Nestled in Kensington just a short walk from Gloucester Road tube station, The Drayton Arms Theatre is set above a rustic corner pub that offers an extensive food and drinks menu. The theatre itself seats only 50, so provides the audience with an intimate look at this harrowing and powerful account of an American hostage held by Arab terrorists in Beirut.

The two rooms of the title are the room in which the hostage, Michael (Richard Atwill), has made his nest, and a room in his house in America, which his wife Lainie (Catherine Skinner) has stripped of furniture, so that at least symbolically, she can try to share his ordeal. The stage is stark, featuring only a worn out mattress in one corner (designed by Roberto Surace), and with basic but effective lighting design by Dan Crews. It provides the locale for imaginary conversations between the married couple. When enhanced with a chair, it occasionally becomes the setting for conversations which Lainie has with a reporter, Walker Harris, and Ellen Van Oss, a representative of the US State Department. Lainie expresses her anger and frustration that her husband’s release still hasn’t been fixed, and when Walker pushes her into speaking out against US tactics, it creates a downward spiral of events which lead to the play’s harrowing end.

Atwill does a decent job of acting the prisoner, who we later learn has been held captive for nearly three years. His speech about how he observes time is a poignant one, and lets us imagine the incomprehensible suffering that character Michael has been through. Skinner, too, provides a strong performance as the equally suffering wife, though sometimes lacks the vulnerability that would allow us to really feel for Lainie. Thomas Vilorio’s turn as Walker is probably the strongest performance of the four, convincing not only Lainie, but also the audience, that the government’s ineptitude is hindering the release of the captured man.

Joanna Bool shines as Van Oss, particularly in the second act monologue about her previous work, which allows us to see why she deliberately detaches herself emotionally from work, and enabling Lainie to see the bigger picture in a hostage situation. MaryClare O’Neill’s direction works well with the video installation by Dominic Coddington which is showing some images of real-life captured people as the audience enter – again, adding another dimension to just how scarily real the whole story is. The play focuses not only on the tragedy that the captives themselves have to go through, but also the terrifying grief that affects the people left behind and their daily lives. It becomes a play that leaves you with a sense of despair that, after all the work that is plumbed into trying to release a captive, seems fruitless when there are others that are willing to commit a barbaric act so freely.

Two Rooms is playing at The Drayton Arms Theatre until 25 May 2013. For more information and tickets, see the Drayton Arms Theatre website.

In this new blog series, David Byrne, Artistic Director of the New Diorama Theatre, will explore the process of writing and staging a musical, looking at the place of musical theatre in Britain today…

This April, here at New Diorama Theatre, we will stage our first musical. The Universal Machine will be a new musical about the life and death of Alan Turing. And I really didn’t want it to be a musical. I fought against it for quite some time but it was the only way to go and, as soon as I gave in, it felt right. The most recurring question or reaction I’ve had to the piece is why have we turned such a potentially tragic story into a piece of musical theatre?

There is a prevailing assumption that all musicals are staged with lines of kicking girls, jazz hands and camp choreography. Personally, I’ve never seen a musical like this. I’m not sure they really exist outside pastiches in The Simpsons. Most musicals, especially popular ones of the past 20 years, are centered around obscure subjects and issues that you wouldn’t initially dream of setting to music – just look at the Lloyd-Webber back catalogue: the life story of the wife of an Argentinean dictator, obscure parts of the Old Testament and, soon we’re told, the Profumo affair.

The truth is we’ve made Alan’s story into a musical for one main reason: the content fitted the form. I wanted to show the world of a man who can make the most incredible, genius intellectual jumps but had problems connecting to those around him. Showing the people in Alan’s life moving with erudite ease, able to express themselves and their emotions with effortless clarity seems to fit the idea of a completely choreographed piece. Here, through a musical language, characters can communicate freely and try to connect through music, which is always hardwired into us emotionally.

That is the basis on which we’re going forward.

The smaller reason was I’ve been dying to programme some musical theatre at New Diorama. One of the recurring themes I’ve noticed in my professional career has been the complaint that there aren’t enough new musicals. Barely six months goes by without somebody writing an article or starting a debate to ask why in the UK there are so few new pieces of musical theatre attempted while our cousins State-side, seem to churn them out to a more consistent high standard quite regularly.

I’ve always been a huge fan of musicals. Early in my career this was scoffed at by my superiors but, landing a venue of my own to run and programme, I was determined to make musical theatre part of the mosaic of work we present. Also, Jemima, our General Manager had championed new musical theatre while she worked at Arts Council England and fought for companies such as Perfect Pitch to get public funding for the first time. We felt like the right team to do it.

I started off at the big festivals (mainly Edinburgh) trying to find really strong new British musicals. I then moved to looking across the London Fringe, attending showcases and new productions. What I found was a surprising lack of variety and innovation, especially when compared to developments in other dramatic forms, with nowhere near the same number to choose from. I’ve been wondering why that might be the case.

