises in promoting experimental theatre, music, dance and visual art collaborating with some of the most exciting creative talent around. I went along this weekend to see their first exhibition: The Imaginary Painters Workshop.

Within a newly renovated 1950s warehouse, the space is clean and spacious with an enchanting garden outside. I was immediately captured by the character of the building and noticed the versatility of the main performing room. The work on display is by two inventive artists, Sofie Lachaert and Luc D’Hanis. There are a few themes that seem to link the different pieces: the artist’s palette is the most visually obvious. The handwoven ‘Palette Rug’ takes up a large area of the floor and the brightly coloured edible painting (also in the shape of a palette- see image above) is very appealing in another corner of the room. The other work is intriguing and pretty to look at, although the reasoning behind the pieces is sometimes impenetrable.

I cannot wait to see some drama in this space, although the visual art works well here I feel this is a venue that will thrive on the power of live theatre. Definitely one to watch, check out the website to find out about exciting upcoming projects.

www.the-print-room.org