The Beauty Queen of Leenane... comes on like a village Romeo and Juliet. "Me? A whore? I dream."Maureen Boy (40+) meets Girl (40). They more than click. Love looks set…
Cush Jumbo's soliloquies are deep and thoughtful, every word heard as they should be. This is the third time I recall the Young Vic choosing an excellent Hamlet but giving him a problematic production. There was Peter Brook's curtailing Adrian Lester's Hamlet to just Hamlet's lines in the play. There was Ian Rickson's setting of Martin Sheen as Hamlet in a psychiatric ward with Gertrude as a fellow patient and Claudius as the consultant psychiatrist. We walked through an installation of the back of a hospital with a dispensary before seeing the play. The last really successful, all round Hamlet I remember at the Young Vic was Paul Rhys's 1930s European royalty in 1999.
Even without Andy getting up to his paradoxical tricks, quarter-hours have not latterly had a good press, vis "un mauvais quart d'heure". Lasting 17 minutes straight through, What If If Only - the latest piece by Caryl Churchill, is the polar opposite of "un mauvais quart d'heure". It packs a wealth of suggestion in its brief allotted span. And the wonder of it is that it does so with an elating lightness of touch.