Reviews

After the sad fiasco of the Old Vic’s geriatric Much Ado About Nothing, it is a relief, as well as a pleasure, to report that this new production of a rarely performed early work by Turgenev is first rate, often wonderfully funny, and by the end deeply touching. The play – written in 1848 – strikes me as an unjustly neglected classic of Russian drama which has echoes of Gogol and at times seems to anticipate both Chekhov and Gorky.

There is that familiar, strangely addictive mixture of melancholy and absurdity about the piece, and it springs surprises until the very end. The action is set on a vast provincial estate which, in the vivid opening scene, seems to be waking up from a long sleep. After years away from her home, Olga Petrovna, the young mistress of the estate is returning from St Petersburg with her new husband Yeletsky, a government official.

Lucy Bailey’s beautifully fresh, observant production, in a fine translation by Mike Poulton, brilliantly captures the rush and bustle of the servants as they prepare to meet their mistress, heralded by a hilariously wheezy, out-of-tune brass band. One man, however, has particular cause to worry about the arrival. Kuzovkin (Iain Glen) has been living in the great house for 30 years, one of those impoverished hangers-on so commonly found in Chekhov. In the opening scene we see that he is reduced to sleeping on the top shelf of the linen cupboard, from which he descends with both agility and surprising dignity.

Although he claims Olga Petrovna loves him, his future seems scarily precarious. He may be a gentleman but he is penniless, having spent all his money on a never-ending court case. But things seem to be going well. The new master invites him to an all-male luncheon and seems a decent chap. But then his nemesis arrives. At first Richard McCabe, who plays a neighbouring landowner, Tropatchov, merely seems an absurd fop, with his babble of slanderous gossip, corrupt face and epicene manner.

But McCabe, once a brilliant Iago, leaves no doubt that we are in the presence of a character of vicious malignity. Chortling merrily, he takes odious pleasure in humiliating Kuzovkin and getting him drunk with endless toasts. Goaded beyond endurance, this baited bear of a man roars out the one great secret of his life – a secret that seems certain to destroy both his own happiness and those of others about him.

It’s an electrifying scene, at once funny and almost too painful to watch, and the double act between the slimy McCabe and the tormented, drink-befuddled Glen is some of the most exciting acting I have seen on stage this year. The second half is just as fine, less explosively theatrical to be sure, but instead full of deeper feeling, satisfying plotting and a lovely moment of honesty and tenderness between Glen and the confused young mistress of the house (a touching Lucy Briggs-Owen). William Dudley’s designs are sumptuous and atmospheric, and Bailey’s production beautifully captures the play’s rich variety of mood and tone. It’s great to find the Old Vic back at the top of it’s game.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Iain Glen seems to be cornering the market in the Russian repertory. He was last seen on the boards as a moulting heart-breaker, allergic to commitment, in Longing, William Boyd’s conflation of two Chekhov stories. Before that he was a brilliantly volatile Vanya for Lucy Bailey. Now he teams up with Bailey again for this splendid revival of Fortune’s Fool (1848) – also known as The Parasite – an early tragicomedy by Turgenev.

Mike Poulton’s canny adaptation was first staged at Chichester in 1996 starring Alan Bates who later took it to Broadway where it garnered a Tony nomination for Best Play. But this is the London premiere and I am delighted to report that that Bailey’s production, which is horribly funny and deeply touching, marks an impressive return to form by the Old Vic after the sad miscalculation of the recent Much Ado About Nothing.

Glen is superb here as Kuzovkin, one of those impoverished gentlemanly hangers-on who seem to have been as staple a feature of the Russian country estate as silver birches and samovars. Having outlived the master who used to treat him as court jester, he simply stayed put – sleeping on the top shelf of the linen cupboard.
But now Olga Petrovna (Lucy Briggs-Owen), the daughter of the household, is about to return after seven years with a polished St Petersburg husband (Alexander Vlahos) who is eager to take command.  Will her remembered fondness for him save our hero from eviction?

