London Spotlight: January 2006

Please sir, you want some More? Well, an intriguing double bill of sort is available to London theatergoers this month: Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons is being revived at the Haymarket and Thomas More is opening at Trafalgar Studios 1. Bolt’s prize-winning play (the movie adaptation was the 1966 Oscar winner for Best Picture) stars the great Martin Shaw (perhaps best known in the United States for his role as Adam Dalgliesh) as the man who stood up to Henry VIII, while the less familiar Thomas More is attributed to William Shakespeare and a few others and is part of what the Royal Shakespeare Company is calling its “Gunpowder Season.” The rare chance to see this piece only lasts January 4-14, so make haste.

And there’s more (no pun intended) in the Gunpowder Season for those drawn to lesser-known theater classics. Directly after Thomas More comes Sejanus: His Fall, a Ben Jonson obscurity about an over-reaching emperor (undoubtedly meant to be a metaphor for early 17th-century monarchs and other politicians), followed by Philip Massinger’s Believe What You Will, which has to do with a Middle Eastern potentate tangling with the Holy Roman Empire.

For Americans looking to catch up with work they have missed this side of the Atlantic, there’s the late August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, in which the two-time Tony-winning author finally introduces 287-year-old Aunt Esther, whose fabled wisdom has meant so much to the characters of his now-completed 10-play cycle; the Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Apollo, directed by Englishman Anthony Page and starring Kathleen Turner as Martha (whom many think deserved the 2005 Tony), Bill Irwin (who did take home the 2005 Tony), David Harbour and Mireille Enos; and Sam Shepard’s political scorcher The Late Henry Moss at the Almeida, directed by Michael Attenborough.

Elsewhere around town, the wonderful Lynn Redgrave, who can do no wrong on stage or screen, has written and will direct a solo show Nightingale at the New End Theater. The protagonist, Mildred Asher, is actually based on Beatrice Kempson, Redgrave’s maternal grandmother, and will be played by Caroline John. Shakespeare buffs scanning the horizon are pointed to the newly-renamed Novello Theatre on the Strand where the Royal Shakespeare Company is presenting The Comedy of Errors, helmed by Shared Experience artistic director Nancy Meckler (probably with her usual story-theater aplomb); and Michael Grandage’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck at the Donmar Warehouse, heavily symbolic as the play is, is definitely a ticket to pursue.

Up at the Hampstead in Swiss Cottage, there’s a short run of A Fine Balance, an adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s novel, which was short-listed some years back for the Booker Prize. The stupendous performance artist Robert Lepage has written and will appear in The Andersen Project at the Barbican, which is constructed around two Hans Christian Andersen stories but will evidently wander far afield from them. Yet another adaptation of a favorite Brit novel plays at the far-flung Lyric Hammersmith: Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, which Tom Morris and Emma Rice have transformed for the stage.

Last but hardly least: Mike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years seems to be delighting sell-out audiences. The improvised work about lost and found faith in a contemporary Jewish family is playing its last performances this month at the smallish Cottesloe before transferring to the large Lyttelton in March.