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Theatre

Review The 15:17 To Paris by Kevin Johnson

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In 2015 a lone terrorist boarded the train from Paris to Amsterdam carrying an AK-47, a pistol, 300 rounds of ammunition and a knife. Before he could do much damage he was tackled by several passengers, including three American friends on a European tour. This is the film based on that event.

First let me say that the incident itself was an amazing demonstration of the bravery of these passengers in attacking, unarmed, a Jihadist gunman. I am in awe of their courage.

Having said that, this film is incredibly bad.

There are pointers to a bad film: they open in January or early February, they’re usually about 90 mins long due to being edited down, and there are no press reviews before they open.

I knew all that beforehand, but I went in anyway. I’d now add a fourth pointer, if the film is based on a real incident and the characters are played by the ACTUAL people themselves and not actors.

The script is truly terrible, the mother of one of the heroes, upon being told by his teacher he may have ADD, replies ‘My God is bigger than your statistics!’, and that’s not even the worst line.

The narrative is all over the place, the three heroes lives are told in flashbacks that don’t advance the story, and the acting is really bad, apart from Veep’s Tony Hale as a gym teacher who seems to have wandered in from another film. A much better film.

The editing is all over the place, and the direction poor, except in the scenes showing the attack itself. What’s shocking is that the director is Clint Eastwood, who is much better than this.

I have never walked out of a film in my life (except for a Stallone film, but that was just to vomit) but I wanted to walk out of this after 10 minutes.

It’s bad, really bad, worst film not just of this year, but the last decade. I’m posting this review so that you won’t suffer, save yourselves, wait for it to come out on TV or Netflix and then don’t watch it. Trust me. Run away!!!”

Kevin Johnson

Literature, Theatre

Review The Cherry Orchard, Sherman Theatre by Kevin Johnson

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This is not a new version of the Chekhov classic, but a ‘re-imagining’ by Welsh writer Gary Owen, of Killology & Iphigenia In Splott fame. Owen relocates it from 1890’s Russia to the Pembroke coast in 1982, just prior to the Falklands War, which makes for a very interesting choice.
It feels like every dysfunctional family drama you’ve ever seen, until you realise Chekhov originated the idea of real characters, with real problems, talking like real people.

Family matriarch Rainey, who has crawled into a bottle after the death of her son over a decade ago, followed soon after by the suicide of her husband, is virtually dragged back to the family home from London by Anya, her youngest daughter. Her self-destructive lifestyle has lead to the family home on the Pembroke coast being auctioned off to pay the debts.
Val, her eldest daughter, has held things together, but they need Raynie’s permission (and signature) to save it. All agree that the only viable option is to sell off the ancestral cherry orchard for redevelopment, but will she see it that way?

This play is incredibly funny and well-worth seeing, if only for the way Owen makes it so accessible to Welsh eyes. The ‘Russian peasants’ now come from housing estates, the decaying aristocracy are English interlopers, and the Communist revolutionaries are now Thatcherites, sweeping the past away without a thought or concern.
At the heart of the play is the idea that the future is farther away than we hope, while the past is always closer than we’d like. The characters here are continually haunted, not by spirits, but by the ghosts of memories, taunting them with remembrance.

Rainey tries to forget through excess, her guilt at losing her son gnawing away at her, like a rat sown inside her skin. In the end it causes her to take drastic action, and Denise Black brings all this out in a masterful performance that makes you feel sorry for her, even while she’s being a monster to all and sundry.
The entire cast take their moments when offered, yet still make this a true ensemble piece. Morfydd Clark is sweetly sensual as the young Anya, while Hedydd Dylan as her elder sister Val, shows us a woman who tries to run other people’s lives, but fails at her own.

Simon Armstrong as Gabe, Rainey’s brother, is amusingly ineffectual, yet quietly sharp. When Val talks about Rainey not telling him about her plans to leave he replies “We’ve been brother & sister half a century. Through awful things. Do you think saying ‘goodbye’ makes any difference?”
Alexandria Riley gives us a Dottie that is down to earth yet shows the love/hate relationship she has with the family, while Richard Mylan is funny, while also imparting a wise naïveté to Ceri.