The future looks promising until Kuzovkin meets his nemesis in the fat, effete shape of Tropatchov, a sadistic fop (sublimely well-portrayed by Richard McCabe) who delights in humiliating people he considers socially inferior. At a lunch party on the first day, this smirking bully gets Kuzovnik drunk by forcing him to quaff endless toasts and he eggs him on to tell the ludicrously convoluted story of how his family cheated him of his wealth. It’s a merciless ritual that escalates chillingly here and ends with Kuzovkin,in a dunce’s crown and driven beyond endurance, retaliating with a shocking revelation.  The rest of the play deals with the repercussions of that outburst.

Filled with strong echoes of Gogol and with premonitions of Chekhov, Fortune’s Fool also shifts shift from the grotesque comedy of the first act to the heart-tugging melodrama of the second. In Bailey’s beautifully considered production, though, there isn’t a jolting switch of tone and this brought home to me how the preoccupation that persists throughout is the rather Dickensian question of what constitutes a real gentleman. Glen shows you a shabby ineffectual dreamer who struggles to keep his head held high but whose sensitivity of spirit has not coarsened. He even manages, in a lovely absurd touch at the start, to descend from the linen cupboard with a certain dignity. In their wrenching scenes together, Lucy Briggs-Owen’s Olga piercingly conveys her recognition of his worth, unlike her spineless spouse whose offer of hush money results in one of the most ambiguous and painful happy endings on record.

The Independent, Paul Taylor

Iain Glen plays the more sympathetic, put-upon Kuzovkin with comparable skill. At first one is tempted to think of the character as a bit of a wimp for adopting the role of fortune’s fool. But Glen shows that Kuzovkin, like so many figures in Russian drama, is comic outside and tragic within; in the second act, he grows into a figure of genuine moral stature.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

It is rare to come out of the theatre with a pressing sense that one would like nothing better than to see the same production again and as soon as possible. Thanks to director Lucy Bailey, one is persuaded that Turgenev’s seldom-performed Fortune’s Fool (1848) is a little masterpiece. It’s a play that, if not quite equal to any by Chekhov, comes pretty close. Turgenev has the Russian gift for the tragicomic, the steadfast refusal to simplify the psyche or to polarise good and evil – life is allowed to be a painful muddle.

Fortune’s Fool opens with the sight of a colossal linen cupboard and maids busying themselves with its lower shelves. It’s not until he stirs that we notice the man who has been sleeping inside the cupboard all along, on the top shelf. This is Iain Glen’s Kuzovkin, the fool of the title, a figure whose threadbare, sparrow-brown clothes and far-fetched existence, surviving on charity on a country estate, do not obscure his sympathetic gallantry. It is affectingly clear that he’s a gentleman. Glen’s performance is perfect: his glamour wonderfully illuminates his character in moments of uprightness and humiliation alike. He wakes from his linen cupboard to a household in uproar: the newlywed lady of the house is about to return with her husband, now the estate’s master.

There is exquisite ensemble work as the handsome country house (designed by the inimitable William Dudley) comes to life with much rushed, and often inefficient, industry. Dustsheets are whipped off, a giant chandelier is tenderly unwrapped, a gold samovar is steered into place. And when the happy couple are within sight, the house is beside itself: I have never seen better dramatisation – or choreographing – of the panic before a party.

The self-important steward (entertaining Daniel Cerqueira) is at pains to remove Kuzovkin and his bashful, doleful, chess-playing companion Ivanov (the excellent John McAndrew) from the premises. Their presence is seen to be a blemish. One assumes trouble lies ahead for Kuzovkin – and it does. But it doesn’t come in a form one could have predicted.

The happy couple are more sympathetic than a lesser writer would have allowed (and Mike Poulton’s new version of the play is nuanced and compelling). Lucy Briggs-Owen’s Olga is light and pretty as thistledown but has the ballast of being an intelligent, loving woman too – it’s a beautiful performance. She apologises for her husband, saying he appears “cold” but explaining that he is not. Alexander Vlahos’s Yeletsky is masterly and subtle: a pale, pensive, fastidious presence, a control freak about the estate’s accounts but not a man without heart.

