It used to be easier than this. Stars would take time away from their busy screen careers to “get back on the boards”, “hone their craft” and “get back to their first love”. If they wanted to get serious they would choose an Ibsen, a Chekhov or a Pinter. If they wanted to get frisky they would choose a Wilde or a Coward. They would work with a solid director, even a great director, but always one who would serve the text and serve the star rather than pull focus with a radical reinvention.
Now there is far more monkey business. Matt Smith, formerly of Doctor Who, is playing Dr Stockmann in An Enemy of the People. It’s Ibsen’s play kind of as we know it, except with Bowie songs and laptops, and a long new speech intended to shred contemporary consumer capitalism for ever. The Australian actress Sarah Snook, aka Shiv from Succession, is performing an adaptation of Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Yes, we have seen one person off the telly dazzling as multiple characters before. Yet not with this amount of camera trickery in a two-hour show relayed through portrait-shaped screens. Camera trickery that needs precise positioning and timing from a star still visible beyond those screens.
They are not alone. David Tennant and Cush Jumbo have just finished their “binaural” Macbeth, relayed to the audience through headphones. Nicole Scherzinger triumphed in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard reinvented with multimedia muscle by the director Jamie Lloyd, who is soon to work with Tom Holland on Romeo and Juliet. Expect more monkey business.
• The best theatre, comedy, opera and dance shows in 2024
Because if a Holland is going to get back on stage — or a Sheridan Smith, about to star in Opening Night, a musical helmed by the ever-experimental Ivo van Hove — they want it to be an event. Satisfying, but not safe. They want to do something that you had to be there to really understand. Even if the production uses screens.
Advertisement
And even if they risk alienating a few fans. I know some will be irked by An Enemy of the People. Its director, Thomas Ostermeier, staged this show in German at the Barbican in 2014 (to rave reviews), and then and now its politics are centre-stage.
It’s the story of a doctor who works for the local spa, the mainstay of the town’s prosperity. He discovers its water supply is toxic. The only solution is to close it down to sort out the pipes, at staggering cost. The only problem: his brother, the mayor, tells him to get real. We don’t trust this smoothie-chops politician. Should we trust this swaggering doctor, though?
The second half is hollowed out for a town hall meeting in which Smith — fabulously easy with his virtuosity, as ever — takes to the podium to argue that the political status quo of the world at large is more toxic than the water.
It’s impressive and insightful and a bit undergraduate in its taking up of a political cause. And when we the audience are invited to weigh in, with mikes handed to those who want to speak out, it’s a sincere but toe-curling exercise. We all feel squashed by the system, it turns out. Fair enough.
If this rejig were taking itself too seriously it would be excruciating. But not only does it have a good sense of humour about itself, it is also a perfectly plotted (cheers, Ibsen) encapsulation of the challenge of change.
Advertisement
Most quests have the hero risk all for the elixir of truth. This one toys with the idea that that elixir might be toxic too. It’s far from perfect, but the frustration you feel at the circularity of the arguments is surely deliberate. Democracy is frustrating. It’s exasperating. What to do about it, though?
Duke of York’s Theatre, WC2
★★★★☆
The Picture of Dorian Gray
This could lose 15 minutes, but beyond that I’d say it is pretty much perfect. Yes, Snook’s performance is staggeringly good. So is the way Kip Williams’s production gradually ups the ante for monkey business as Snook interacts with more and more pre-recorded versions of herself.
Yet, flashy as it gets, form matches content in a story of narcissism run amok. It’s all about the image, about how we project ourselves. I hate to use the r-word, but a great story is made thrillingly relevant. And it’s told in a way you couldn’t possibly get at home.
Haymarket Theatre, W1
★★★★★
What’s the best show you’ve seen at the theatre recently? Let us know in the comments below
For tickets, visit thetimes.co.uk/tickets
