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Following a letter in the London Times supporting London’s threatened Theatre Museum, whose signatories include Diana Rigg, Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave, the conclusions of the March 23 crucial meeting of the museum’s trustees have been made public.
Of the options being considered, two have emerged as front runners to be explored further before the trustees’ next meeting on May 18.
The first of these involves moving the Theatre Museum’s collection and activities from their current location in London’s Covent Garden to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which owns the Theatre Museum’s current building.
The resulting savings would be used to develop the collection, which would receive a permanent space at the V&A in South Kensington. The Theatre Museum’s archives would remain at Blythe House in West London.
The second option involves a partnership with another, unnamed, organization that may be interested in using the Theatre Museum’s current site, allowing the museum to continue to stage displays and educational activities in Covent Garden.
V&A Director Mark Jones said, "We understand the concern within the theatrical world over the future of the Theatre Museum and are considering several options to ensure that the collections remain as widely seen and used as possible."
The crisis has been prompted by two failed applications for lottery funds to upgrade the Covent Garden building, which has housed the Theatre Museum since 1987.
I’m afraid I married a stranger.” “Everybody does that.” Period of Adjustment is that rare thing, a Tennessee Williams comedy. Many of his plays end with a positive affirmation, but usually that is achieved in the face of death or disaster. Not so here. Although for much of the play it looks as if we are observing two marriages heading for the divorce courts, early on we sense the play has nowhere to go but a happy ending. That ought to be trite, but Williams makes much of his material awkwardly intimate, so we are kept in suspense.
There are many reasons to consider Williams the greatest American playwright, and one of them is simply that no other has written so well for actors. His characters are seen from all sides, they keep taking us by surprise and their weaknesses are related to their strengths. And he gives them great lines. Often it astonishes me that so many of his plays have been turned into successful films, because he gives his characters a quality of utterance that often seems to be the very stuff of theatre. In Period of Adjustment, four undistinguished Americans become astoundingly vivid.
Though the play occurs on Christmas Eve and would be perfect Christmas fare, Howard Davies’s production is a very welcome addition to the London theatre scene right now.
Jared Harris’s Ralph is the anchor: the play depends on his perfectly judged blend of pliant strength and uneasy tenderness. The last to arrive on stage, Sandy McDade, makes his unlovely wife Dorothea utterly distinctive. As Isabel, a virginal, inhibited and dismayed bride with the Texas accent from hell, Lisa Dillon is heart-catching, with the face of the young Elizabeth Taylor beneath a Marilyn Monroe wig. You hang on the vulnerability in her eyes and smiles. Even the Texas accent comes to embody all the repression that she must thaw. Benedict Cumberbatch, another of London’s fast-rising actors, finely catches her husband George’s yet fiercer façade and the shakes that keep returning to him (a legacy of warfare). He brings him a virile warmth that makes us hope for the marriage. London has not seen Period of Adjustment since 1962. These actors make it all the more worth catching now
As this belated blast of icy weather finally abates and venturing outside one’s living room becomes a more appealing prospect, London theatregoers can look forward to a particularly tempting array of new (and new-ish) productions.
A new artistic director at the Globe and some well-earned West End transfers are among the obvious highlights of the coming season.
But things get underway with two returning shows, not long away from London stages.
At the end of March, Christian Slater goes back the asylum as Terry Johnson's critically and commercially successful production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest begins a second London run. Now playing at the Garrick, ER's Alex Kingston will be taking on the role of the formidable Nurse Ratched in the stage version of Ken Kesey's cult novel, and, as before, the supporting cast will favour comedians, most notably the always endearing Owen O'Neill.
The Royal Court's sell-out show My name Is Rachel Corrie - Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman's stage adaptation of the writings of the young American activist - also returns to London after its US run was 'indefinitely postponed,' presumably for its emotive handling of the Israel issue. Megan Dodds will again be taking the role of Corrie in a thought-provoking and relevant production that should be checked out at during its brief run at the Playhouse.
Personally Dawn French's comedic output over the last few years has left me colder than a cameraman on March Of The Penguins, but she has a strong track record when it comes to her stage work and Carmel Morgan's Smaller, a 'comedy with music' about two sisters caring for a disabled mother, sounds like it has the necessary darkness to override the taint of all things Dibley. French will be joining best mate Alison Moyet at the Shaftesbury Avenue Lyric from the end of March.
The late Arthur Miller's last play Resurrection Blues has been one of the big disappointments of the year to date, though how much of this is down to the writing or to Robert Altman's distinctly flimsy Old Vic production is debateable. Fortunately the RSC's recent production of The Crucible provides a reminder of just how vital Miller was at his best. Featuring, by all accounts, a captivating central performance from Iain Glen in the John Procter role, the show will be transferring to the Gielgud in April, right on the heels of the company's generally well-received series of Comedies at the Novello
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