In Turgenev’s hands, people are as difficult to pin down as they are in life. Yeletsky can also seem absurd, a toy husband, ready to stamp his little feet in their silly knee-high patent riding boots. Meanwhile, there is a wonderful contrast between Olga’s flyaway ardour – she dances through the house like a summer breeze – and the servants, an awkwardly parked group, paying their respects in the doorway.

The newlyweds have scarcely settled before the unwelcome arrival of a startling neighbour: Tropatchov (Richard McCabe). He resembles a marooned opera singer who, in lieu of an aria, cannot stop talking. He wears a grassy velvet frock coat, is noisily camp and frequently breaks into impromptu Italian. He has a peculiar, stunted sidekick (the priceless Richard Henders) whom he does not permit to speak and dubs “Little Fish”.

McCabe’s performance is magnificent: calculatedly over the top, disagreeably compelling, brilliantly vicious. This is a man who helps himself to lilies from one of the house’s vases and shreds them to decorate himself with a spectacular buttonhole. And it’s not just the lilies that suffer. Kuzovkin is about to be shredded too.

It would be a spoiler to say more – except to hint at more than a skeleton in Kuzovkin’s linen cupboard. One leaves the theatre moved, entertained and confounded – all at once – and, in the absence of a sequel by Turgenev (which would have been best of all), feeling that imperative to return.

The Observer, Kate Kellaway

Iain Glen is utterly magnetic, at once dignified and embarrassingly diffident as Kuzovkin. His lengthy, sozzled account of a complicated legal case is a virtuoso piece in itself and makes the required transition from entertaining absurdity to grotesque torture.

The Financial Times. Ian Shuttleworth

Credits

Kuzovkin

Iain Glen

Tropatchov

Richard McCabe

Olga

Lucy Briggs-Owen

Yeletsky

Alexander Vlahos

Trembinsky

Daniel Cerqueira

Pyotr

Dyfan Dwyfor

Karpatchov

Richard Henders

Praskovya Ivanova

Janet Fullerlove

Ivanov

John McAndrew

Akulina

Bryonie Pritchard

Masha

Emily Tucker

Anpadist

Simon Markey

Vaksa

Paul Ham

Kuzovkin Understudy

Patrick Cremin

Reviews

★★★★ The Telegraph
★★★★ The Guardian
★★★★ WhatsOnStage

William Boyd has fused two Chekhov stories from the 1890s, A Visit to Friends and My Life, to create a new play. The result is inevitably something of a hybrid: neither pure Boyd nor pure Chekhov. But it works because it deals with eternal Russian themes – and because it is performed with rare musical precision.
Boyd’s chosen stories neatly intersect. In one, a charismatic Moscow lawyer, Kolia, returns to the provinces to try to rescue Sergei, a heavily indebted drunk whose estate is mortgaged to the hilt. In the other narrative strand we see Misail, an architect’s son who wants to be a roof-painter, trapped into marriage with the daughter of a wealthy vulgarian. What links the stories, which take place in and around a dilapidated summer house, is the shared sense of futility and waste. Kolia’s tragedy is that he is terrified of commitment; Misail’s is that he has made a commitment and now regrets it. Watching Boyd’s ingenious mix-and-match, it is impossible not to be reminded of Chekhov’s future masterpieces. Unrequited love, marital misalliances and auctioned estates usher us into the world of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. But although it is tempting to see the play as a Chekhovian medley, what finally matters is its humane stress on the need for endurance.
Nina Raine’s production gains immeasurably from luxury casting. Iain Glen is remarkable as Kolia, suggesting a man who – possibly like Chekhov himself – combines effortless charm and emotional ruthlessness. Tamsin Greig, as the middle-aged doctor clearly besotted by him, subtly evokes the quiet anguish of the unfulfilled heart. And there is a clutch of fine performances from Alan Cox as the alcoholic Sergei, Natasha Little as his despairing wife and William Postlethwaite as the well-born Misail who has a Tolstoyan urge to identify with the workers. Not perhaps a wholly original play, but one that powerfully reminds us that Chekhov’s stories contain the seeds of all his dramas.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

The actors are uniformly splendid. A superlative and surprising Vanya for Lucy Bailey last year, Iain Glen offers a penetrating portrayal here of the kind of moulting heart-breaker who can’t, as we say these days, “commit”. And Tamsin Greig is quietly devastating as the pragmatic, lonely doctor, Varia. I love the faint glint of arrogance she gives to the masochism with which the character presses the romantic claims of a younger rival and does any actor stub out cigarettes with a more expressive bleakness than this splendid performer? It’s good to see John Sessions back on stage, too, as a rather oily arriviste.

