London Spotlight: November 2005

In a month with so much theater activity, perhaps the most intriguing offering is Bronte, written by Polly Teale and presented at the Lyric Hammersmith by the unflaggingly enterprising Shared Experience company. This is the outfit that previously looked closely and with great excitement at Charlotte Bronte in Teale’s grittily sumptuous Jane Eyre adaptation. This time, Teale and co-artistic director Nancy Meckler are examining all three Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, Anne) and brother Bramwell. Rising actor Fenella Woolgar, who’s as period-looking as her name, portrays the Jane Eyre author and the longest-lived of the Yorkshire siblings. An additional come-on for art lovers is the inclusion of Paula Rego’s work; she’s a greatly respected dauber who finds family life as dark and mysterious as those imaginative Bronte girls did.

That well-loved national favorite, Maureen Lipman, will appear at the Duchess in Peter Quilter’s Glorious!, a new play about a real-life woman who thought she was indeed glorious but in the eyes and especially ears of others was decidedly unglorious. If you think she sounds like the self-deluded Florence Foster Jenkins, the heroine of the Broadway play Souvenir, you’re right. There are now two plays about this benevolent New York City socialite who thought she had a voice worthy of gracing the best opera houses. She didn’t have pipes anywhere nearly that enthralling, but the recitals she produced herself packed Manhattan music halls all the same.

Yet another woman of intrigue will show up in the West End when Doug Wright’s Tony-winning I Am My Own Wife bows at the Duke of York’s starring Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays. That’s right: This lady ain’t no lady. Mays plays the cross-dressing Charlotte van Mahlsdorf, who ran an oddball Berlin museum and may or may not have ratted on a close friend after the Stasi came calling, as well as over 30 other characters.

Meanwhile, Ethel Rosenberg and husband Julius are recalled — and thinly fictionalized –in The Rubinstein Kiss at the Hampstead. Actually, James Phillips’ play takes place both in 1953, when the Rosenbergs were executed as spies, and in 1975, when a young couple gets caught up in the story by way of a compelling photograph. In Alice Trilogy at the Royal Court’s Jermyn Theatre Downstairs, the always marvelous Juliet Stevenson plays a woman who is caught at three different moments in her evidently emotionally troubled life. She seems entirely made up by playwright Tom Murphy. (Or is she possibly based on a true story he knows?) Meanwhile, a compulsive playgoer may want to pick up a ticket for Gregory Motton’s brooding romance, The World’s Biggest Diamond at the Royal Court.

The busiest venue — or beehive of venues — is the National Theatre, where it’s one opening on the heels of the previous one. Henrik Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community (in a new Samuel Adamson version) in the Lyttelton stars Damien Lewis, who’s best known stateside for his tough-minded yet suave appearances in television’s Band of Brothers and in the recent Forsyte Saga re-do. Brian Friel’s Translations, which has been touring the country under the National’s auspices, finally hunkers down in the small Cottesloe for only a few weeks. Helen Edmundson’s version of Jamila Gavin’s Whitbread Children’s Book Award citation, Coram Boy also raises its curtain at the National. Edmundson is the author of Mother Teresa is Dead, one of the smartest and most provocative plays of the past few seasons here. The in-house powers have also given the ever-political Howard Brenton another nod. His new work, Paul, takes place on the well-known road to Damascus, and Brenton will give his take on what he thinks overtook the pillar of Christianity on that much-publicized trek. Last not but least, Alan Bennett’s brilliant History Boys, which has been the company’s biggest hit in years, is back in residence. It’s an absolute must-see.

Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca has been arranged for stage by Frank McGuinness and will be stopping at the Theatre Royal, Bath and at the New Wimbledon. It’s supposed to be London-bound, and let’s hope it’s that good. Maxim De Winter will be impersonated by gaunt, reliably good Nigel Havers.

Over in Richmond at the appropriately named Richmond Theatre, Joanna Trollope’s Marrying the Mistress has been retooled by David Taylor for actors Adrian Lukis, Jeremy Clyde and Caroline Langrishe. The playwright, who is distantly related to Anthony Trollope (who’s also been the subject of more than a few adaptations), is known throughout this land as the queen of the Aga sagas. She sure can write a good one, and this is among her most popular ones.

One last adaptation is on hand: the late Sarah Kane’s reworking of Seneca’s Phaedra, which she calls Phaedra’s Love. She directed the sizzling play when she was 25 — making what has become an indelible name for herself — and this first London revival of the piece since Kane took her life at age 28. Just about everything she wrote explains why she decided at such a young age that life isn’t worth living. For ravenous theatergoers this month, however, it’ll seem that life is very much worth living.