by Go for acting. To see a powerful actor at the peak of his powers in his 80s, and a younger one starting to rise. Robert Icke, the neon-intellectual, fast-paced director who has made his way Hamlet, Oristeia and 1984after the two separate plays of Henry IV make an epic portrait, Game Kings Player. The evening is driven by Falstaff.
Ian McKellen has spoken eloquently and practically about the difficulties of moving around in huge amounts of padding, and memorizing a role written not in verse but in prose. The lines are so idiosyncratic that Shakespeare must have written them for a particular actor. It could be McKellen.
Not that his performance is predictable. Although he is very funny, he is surprisingly venal: turning his fantasies with bravado like Jeffrey Archer. No loyalty, no sympathy, no pity. You just have to trust that it is bigger than his own little life. And a new version of being bulky. McKellen certainly gets a lot of meat, but he’s also created a sonic series of lard. His voice carries the sounds of age and decay: a wheeze, an occasional slur as if a tooth were missing; gurgle as if he is swilling a mouthful of sack. His words are as crisp as ever, but seem to have been made in a completely redone interior.
Remarkably, the moment when Hal, the newly crowned king, abandons his old grudge – “I don’t know you, old man” – is as devastating as ever. McKellen doesn’t drink the rejection, but makes it a story before it scares, so that the episode becomes a bit refocused: the young king is not only marching towards a purer life but towards a lighter life. It’s a subtle shift, enhanced by Toheeb Jimoh as Hal. He is an absolutely radiant presence, as he was when he played Romeo last year: able to absorb terrible trips (he is too great to stab Samuel Edward-Cook’s roaring Hotspur in the back) and still seems it is true, magnetic. His charisma is as dangerous as Falstaff’s.
Icke has rearranged the plays but not changed them. There are additions – the death of Falstaff was imported from Henry V – and strange omissions: the sad gaggle of conscripts in the Judges scenes have been cut. There are weaknesses: Richard Coyle’s Henry IV is not strong enough to counterbalance McKellen, so the feeling of Hal being pulled between two fathers is missing. It’s a cloudy evening (stronger in the first half than the second half) but brushed with a gentle touch. On Hildegard Bechtler’s constructive design of a brick wall and swift curtains, scenes flow into each other, with characters from one looking into the next, as if time – such a big theme in the plays – is evaporating. He didn’t feel like he was nervous for four hours.
Bleeding episodes from the lives of young black men are lighting up the West End, bringing not only new observations but unexpected intimacy and a fresh stage vocabulary. We have small theaters to thank for this: David Byrne’s New Diorama premiered the dance-infused For Black Boys Who Forgave Suicide When The Color Gets Too Heavy, now at the Rock; Lynette Linton’s theater in Bush presented the award to Tyrell Williams Red Park (2022), dynamically directed by Daniel Bailey, now at @sohoplace.
On a derelict estate in south London, three teenagers, who could be footballers, are about to change. Around them gentrification – or regeneration? – it means demolition and construction. The dry cleaner is boarded; the chicken shop is a Costa; residents are being moved to new apartments. Within them are other uncertainties: the worry of a demanding father or a sick grandfather; GCSE; brushes with girls – one boy wants seven children, “one for every day of the week”. Above all, the urgency of their kick as they await the QPR trials.
Francis Lovehall, Emeka Sesay and Kedar Williams-Stirling act with a 3D performance. They shrugged each other off; flare into confrontation and heat; pass and score with precision, accuracy and fluency. Khalil Madovi’s soundscape surrounds them with the hammer on iron and wood. Ali Hunter’s lighting transforms Amelia Jane Hankin’s stark design – the vital field is surrounded by a red metal fence – into a stadium and a place of shadowy contemplation. In a great stroke football glows like the sun, radiant with possibility.
Underdog: The Other Other Bronte part of another new theater boom: remaking the idea of authors who were once considered to be wearing a bonnet. Isabella McArthur Pride and Prejudice* (*type) squinted by Jane Austen’s heroine from the servant’s point of view; Zoe Cooper has been feeling a strange pressure lately Northanger Abbey.
Sarah Gordon’s new play tackles the Brontë sisters: their lives apart from the works. Thirteen years ago, Northern Broadsides and Blake Morrison put a Chekhovian twist on the parson’s life We are Three Sisters. Gordon’s emphasis is clearer: the times (which required the authors to publish under male names) are restricted at home but the meaning is entirely 21st century: to know and not to be barred.
Charlotte, her legs planted firmly apart in her scarlet dress, tells her sister Anne to stop writing “this shit”. Her biographer Elizabeth Gaskell bustles about as a pantomime dame. Sibling rivalry is in full swing as Charlotte takes advantage of Anne’s novel idea. A wonderful selection of literary figures in mustaches and top hats is very important. Charlotte climbs into a glass case for display.
Natalie Ibu’s intense comic performance gets lively performances from Rhiannon Clements as Anne, known as a mouse but wild with her pen, Adele James as lively Emily, and Gemma Whelan as bossy Charlotte (who also gets a kick out of the 2022 film. Emily). It is a relief to be free from piety and piety. But where in this mechanical modernization is the imaginative power worth giving to the sisters? These Brontës are not enough.
Star ratings (out of five)
Game Kings Player ★★★★
Red Park ★★★★
Underdog: The Other Other Bronte ★★
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Game Kings Player at the Noël Coward Theatre, London, until 22 June and then on tour to Bristol, Birmingham, Norwich and Newcastle until 27 July
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Red Park at @sohoplace, London, until 4 May
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Underdog: Brontë’s Other Other at the Dorfman, National Theatre, London, until 25 May