Mathew Bulgo, given the task of Lewis, the ‘poor boy made good’, effects a performance of subtlety that defies the historical villain the role has been seen as. With the insults he endures from the others, and denied the role of ‘family saviour’ by Rainey, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him.
Writer Gary Owen conveys a situation full of layers, and also offers some nice ironies. Ceri’s expectations of Margaret Thatcher getting the blame for the Falklands War being one, Gabe’s job offer as an investment banker another.
When you add all this to Rachel O’Riordan’s deft direction, Kenny Miller’s intriguingly skewed set, and Kevin Tracey’s ingenious lighting, the Sherman Theatre demonstrates yet again that it is punching well above its weight in the theatre world.
There is so much going on here that I actually re-read the script in one go afterwards, and was still as gripped as I was by seeing it. The play is funny, ironic, witty, sarcastic and quietly heartbreaking. It is a story of loss, of people, places and things, and how memories both haunt and define us.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed: ‘We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past‘.
http://www.shermantheatre.co.uk/performance/theatre/the-cherry-orchard/

Kevin Johnson

Film & TV

Review The Mountain Between Us by Kevin Johnson

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An interesting but flawed idea, two strangers survive a plane crash in the mountains, get to know each other as they try to walk out of the frozen wilderness, and begin to fall in love.
Idris Elba shows his star quality by holding his own against Kate Winslett. They have chemistry, and full marks for casting an interracial couple, but it doesn’t quite work.
Films like this drive me mad, because they’re so close to being brilliant, but fall short. The scenery, mostly snowy mountains, is amazing, the music is good, as is the direction, with some innovative touches. The script, however, lets everyone down.

Elba is an emotionally constipated neurosurgeon, Winslett a maverick photojournalist, both are strong-willed yet it’s she who drives them on while he wants to play it safe. So far, so good.
What could then have been developed into an interesting character piece, starts to unravel. Winslett keeps moaning about her poor fiancé, whilst the plight of the ten year old patient Elba was supposed to operate on is ignored.
It doesn’t help that the film is divided into ‘before and after’ section, which means the ending gets bogged down in romantic cliches that dilute the emotional momentum from before. There’s even a sex scene which, although beautifully filmed, jars with the story.
The film falls between two stools, neither a romance nor a survival thriller, although it tries to be both. Not a bad film though, just not a great one.
Oh and there’s a cute dog.

Theatre

Review We’re Still Here, National Theatre Wales by Kevin Johnson

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Over a year ago Port Talbot steelworks were put up for sale by Indian owners Tata Steel, threatening not only thousands of jobs but the future of the town itself. What followed was a campaign to save the last part of heavy industry in South Wales by people from all walks of life.

Rachel Trezise

This story has now been turned into a play by Rachel Trezise, in collaboration with the National Theatre Wales and Common Wealth Theatre Company. Set in an old factory that was once part of the steelworks, this is promenade-style theatre, where you ‘wander through’ the play and it happens around you. There are seats if you need them, and good disabled access, but at around 80 minutes, the play is brief enough to endure, yet long enough to shock.

Sam Coombes (Lewis)

With a core cast of five including real-life steelworker Sam Coombes as Lewis, this is both spacious and intimate. The cavernous building is juxtaposed with the intimacy of the workers, who tell their stories, and confide their fears, amidst the jovial banter. Also roaming among the audience are actual retirees, who share true stories about the works, and the oft hidden cost.

Jason May (Rob), Siôn Tudor Owen (Mark) & Simon Nehan (Kevin)

In the interests of full-disclosure I should mention that I was born here, and as a local the steelworks have always been a big part of my life. As one of the actors says:’if you can smell sulphur in the air, somebody’s getting paid’. Both my parents worked there, so in a way it paid for my upbringing. Steel is in our blood here, and with so many accidents over the years, our blood is certainly in the steel.

Designer/Dylunydd Russell Henry, Choreographer/Coreograffydd Vicki Manderson, Directors/Cyfarwyddwyr Rhiannon White & Evie Manning

Co-directed by Common Wealths Evie Manning & Rhiannon White, music, song, comedy and monologues are used to create an enthralling and fascinating piece of theatre. Watching so many people coming to my ‘home’ to be entertained, gave me such a feeling of pride.

This threatened closure is the latest in a long line of body blows that have hit Port Talbot, brought home by the scene where the names of some of the 750 already made redundant are read out. A litany of damaged lives, counterpointed by the children the workers can’t see, ghosts from a lost future.

Sam Coombes (Lewis)

This isn’t sugar-coated either. At one point, in a gladiatorial arena of chairs shared by cast and audience alike, grievances are expressed with a violent passion. Characters turn on each other, unsure of the best course of action to take. One blames the union organiser, who then quietly reveals that his marriage has become a hidden casualty of the fight.
That’s a key element here: how long do you keep on fighting? When do you know when the cause is lost? What if all you have left is the struggle? The whole play roars a magnificent defiance at the world, but beneath that you can hear the scream of a wounded animal.

