Stage review: Chimerica, Almeida Theatre

STAGE
Chimerica
Almeida Theatre
★★★★★

IN A NUTSHELL
This rousing and cinematic play aims to tell the story of two sparring countries with a snapshot of two driven men.

REVIEW
This is how plays should be. The politics and the personal. The big themes and the little lives. Geopolitics and KFC.

Playwright Lucy Kirkwood magnificently wrangles the economic struggle of the two superpowers and creates a mesmerising kaleidoscope of cultural confusion.

The script is rich with meaty discourse and witty, cynical sideswipes so its three-hour length whips by.

The title is coined from economist Niall Ferguson's conflation of the China and America but also, neatly, suggests "chimera" - a single organism composed of two different populations. Although there is an irony there (never the twain shall meet) that is the underlying subtext.

But the story starts simply. The story starts with a single image - a man defies the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

In this fiction, the photograph was taken by US photo-journalist Joe Schofield (a compelling Stephen Campbell Moore) who is haunted by its potency.

When he returns to a transformed, choking Beijing, in 2012, midlife crisis is upon him as is the realisation that nothing he has ever done matches those 30 seconds in Tank Man's life.

It begins a destructive, blinkered quest to track down the iconic figure and make some sense of his own fractured existence. (After his 1989 masterpiece, this is the "difficult second album" according to pal Mel who signs up for the task but falters in the face of corporate and political opposition).

Meanwhile, in smoggy Beijing, Zhang Lin (Benedict Wong - brilliant) is haunted by that same day in 1989, the day that stole his wife, and his festering sadness turns to anger and then action and then rebellion.

Encapsulating the New York brownstones, strip joints, pap lines, lawyer's pads and smoggy high-rises this is necessarily cinematic in scope and attack. All this is aided by Lyndsey Turner's dynamic direction and the use of a vast, rotating Rubik's Cube of a set that introduces flashbacks, cut-aways and vignettes as well as hosting the main action.

The political never forgets the personal and the fractious relationship between driven Schofield and self-possessed consumer researcher Tessa (a scene-stealing Tessa Kendrick) grounds the sprawling, flinty drama.

Others deserving of a mention are Sean Gilder as cynical hack Mel Stanwyck and Trevor Cooper as weary editor Frank but there are no weak links.

The play ends with a telegraphed twist but, by then the urgency of the cast to tell this important story has enlightened and invigorated us sufficiently so that the cathartic climax becomes necessary rather than irksome.

Until July 6, almeidatheatre.co.uk

Spiral Notebook: Tough lessons in liberty

We were on our journey back to Cairo airport where our flight would be delayed by the simple mechanic of a very small door through which to send too many people bound for too many flights scheduled to leave at the same time.

A sight caught my eye. Many sights caught my eye, in fact, because it's that kind of city, but this one caught my eye because it was so out of place.

Three men were painting railings by the side of the road. The railings, for the many miles of their length, were a battleship grey.

As the fierce sun set and the potholed main road was bumper to bumper with mangled Nissans and de-mirrored mopeds, the men were painting the railings a municipal green.

Not particularly noteworthy, except a tour of Cairo would accord with a view that this was a bustling, energetic city that teetered just this side of anarchy.

Indeed, not too far away an encampment in Tahir Square embodied that tension.

To paint railings in the midst of this mayhem, of tumble-down houses, feral dogs, waste-choked waterways, pollutant-filled air and jallopy-jammed roads seemed both futile and wonderful.

There were so many jobs to do - build houses that were perpendicular, pipe water that didn't poison, for example - that a new coat seemed deliberately obtuse.

But, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single tin of Dulux Teal Tension, I suppose.

And who am I to complain? A couple of columns back I lamented the overbearing bureaucracy that acquired unregulated arenas of our life, surrounded them with bollards and tape and filled them with the implacable rubble of clipboards and tick boxes.

Cairo is the opposite. There are no rules. Anyone does anything and, unless it violently impedes a fellow citizen, they get away with it. It works. It muddles through. There is a liberty of sorts that is invigorating.

Of course, there is also the freedom to fail catastrophically and sink into misery, so let's not romanticise poverty but also, a dollar for the knock-off onyx pyramid is hard-earned, not given.

No-one would wish the poverty, chaos, disorder and discomfort of an impoverished people on anyone. But those who were able to strive were driven, tenacious, hungry, ingenious, crafty, alive and engaged.

