Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Streaming Diary: Notable recent West End dramas, viewed from home (DEATH OF ENGLAND: DELROY, THREE KINGS, and EMILIA)

• By drediman
• December 5, 2020
• No Comments

This past week, I was able to stream some of the more notable recent stage dramas from across the pond (in addition to the West End transfer of An American in Paris at the Dominion, a big revival of 42nd Street at the Drury Lane, and the starry staged concert of Les Misérables – all large-scale musical productions that I won’t cover here) from the comfort of my home. Here are my thoughts on these timely and thought-provoking new works.

DEATH OF ENGLAND: DELROY
National Theatre

One of the few shows in London to brave an in-person mounting during the pandemic is the National Theatre’s production of Death of England: Delroy (RECOMMENDED) by Clint Dyer (who also directs) and Roy Williams. Unfortunately, England’s second lockdown shuttered the show only a few weeks into its run (performances are scheduled to resume on the 11th of December). Luckily, it was captured on film and recently made available for free streaming for a 24-hour window. The powerful new solo show features a dynamic, highly physical performance by Michael Balogun, who plays a working class man (the titular Delroy) struggling to come to terms with his relationship with Great Britain as a Black citizen. Like the central Muslim-American character at the heart of Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, Delroy is someone who has so fully acclimated himself into society that he has lost touch with the unaddressed rage simmering just behind his amiable, well-adjusted facade. When a run-in with the authorities triggers open the floodgates, what emerges is a forceful indictment of the racist systems that appear to be holding people of color back (particularly the Black community). Although Mr. Dyer and Williams’ confrontational play lacks somewhat in subtlety, Mr. Balogun’s impassioned, full-throttle delivery gets their message across loud and clear. Boldly re-imagined for the pandemic, the Olivier Theatre has been reconfigured into an in-the-round playing space, further drawing audiences into Delroy’s fractured psyche. Despite being a solo show, Mr. Dyer’s staging is thrillingly theatrical, maintaining an exhilarating, aggressive pace throughout.

THREE KINGS
Old Vic

One of the most highly regarded theater streaming occurrences during the pandemic so far have been the Old Vic’s first crop of “In Camera” productions, which somehow I missed during their brief original runs. Luckily, the revered company is revisiting these virtual productions, giving audiences who missed them the first time around (like myself) the opportunity to experience them. The first of these “playbacks” was Stephen Beresford’s new play Three Kings (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), another one-man show written specifically for Irish actor Andrew Scott. With a running time of only an hour, Mr. Beresford’s stealthily-structured play is a haunting meditation on father-son relationships and the toxicity they can breed. Nimbly jumping across time and space (e.g., Ireland, numerous locales in mainland Europe), Three Kings paints a contradictory portrait of a man who is at once damaged, despairing, yet somehow unrepentant. Recent years have seen the ascent of Mr. Scott’s stardom. On television, he’s been featured as Jim Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock series, as well as the Hot Priest in the second season of Fleabag. He also won this year’s Olivier Award for his leading performance (which I’m sad to have missed) in the recent West End revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, also at the Old Vic. As in his turn in the exquisite 2012 film version of Simon Stephens’ quietly harrowing monologue Sea Wall, Mr. Scott here brings a seductive existential gravitas to his performance – enhanced by Matthew Warchus’s penetrating, deceptively simple stage and camera direction – that got under my skin (those eyes!). It’s the kind of work that is cementing his status as one of the most magnetic actors working in the theater today.

EMILIA
Shakespeare’s Globe at the Vaudeville Theatre

One of the productions I unfortunately missed during my last theater trip to London was Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s new play Emilia (RECOMMENDED), which was a big winner at the 2020 Olivier Awards (most notably snagging the award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play). Happily, the show’s producers have made available, for pay-what-you-can consumption during the pandemic, the archival film of the Shakespeare’s Globe production, which was captured of during its West End transfer at the Vaudeville Theatre. Ms. Malcom’s work chronicles the life and times of Emilia Bassano, a 17th century feminist and writer, who seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of the male-dominated presentation of history in our history books. Until now, that is. Emilia continues in theater’s recent trend in reclaiming and recasting history, as evidenced by such hit shows as Hamilton and Six. Written, directed, designed, and performed by an all-woman team, Emilia emphatically inverts persisting norms in theater (from Shakespeare’s time through to the present). As if to maximize the endeavor’s sense of girl-power empowerment, the title character is played by not one, but three actresses; Clare Perkins, Saffron Coomber, and Adelle Leonce fiercely portray Emilia at three stages of her extraordinary life. Like Death of England: Delroy, Emilia is full of confrontational fury and coiled anger. By choosing to address its feminist agenda headlong, the show hits a one-note cadence from the moment the curtain rises to curtain call. Nevertheless, director Nicole Charles’s rousing production is filled to the brim with boisterous life, ensuring that the experience is as entertaining as it is illuminating.