The Independent, Paul Taylor

A new Chekhov play, Longing, has been created by novelist William Boyd from two of the Russian author’s short stories and given a wonderfully skilled and well-cast production by Nina Raine that certainly looks Chekhovian.
Designer Lizzie Clachan provides silver birches and sycamore, birdsong (tits and blackbirds), a colourful betrothal party, samovars and brandy bottles, and a delightful summer house in the wooded corner of a run-down country estate. Boyd has written completely new dialogue that manages not to sound like second-rate spoof Chekhov. The play is tilted towards a melancholic nearly-reunion of Kolia and Varia, and it’s expertly, very touchingly played, with no swooning or sentiment, by Glen (last year’s outstanding Uncle Vanya) and Greig. The young girls, too, are exceptionally good, and Cox and Sessions fill out their contrasting studies in irresponsible alcoholic bonhomie and go-getting, landscape-changing interference with great gusto.

What’s On Stage, Michael Coveney

Credits

Kolia

Iain Glen

Varia

Tamsin Greig

Tania

Natasha Little

Radish

Tom Georgeson

Misail

William Postlethwaite

Olga/Mrs Luganovitch

Mary Roscoe

Natasha

Eve Ponsonby

Sergei

Alan Cox

Dolzikhov

John Sessions

Kleopatra

Catrin Stewart

Director

Nina Raine

Author

William Boyd

Designer

Lizzie Clachan

Reviews

A witty translation, an evocative, claustrophobic setting, performances that hum with trapped energy – this is great Chekhov. Precious little happens. The men grumble and rage, the women yearn and suffer, and nearly everyone feels sorry for themselves. Yet even as they are comic, ridiculous, pathetic, these characters are also touching, believable and all-too recognisable. Catch yourself griping on the way home and you’ll know how honest Chekhov was. This sympathetic exasperation with his characters comes across brilliantly in Poulton’s salty, witty translation. It also characterises Lucy Bailey’s moving, physically vivid production, which deftly deepens with the play into a painful examination of frustrated hopes.
Bailey makes the most of the intimacy of her venue: here we are in the same world as the characters. William Dudley’s simple set is evocative but not too pretty. This is a working country estate. And Bailey seats the audience on four sides, so that we are closeted with the characters and feel their frustration and claustrophobia. When they soliloquise, we seem to be listening in on their thoughts, and when Vanya and Astrov burst into wild, drunken dancing they nearly land on top of the people in the front row.
In these close quarters, the actors make you feel the agony and absurdity of their characters physically. The show hums with trapped energy. Iain Glen’s volatile Vanya prowls the set like a caged tiger. You can see the traces of the young man who devoted himself to running his brother-in-law’s estate, in the belief that that brother-in-law was a great professor. But you also see how, realising that he has wasted 25 years, Vanya seethes with corroded energy and bitter disappointment. He is matched by William Houston’s vigorous Astrov, a great bear of a country doctor who spends his life mired in poverty and disease yet clings to a rusting belief in the potential of human beings. The arrival of the professor and his unhappy young wife, Yelena, drives both men into a frenzy of desire, resentment and despair.
There is a lovely performance from Charlotte Emmerson as Sonya, Vanya’s hard-working niece, while David Shaw-Parker is very funny as the bumbling Telegin and David Yelland is a splendid pompous windbag as the professor. It’s vigorous, raw and humane: great Chekhov.