There is no denying the driving power of aspiration, even if that aspiration is as pitiful and unambitious as getting a bite to eat or a place to spend the night.

Of course, the free-form, safety netless, tightrope society of Egypt is no great model. It demands too much of its people and offers too little in return.

But there is no escaping the uneasy feeling that the UK isn't the model either, for opposite reasons.

Easy to be smug in Africa. Easy to be wrong too.

Film review: Dead Man Down (15)

FILM
Dead Man Down
(15) 110mins
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Danish director Niels Arden Oplev makes a worthy attempt to give some heart and character to a traditional revenge movie.

REVIEW
There's no particular desire to disguise the creative signatures of this movie.

Danish art-action director Niels Arden Oplev helmed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the female lead here, Noomi Rapace, was that eponymous Scandinavian inkee.

These appointments, at least, nudge this over-complex revenge movie up a notch or two on the evolutionary ladder. Oplev, in his US debut, ensures that between suspenseful action set pieces, a slow-burn two-hander emerges, captured with neo-arthouse flare.

Colin Farrell's Victor is not the meathead that he first appears to be in JH Wyman's genre-bending script, and Beatrice is certainly not the pitiable outcast her scarred face would suggest.

While they are always destined to end up in a third act steeped in action movie cliches, they at least make a stab at challenging convention with their off-kilter, mumblecore flirtations.

To evolve the character of Victor and his tentative relationship with cagey Beatrice, Oplev slackens the pace to give them time and room.

The pair have to break out from their own damaged souls to make a connection. In a neatly Hitchcockian metaphor, they are pseudo-voyeuristic high-rise neighbours who must reach across a gulf about 20 storeys high and 60 feet wide.

Between encounters, Victor is busy playing two gangs against each other to settle a score but his super-sophisticated approach (ridiculously A-Team for a humble Hungarian engineer) begins to crumble and his dual identity is likely to be exposed.

Beatrice finds herself beginning to care, which is the last thing Victor needs, except perhaps for his own reciprocal response.

Victor needs to stay focussed on his task. For his crime syndicate boss Alphonse (a classy Terrence Howard) is beginning to look closer to home for his tormentor and ambitious low-ranker Darcy (an eye-catching cameo from Dominic Cooper) is closer than he realises to unmasking his best friend.

Director and cast are keen to suggest this is a love story rather than an action flick.

The conflict of interest is evident on screen, never entirely satisfying fans of either genre but intelligent enough to keep everyone engaged.

While never quite hitting all its marks, and laden with groan-worthy plot twists, this is an ambitious stab at putting 3D characters at the heart of an explosive revenge movie.

Spiral Notebook: Just go for it

Start It Up, by Luke Johnson,
Penguin £9.99

Time and again, I find inspiration from the following Goethe quote: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."
 
There's something to be said for the doing of things.

The doing of things is so entirely different in character to the thinking of things, the planning of things and the imagining of things that all those other qualities can be lumped together in a beige soupy cocoon while the first of them is the dazzling butterfly.

Scottish mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray, who added Goethe's couplet to the end of this famous quote, captured the alchemy of getting stuff done.

He said: "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too." 

Luke Johnson, pictured, has Goethe as one of the many affirmations in the new edition of his handbook Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business Is Easier Than You Think.

I like this book. It is one of the finest business manuals of the shipload that land on our desks at The Wharf.

Not because it teaches me the elements of double-entry bookkeeping (does such a thing exist outside '70s sitcoms?) or because it lists the prerequisites for a patent application or the dimensions of the shed demanded to incubate the invention (he is not a great fan of invention).

No, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur teaches none of those things. Instead, the chatty, anecdotal volume has an inherent impatience for anyone reading the book instead of following the urgent entreaty of its title.

Just do it. Yes, there are certain provisions and characteristics and essentials that are necessary but, hey, says Johnson, you're only ruled out if you rule yourself out. Failure is part of the adventure, he says. Failure is a milestone, a lesson, a rite of passage.

Recently, a son of this parish - Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror - was touted as a possible successor to departing David Miliband in his native South Shields seat.

Maguire was quick to dampen speculation but he must have eyed Michael Gove (former Times journalist now busy and bruised architect of New Education) and pondered what all journalists do from time to time - observing wryly and dispassionately from a distance is another element of that soft-centred cocoon.