Ioan Hefin (Adrian) & Jason May (Rob)

If the steelworks closes it’ll be devastating to the town and its people, should that be allowed to happen? I’ll give the last word to Dic Penderyn, a local martyr hanged for rioting in the 1830’s, who’s last words on the scaffold are quoted in the play:
“O arglwdd dymma gamwedd, O Lord, what injustice.”
http://nationaltheatrewales.org/were-still-here

Theatre

Review Us Proclaimed/Clywch Ni, Mess Up The Mess, Wales Millennium Centre by Kevin Johnson.

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Aged from 11-20 plus, Mess Up The Mess Theatre Company make ‘awkward and brave theatre by, for and with young people’. Their new show ‘Us Proclaimed/Clywch Ni’ features over a dozen actors at the Wales Millennium Centre, Dance House.
It starts with a line up of the cast, who then turn their back on the audience, before assembling in a series of ‘scales’: alphabetically by first name, surname, home, then things start getting more honest, revealing, and then raw.
They line up in scales of sexuality, gender, feeling anxious, optimistic about the future, all while explaining what THEY think, stripping away the hypocrisy of the ‘real’ world, and showing us what’s actually real to them.
The honesty of this cast is humbling: personal stories, personal feelings, personal ‘secrets’ even, are not just divulged but proclaimed. Sometimes in simple words, sometimes with songs, or even comedy.
My personal highlight was young actor Ciaran Fitzgerald with cerebral palsy wearing a T-shirt stating ‘I don’t have cerebral palsy, I’m drunk’, explained later when he recounts being refused service at a pub because the barmaid thought he was drunk.
Perhaps a little blunt at times? I’m not sure, sometimes bluntness is called for. ‘We don’t want to preach’ they sing at the start, but they certainly make many good points.
Above all else they are wary of the future, some are worried but most are positive. Having seen – and more importantly listened – to them, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic about the future myself.

Theatre

Review Hamlet Almeida Theatre by Kevin Johnson

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I’ve been trying to see this for nearly a year, since it was at the Almeida. It was worth the wait.
Andrew Scott, one of my favourite actors, gives what I can only describe as a true Irish Hamlet: sad, bittersweet and quietly, heartbreakingly funny.
He sees the irony through the madness and the sorrow, yet his grief is always just behind his eyes. This is a romantic hero of legend, Scott brings a childlike sweetness to the role and thus he makes us care for Hamlet all the more, even when he is at his most irresponsible.

The setting is modern, innovative and intriguing. The play begins with coverage of the King’s state funeral straight from a cable news channel, albeit in Danish. CCTV is everywhere, the ghost first appears on a control room screen, and everyone is being watched and spied on, as they are in the play. As are we.
Ian Rickson’s 2011 Hamlet emphasised the madness within the play by setting it in an asylum, the audience even entering the theatre after walking through the set. Robert Icke’s production in contrast focuses on surveillance. Britain has more security cameras than any other country in the world, we are all being watched. The same, it seems, is true of the ‘state of Denmark’. Is this what is ‘rotten’?
The play within the play takes centre stage, while the cast sits in the front row among us, their faces thrown by live camera onto screens around the auditorium and above the stage. A clever use of old and new, theatre and video, where Claudius’ reaction is ‘caught on tape’, before he storms out of the theatre. It strikes true in today’s society, where it seems as if nothing is real unless shown on screen.

This also means that the subtle looks from the actors, such as Hamlet’s eye rolling at a Claudius soundbite, is not missed. Indeed such moments give this production a lot of humour that I haven’t seen since David Tennant’s version.

In other resonances to modern times, Polonius seems to be suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, Rosencranz and Guildenstern are a couple, and both Hamlet and Gertrude (A loving yet still sexual Derbhle Crotty) are the only characters that speak with Irish accents, which subtly evokes the mother/son bond.
For me, Michael Sheen is still my favourite Dane, but Andrew Scott is but a hair’s breadth behind. My only criticism would be his foot-stamping, which brings out the ‘little prince’ in the character, but is over-used. He makes the words his own, and shares his feelings only with us.
Jessica Brown Findlay is a sweetly sensual Ophelia, crushed by heartbreak, Angus Wright’s Claudius has more smarm than Tony Blair, Joshua Higgott’s Horatio is a true friend of Hamlet, but it was Peter Wright’s performance as Polonius that most caught my eye.
Switching from caring father to tyrant, from accomplished fixer to absent minded rambler, hinting at some form of dementia, Wright subtly makes him all too human.
The trouble with this play is that often you have a great Hamlet but not a great production, or vice versa. Here, for once, you have both.
https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/hamlet/16-feb-2017-22-apr-2017