The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

action films Cage made in his

hour of greatest desperation.

As if in touching tribute to

those films, The Unbearable

Weight of Massive Talent is also

just as bad. How meta is that?

Playground begins by

stealing your heart. A little girl,

Nora (Maya Vanderbeque),

looks back at her father

(Karim Leklou), eyes

brimming, as she is led away

to her first day at primary

school. The film grabs a tight

hold and doesn’t relinquish

your emotions for one second

of its running time.

Written and directed by the

Belgian film-maker Laura

Wandel, it is as small and

perfectly formed as its

heroine, following Nora as she

negotiates her first lonely

lunch room, is teased for not

knowing how to tie her laces

in gym, looks for her brother,

Abel (Günter Duret), in the

playground, sees him bullied,

attempts to intervene and is

pulled into her first brawl — a

sequence of events that strikes

you with the same force as

lovers pulled asunder or

revolution hatched in Doctor

Zhivago. In its own way the

film is an epic. Anyone who

has a small child, or can

remember what it was like

themselves, will be able to

empathise; growing up is like

a plunge over the edge of the

Niagara Falls.

The cinematographer

Frédéric Noirhomme keeps

the camera on eye level with

Nora, sometimes following

behind her as she drifts from

classroom to classroom, that

grey world rendered as a

background blur, while the

halls echo with the sounds of

children shouting, laughing,

taunting. The Hobbesian,

tooth-and-nail universe of the

playground has rarely been

portrayed so indelibly,

because Wandel immerses

you so fully in Nora’s world,

and because Vanderbeque is

such a translucent actress that

you see every emotion written

on her face: fear, heartbreak,

love, betrayal. Occasionally

she tries to intervene, or get

help from a teacher; returning

to their parents at the end of

the day, Abel is sometimes

mute with misery, while Nora

knows enough to give him a

small hug. They might as well

be on their own, for all the

adults can do. As its French

title (Un monde) suggests,

theirs is a world unto itself.

A beautiful film. c

Another weekend, another

Mike Bartlett production.

Last Sunday I enthused about

Bartlett’s slick new play at the

Old Vic, The 47th, which spears

Donald Trump and American

presidential politics.

Scandaltown is a less assured,

less surprising effort about

modern manners in London.

Again there is an elaborate

script device to place today’s

morality (or lack of it) in

historical context. Where The

47th used cod-Shakespearean

verse, comparing Trump to

Richard III and Lear,

Scandaltown is a spoof

Restoration comedy. The

leading lady (Rachael

Stirling, doing her valiant

best) is sexually voracious and

has a late 17th-century beauty

spot on her cheek. The plot

involves country twins

Phoebe and Jack Virtue, who

visit the capital to confront

the depravities of life. And

there is a masked ball. Ugh.

I can not abide masked balls,

in plays or in life.

Three characters turn

up in the same disguise

and are mistaken for one

another by their lovers.

It ends with the country

twins altering their

contrasting views and

the whole corrupt world

tumbling forth on its

merry path.

Bartlett satirises the

decadent and the

disapproving. Phoebe Virtue,

as per her name, is a pious

twentysomething, heavily

into puritan wokery. Cecilia

Appiah doesn’t come close to

nailing this sort of prude. Her

performance of wide-eyed

golly-goshness is, I regret to

say, a show-killer. Matthew

Mike Bartlett’s ambitious new play skewers modern manners

Broome, as the hunky brother,

spends his first scene in just

a pair of taut underpants.

For some patrons that may

compensate for any

shortcomings in his acting.

While Phoebe tries to steer

Jack away from sex and drugs

and capitalism, Stirling’s

Lady Climber employs a

social media consultant, one

Hannah Tweetwell, who urges

Climber to develop a divisive

voice on Twitter to attract the

attention of two reality TV

producers, Peter Media OBE

and Rosalind Double-Budget.

Throw in a libidinous Tory

minister for procurement,

who is most certainly not

Michael Gove, and you have

most of it. There are digs at,

among others,

Gary Lineker,

Nadine Dorries

and the

Sunday Times

Culture

section.

Oi!

At the Edinburgh Festival

Fringe, it would probably

have worked. In a half-empty

Hammersmith Lyric, it failed

to fly. A tighter direction, with

faster cues and entrances, is

needed to establish the

dramatic rolling boil of farce.

Little money has been spent

on the staging. There are a few

lines where Bartlett pierces the

pretences and selfishness of

modern metropolitans, but he

could do a lot more to provoke

his audience. For too much of

the evening, Stirling excepted,

you could be watching a

university drama society

production.

Jim Cartwright’s 1992 play

The Rise and Fall of Little

Voice is being given another

trot round the regions.

Despite a few creaks it still

manages to coax laughs and a

few sniffles, Christina Bianco

here taking the role of the

shy northern lass with the

uncanny ability to sing like

Shirley Bassey, Edith Piaf,

Lulu and others.

Bronagh Lagan’s

production, which

I caught in Malvern,

has an elaborate

set of the run-down

terrace house where

Little Voice lives with her

dissolute, widowed mum

(Shobna Gulati). Ian

Kelsey, off Emmerdale and

Casualty, is pretty good

as the small-town talent

scout who hopes to turn

Little Voice into a star.

Fiona Mulvaney has good

moments as the mum’s

lumpen friend Sadie.

Akshay Gulati is rather

touching as the BT

engineer who takes a quiet

fancy to Little Voice.

There may not be anything

newsy in this show. The

spinning of LPs on a record

player and scenes in a

working men’s club take us

back to the era of Trimphones

and advocaat. But the story of

a teenage girl asserting her

independence is, in its way,

strongly political and

uplifting. And because it’s

regional theatre, they accept

cash at the bar. c

For theatre tickets, visit

thetimes.co.uk/tickets

Scandaltown

Lyric Hammersmith,

London W6 HH

The Rise and Fall of Little

Voice

Touring HHH

Social

climbing

Rachael

Stirling

The way we live now

MARC BRENNER

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A frank picture of how
wretched life can be for
women in societies that
ban abortion; this Bafta-
nominated French drama
— set in 1963 — is an
eye-opener. Audrey Diwan’s
film is an in-depth portrait
of a woman standing
her ground. Anamaria
Vartolomei gives a tender
performance as a student
desperately looking for a
way to terminate an
unwanted pregnancy —
the result of her first sexual
encounter.

Edward Porter

HHHHH KO
HHHH A-OK HHH OK
HH So-so H No-no

QUENTIN

LETTS

24 April 2022 15