Wielding power, taking the hits, getting stuck into something bigger than self; that's the sting - and that's the butterfly.

The Yes Book
Clive Rich (Virgin)
★★★✩✩

If you stomach the author's shameless plugging of his other interests, this book has plenty of common sense advice in the art of better negotiation.

It's most interesting sections involve the psychology required to get the best deal - and, as Rich emphasises, it's not always about getting the upper hand.

For newcomers, the advice should remove some of the fear. Veterans will find out how the rules have changed.

Film review: The Look Of Love (18)

FILM
The Look Of Love
(18) 101mins
★★★★★

IN A NUTSHELL
Confessions of the King of Soho are a guilty pleasure and a glorious evocation of an age of tawdry hedonism.

REVIEW
Actor Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom have worked together three times before this film. 24 Hour Party People, A Cock & Bull Story and The Trip showed the inventiveness of one is able to thrive despite the singular presence of the other, and vice-versa.

Here, their partnership works brilliantly once more in a fast-moving, funny and bawdy biopic that should feel tawdry but ends up a gloriously guilty pleasure.

Although the life of Paul Raymond was marked by tragedy - the framing device of the drama - Winterbottom sets out his tonal preferences with his casting.

A plethora of cameos from the front rank of comedy illuminate the brown-and-orange backdrops of a Spam fritter Britain.

Chris Addison gets a meaty role as bearded acolyte Mike Power and Simon Bird gives a spot-on turn as a '70s hipster. Also blink-and-miss Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Miles Jupp and Dara O'Briain.

In an age of internet porn for 12-year-olds, Paul Raymond's daring burlesques appear like chirpy end-of-pier fodder and our sympathies are clearly with the rule-busting impresario.

Indeed, the joy of this beautifully-designed film comes in the unabashed schoolboy relish of a man let loose in the Candy (and Amber) shop.

Cheeky chappie Paul Raymond loved and lost many people, most poignantly, his family. Wife Jean (Anna Friel) quits Britain as a result of his affair with wily beauty Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton), who also packs a suitcase.

Meanwhile daddy's girl Debbie (a mercurial Imogen Poots) dabbles in singing but drowns in drugs, dying of an overdose a month after dad is named Britain's richest man.

All the actors relish Matt Greenhalgh's whipcrack script which bundles along at speed and is packed with one-liners that are in places (and almost inevitably) pedantically Partridge-esque.

The Look Of Love is not only the Dusty Springfield song that the delicate Poots sings but also the illusion Raymond maintains to sidestep the corrupting debasement of his reality.

That the film neatly marries the two without diminishing the impact of either makes for a filthy, rich, and indelibly British, romp.

Spiral Notebook: Red tape empires strike back

Before the Olympics, there were dark mutterings that, once councils had gained their Stalinist powers, they would not easily surrender them.

And so it has come to pass. The parking lockdown, says Newham, "proved such a success" that, hey, here's a random, crazy thought, how about formalising the restrictions into a permanent regime?

Royal Docks has never had a particular parking problem because there's nothing much there but the council sees a land grab, an excuse to build up a department and a new revenue stream.

Let me inform our good burghers what will happen using the example of my development.

Yes, the public parking was occasionally abused by outsiders but when my friends came to stay they could generally find a slot.

During the Olympics, visitor parking was essentially banned, the spaces chained and padlocked. Hey, say the estate managers, that worked well. Let's keep it.

The result is that visitor parking is now paid for, pre-booked, bureaucratic and, because of this, the spaces are, er, always empty.

The shops the estate supports are denied drop-in traffic and the sum total of parking spaces is reduced. Presumably not the desired end.

However, money is made, pointless work is created, inconvenience is subcontracted to time-poor residents. So, in fact, job done.

■ A related domestic matter: The nearby Gallions Reach junction is complex. It is also a roundabout that is self-regulatory.

But, self-regulation is the arch-nemesis of bureaucracy, which demands projects to undertake, empires to protect, admin assistants to employ, flow charts to crayon.

So, for the longest time it has had traffic lights, turning a 10 second roundabout journey into a crazy, stop-start ordeal.

Just before the end of the financial year, the traffic lights disappeared for maintenance or replacement.

Someone, somewhere presumably had money left in their budget, which was better spent on Mr Sheen than returned to residents in the form of lower taxes.

