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A night at the opera: That Bastard Puccini! (Park Theatre)

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It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 130 years since Puccini first premiered La Boheme. Nowadays, it’s a revered classic, and guaranteed to be on any opera company's annual programme if it needs to stay afloat. It’s a crowd pleaser with its melodrama of poor, impoverished artists loving, starving and dying in Paris. But Puccini’s La Boheme had a less auspicious beginning, with one of his contemporaries accusing him of stealing his idea and being poorly received on its first outing. And that’s at the heart of That Bastard Puccini! Currently playing at Park Theatre , writer James Inverne uses the friendship and rivalry between the two composers, Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, to weave a comic tale of creative frustration with an awful lot of facts and tidbits about the opera scene at the time. It’s part comedy, part music appreciation.  It opens with Leoncavallo (Alasdair Buchan) at home with his wife Berthe (Lisa-Anne Wood), cursing about Puccini’s latest work, which is drawn ...

Victims of circumstance: Mother Courage And Her Children @swkplay


War is hell. War is a bitch. But everyone has to scrape by and make a living. Tony Kushner's translation of Mother Courage And Her Children was given an epic staging at the National Theatre in 2009. Here in the more intimate surroundings of Southwark Playhouse, there's less spectacle. But it's still worth a look. Particularly if you're sitting on the right side of the traverse.

Brecht's piece should make you feel uncomfortable with sharp observations about capitalism, war and religion. This production just makes you feel uncomfortable. If you're sitting on the wrong side you will have to make do with either stretching your neck or imaging what's going on behind you.
Mother Courage as portrayed by Josie Lawrence seems more a victim of circumstance here. She comes across as likeable and bit funny. It is a fascinating choice to play this antihero. You begin thinking, "Well, she has to carve out a living. So what better way to do that then to travel across Europe during the Thirty Years' War selling goods to soldiers, with her children in tow?"


While this may not have been Brecht's intention, it makes the show with it's epic length watchable. Laura Checkley as the enterprising prostitute Yvette and Ben Fox as the enterprising cook also give the show life.

But this production feels more like a period piece than a critique of capitalism and war. With its awkward traverse staging things tend to just move on one end and off the other, making for long entrances and exits.

Duke Special's music works well sung by the cast, but without amplification at times feels underpowered.

Tony Kushner's angry translation first arrived during the years after the war in Iraq, which was an obvious analogy. Perhaps the timing isn't right for Mother Courage's wagon to return. For now.

Directed by Hannah Chissick, Mother Courage And Her Children is at the Southwark Playhouse until 9 December.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎



Photos by Scott Rylander


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