My theory is that all the best writing programmes in the UK that playwrights gravitate towards encourage “straight” theatre – after all, few new musicals are staged at The Bush, the Royal Court, Hampstead etc. I think there’s also an historical issue: for some reason writing musicals is barely a respectable career in the UK. In America, the musical is a respected art-form but here it’s seen as an embarrassing cousin to ‘serious theatre’. At university I wrote my first musical and it was a great success – we won several prizes and a good time was had by all. After it all died down one of my lecturers took me to one side: “Stop with this musical theatre business”, he advised. “Why not try working on some European translations next, maybe move to Paris, live in a squat and date a whore. That’s the respectable way to do it.” He added, with a glint in his eye, “after all, it worked for me”.

Photos: The cast of The Universal Machine in rehearsals. By Richard Lakos for A Younger Theatre.

In the heart of Leicester Square, go underground to the not-so-conventional Leicester Square Theatre. Make your way into the living room set, which also feels like a traditional pub, find yourself a seat on any of the wooden chairs and try your best to make yourself feel comfortable as one man tells you the life story of Sir Alec Guinness, in two halves (not quite as exciting as watching a football match with a pint of Guinness, I assure you).

Trevor Littledale portrays Alec Guinness, starting from his speech for winning an Oscar for his supporting role in Star Wars and begrudgingly complaining that he will only ever be remembered for the Jedi Knight role: he tells us of his unaffectionate mother, being an illegitimate child and meeting a man who was rumoured to be his father. He moves on to auditioning for RADA, being taught to act by Martita Hunt, gaining his first walk on roles and meeting the love of his life at The Queen’s theatre.  There are many stories of his troubles at war, conversion to Catholicism, and the saddening story of his only son suffering from Polio, which all make you warm to Guinness reluctantly. Other than Guinness himself, we hear from his experiences with many other familiar names such as his odd talk with Noel Coward in a dressing room, constant references to Lawrence Olivier and the idea that Guinness was never fond of the man, and the creepy story of him warning James Dean to be careful the night before Dean’s death.

Needless to say, Littledale is a superbly talented actor. If there was to be a fight to perform this excessive monologue, Littledale would win, due to his striking tone, ease with multi-role-ing and the ability to look like someone else with a simple change of body language, facial expression or voice.

Derek Parry has directed this one-man play to not be an excuse to fall asleep; in theory nothing worth the use of the word of exciting happens, but it is still an interesting insight into this famous actor’s life. You can perfectly imagine what is going on by the way he has directed Littledale to deliver each and every word with precision. Arguably, this play is mostly aimed at lovers of the art behind theatre and film, and fans of Sir Alec Guinness, as they will come out feeling like they have been told a riveting story. If you are a fan of crazy thrillers, emotionally unstable tragedies or musicals and nothing else, you probably will come out of this theatre feeling like you could have had a more enjoyable time watching The Only Way Is Essex; however, if you feel like exploring the corners of theatre you’ve never experienced before Two Halves Of Guinness would be a start.

Two Halves of Guinness is playing at The Leicester Square Theatre until 7 April 2013. For more information and tickets, see the Leicester Square Theatre website.

“He’s a genius!” sings Clive Oxford (Michael Hobbs) the crafty art dealer, and these words are the audience’s window to the genius this fringe theatre has made with a musical that has been hidden for many years.

Set in the early twentieth century, the play’s protagonist is an unconventional, out-spoken famous artist, who does not like to be seen in public, named Priam Farll (James Dinsmore). On the night he arrives in London to receive his Knighthood, his trusted butler Henry Leek (Andy Secombe) sadly passes away. This is when Priam Farll takes the opportunity to hide from his “Darling of the day” lifestyle, and steals Henry Leek’s identity. This leads to the real Henry Leek being buried in Westminster Abbey as the famous artist, Farll marrying Alice Chalice (Katy Secombe) and we follow his story as he struggles to continue this new life with his real identity unknown to everyone.

With only a simple set design and very few props, the cast acted and embraced every detail so well they made it feel like a higher budget production. Dinsmore and Katy Secombe made an enticing duo. Their duets of ‘Double Soliloquy’ and ‘Let’s See What happens’ were filled with emotion: both actors moved me, with help from the live band in the corner of the tiny stage.

Despite the excellent singing from the whole company, the choreography was definitely the highlight of this production. Each member of the company working together perfectly showing off Matt Flint’s big and exuberant moves as if they were on a huge West End stage, I could not have lost concentration on them even if I tried.

Paul Foster, the director of this production, has brilliantly brought out the large soul of this play, and moulded it into the pocket theatre under an arch in Southwark with a skill that is hard to describe. Every detail of this play is told with a technique that is hard to ignore, and not once did I find myself in a day dream caused by tedious work.
If you are a sucker for musical theatre with a spice of old cockney singing and people flinging each other around, or you crave the experimentation of fringe theatre and need a production to make you smile, this Darling Of The Day is definitely an option for you.

The Darling of the Day is playing at The Union Theatre until 20 April 2013. For more information and tickets, see the Union Theatre website.