For the duration of their absence, traffic flowed freely, the junction worked smoothly and self regulation prevailed.
The traffic lights returned last week along with the inefficiency, congestion and frustration.

■ Another related domestic matter: A couple of years ago in this column I made a point about a broken manhole cover on the new Jubilee Greenway in Royal Docks and mentioned how months before people had put a cordon round it, but had never actually replaced it.

And it has stayed that way. Through the Jubilee, the torch procession, the Olympics, the rain, and snow and sun.

That's because self-perpetuating bureaucratic imperialism is the name of the game, not, you know, dull old public service.

Where there is competence, may we bring clipboards; where there is urgency, may we bring indolence.

The mantra of tax-funded nest featherers everywhere.

Book review: Doughnut / The Hiding Place

COMEDY
Doughnut
Tom Holt (Orbit)
★★✩✩✩

Tom Holt is better than this. He is the master of the comic conceit played out with outrageous daring and with memorable characters.

His comedy is one of awkward predicaments, but in a plot that involves clumsy scientist Theo getting lost in the multiverse with literally an infinite number of escape routes then the comedy of restriction is somewhat lost.

It is as though that, offered such riches, he loses his discipline and focus. He writes wildly, never looking back, and in the end characters end up flinging vast slabs of emergency exposition to explain a lazy plot hole that we hadn't spotted because the story is lacking traction.

The bones of the plot are this: Theo Bernstein loses his job after destroying the Very Very Large Hadron Collider.

When his mentor Pieter van Goyen leaves him the contents of a safety deposit box in his will, Theo's life takes a turn for the better - or worse.

He finds the key to the multiverse and travels to worlds where anything is possible but given infinite power his needs are limited and his problems grow exponentially.

Neat idea lost in space.

CRIME
The Hiding Place
David Bell (Michael Joseph)
★★★✩✩

The disappearance of Justin Manning 25 years ago rocked an American small town.

His sister has been haunted by the boy's murder for years, especially now the man jailed for the crime has been paroled. A detective is also beginning to suspect something's not right.

David Bell is an authentic voice packing his novel with detail and tension. This is a fine read. The only failing is that this is territory that has been covered many times before.

Film review: The Place Beyond The Pines (15)

FILM
The Place Beyond The Pines
(15) 140mins
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Ryan Gosling is scintillating as bad boy Luke but it's downhill from there in an eloquent but overcooked look at the sins of our fathers.

REVIEW
Aaargh! What a waste! What a crime! What a frustrating loss of faith and confidence in something rammed to the gills with cinematic potential.

This ambitious film, from Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance, starts out brilliantly. Lean, taut, sexy with complex emotions and motives hinted by a look and a mumbled word.

But check out that running time. How can a tight film last so long?

Because it has a nervous breakdown, that's why. It starts jabbering.

This collapse comes in three distinct stages because the film is in three distinct chapters. Chapter one is exhilarating. Itinerant fairground stunt rider Luke (Ryan Gosling) returns to a town to find out the year before he sired a child (via Eva Mendes).

The drifter decides to settle down and do well by his boy. He finds robbing a bank is about the only thing he can do, beyond riding a bike.

His chapter closes with the arrival of policeman Avery (Bradley Cooper) and their lives clash and collide in ways that ripple down the years.

The lawyer-turned-cop - also a new father - wants to be one of the lads (a corrupt gang that includes a greasily impressive Ray Liotta) but he has an eye on the main chance. He's not above looking after No.1 as he heads for a life in politics but that means subsuming guilt over his own misdeeds and screwing over the sleazeballs.

If Luke is honestly stupid, Avery is dishonestly smart.

Years later, their two boys, inevitably, find each other. Are they fated to repeat the sins of their fathers?

The film should have left it there, hanging, allowing us to join the dots. Instead, it hammers home the point, time and time again, relentlessly, and in case you don't get the message, Cianfrance tries another way, like we're thick or something.

Then, when you're think he's done and We've Learnt Our Lesson - he goes again. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he showed up at my front door, jabbed a finger against my forehead yelling: "Got it yet, Broadbent, you dumbass?" in a range of languages and dialects to cover all eventualities.

As much as the first reel is an object lesson in intelligent minimalism, the last section is bloated, lazy and utterly, infuriatingly unnecessary.

My advice: When you see the kids meet for the first time at the school dinner table, make your excuses and preserve the memory of something rather special.

Aaargh!

Spiral Notebook: Thou shalt fill the coffers

The Book Of Mormon is doing great business at the Prince of Wales theatre.

Now impresarios are revisiting their back catalogued to see if they can reboot old favourites with a satirically religious theme to fill their coffers anew.

Mary Poppins: An enigmatic maiden sweeps into town without a place to stay. She finds lodgings and quickly founds a child-centred cult that ritually distributes magical liquids to adherents that are not what they seem. Features the hit song Like A Virgin.

Top Hat: The centrepiece of this Amish gaslight review, dubbed the unplugged musical, is the barn-raising scene assembled to the haunting acoustic melodies of If I Had A Hammer and Electric Dreams.

Oliver! A panto favourite in which the Royalists only have two weeks to save Christmas before republic pretender Cromwell cancels the festivities. Features the pop ditty Charles Just Wanna Have Fun.

Annie Get Your Gun: In the Deep South of America, fundamentalist Christians in bunkers sense a gang of East Coast liberals under orders from President Obama are prowling the hilltops looking to impose Sharia Law.

Starlight Express: John Travolta and Tom Cruise in a sci-if fantasy on roller skates in which a bunch of crazy alien invasion stories gain traction and money. Features If I Were A Rich Man and Fidelity Fiduciary Bank.

A Chorus Line: Heart-rending coming of age drama in which a troop of auditioning choirboys troop up the spire to hear the verdict of a tough-as-nails priest. Features the songs Boy For Sale and Fiddler On The Roof.

Sunday In The Park With George: Stephen Sondheim's cultured classic is re-imagined with former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey hiding in the bushes in Hyde Park spouting anti-Coalition rhetoric. Features Feed The Birds.

Greece: The tale of Achaicus, a Corinthian Christian, one of the Seventy Disciples, who according to the Bible, together with Fortunatus and Stephanas, carried a letter from the Corinthians to St Paul, and from St Paul to the Corinthians before joining the T-Birds and Pink Ladies at the Rydell High school dance.

Seventy Brides For Seventy Brothers: Tears, tiaras and tantrums as the Rev Sun Myung Moon prepares his Unification Church for another mass wedding.

Seven Brides For One Brother: Chaos and confusion at the Church of the Latter Day Saints as groom David forgets who's who in his polygamous nuptials with hilarious consequences. Features the song You're The Ones That I Want.

Seven Brides For Seven Brides: Controversial off-West End study of a mass lesbian wedding that became a spark for riots with the Church Of England. Features a reworking of the hit song Nothing Like A Dame.

Saturday Night Fever: Ferris Bueller fakes illness to avoid Matins.

Spiral Notebook: Rising to the occasion

Throughout history there have been people who have emerged to reflect the grandeur of their times. Does the moment make the man or the man the moment?

■ "You ask, what is our policy? I say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime." Winston Churchill

■ "Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!" Oliver Cromwell.
 
■ "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy." Martin Luther King

See? Modern politicians must rue the times they live in. We are a nation at peace with itself and with other ordered nations. There is poverty but there are safety nets. There is a monarchy but there are safeguards. There is injury but there is healthcare. We are not a pariah or a grand power. There are few absolutes or fundamentals. We are a middling nation, muddling along.

But, hang on. Isn't that what politicians want us to believe?

Have politicians orchestrated a provicincial blandness because it best suits their small-town talents? Do they shrink battles to match their limited scope?

Once in a generation an issue comes along - such as one central to the essence of democracy - to test their mettle. And so it is with freedom of the press.

Yes, some in our industry took liberties that were unconscionable. They now face (existing) law.

But, as Winston Churchill (no stranger to a media mauling) said: "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize."

Where are the grand statesman, surveying the sweep of history and providing wisdom, reassurance and leadership, making a case for measured calm in the face of sentiment and point-scoring?

Instead, we have politicians scrabbling a midnight compromise on the pizza box marching to the beat of washed-up fellow travellers and back-slapping their brilliance even as their petty deal unravels.

It is a moment when liberty is tested. And it is met with a bunch of municipal middle managers.

Historians will look back and see wars, economic cataclysm, industrial revolution, liberty throttled and wonder at the contentless character behind the shiny faces of the nation's duck and weave leaders.

Our politicians are Rio Ferdinand. They get the call, but decline the battlefield in favour of media work.
We want The West Wing, we get The Thick Of It. We need giants, we get pygmies.