The Financial Times, Sarah Hemming

For his role as Vanya, Glen’s jutting jaw has been fitted with a great hedge of beard, which he strokes pensively. He is on fine form: a dormant volcano who finally erupts at plane to sell the estate into which he has poured his life. Vanya’s explosion threatens to pitch him into madness, ad you can see him desperately trying to steady himself at the brink, like a drunk clutching a lamp-post. Iain Glen gives a Chekhov masterclass.

Daily Mail, Patrick Marmion

Lucy Bailey’s production of Uncle Vanya is the funniest and most vehemently volatile in mood of any account I have seen of this great play. The desperate desire to live that rages inside Chekhov’s frustrated failures erupts here with a rich sense of the ridiculous. But in a way that complicates rather than coarsens our sense of the marooned melancholy lot. Bill Dudley’s lovely, spare design opens up The Print Room to it’s fullest extent and positions the audience, involvingly around the four walls (into which framed photographs have been stenciled) of the play’s interiors. Iain Glen is on brilliant form as a crumpled scrubbely bearded Vanya who negotiates his mid-life crisis like some frantic, antic comedian offering a running commentary that is full of mocking mimicry and gesture. And yet you never loose sight of the generous soul that has been thwarted by circumstance.

The Independent, Paul Taylor

When Iain Glen’s compelling Vanya spins into rage and starts firing off his gun, the impact is far more alarming and more personal than usual. In this latest outbreak of audience-threatening explosions in small spaces – a tremendous water spout in The Kitchen Sink recently came near to drenching those closest to the stage – he looks easily capable of taking out the front row.

The Observer, Susannah Clapp

My abiding memory, though, will be of two great, growling performances from Glen and Houston, a couple of top notch, hairy actors who don’t mess around and who play Chekhov vigorously and superbly, without kid gloves. The evening’s a tear-stained delight.

What’s On Stage, Michael Coveney

Awards

• Won Best Production – Off West End Theatre Awards

Credits

Uncle Vanya

Iain Glen

Astrov

William Houston

Sonya

Charlotte Emmerson

Marina

Marlene Sidaway

Serebryakov

David Yelland

Yelena

Lucinda Maillward

Telegin (Waffles)

David Shaw-Parker

Maria Vasilyevna

Caroline Blakiston

Yefin/Workman

Andrew Hanratty

Director

Lucy Bailey

Translator

Mike Poulton

Designer

William Dudley

Lighting

Richard Howell

Sound

Gregory Clarke

Casting Director

Joyce Nettles

Reviews

Further proof that English theatre is going through a wonderfully positive patch is furnished now with this terrifically compelling and often disarmingly comic account of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Not only is actor Iain Glen making a most distinguished debut as a director but he is turning in a witheringly satirical performance as Pastor Manders, the sanctimonious clerical hypocrite whose real God is not the Lord but his own fearfully guarded reputation in a community of small-minded backbiters… Lesley Sharpe breaks your heart as Mrs Alving. She’s the mother whose plans to protect her son from the sins of the father (sins that her own repressiveness have caused) have backfired disastrously. A luminous Mrs Alving sounds as counter-intuitive as a “retiring Cleopatra” but here the glinting steel of woman’s progressive thought is as potent, in the earlier episodes, as the excruciating tyre-burn skid marks as she later makes as she backpedals her way into a revelation of truth… Frank McGuiness’s new version derives a lot of energy from pointed but never overdone alliteration… Shockingly good.

The Independent, Paul Taylor

Director Glen does not let actor Glen embody only the scary evangelist. True, his Manders works himself into a fit of righteous rage when he’s calling Mrs Alving a sinner and telling her “there’s guilt on your soul”, all because she wasn’t to the roué husband who impregnated her servant and fatally infected her son. There are delicate touches here too; a complacency and conceit reflected in his looming, preening body language, asexual susceptibility suggested by his comical interest in the servant Regina’s young flesh, a hint of vulnerability beneath the scary certainty. This is a fine performance, subtle yet charismatic, one that simultaneously shows the preacher’s power and his weakness. And there is strong support from Malcolm Storry as the sleazy hypocritewho dupes Manders, from Sharp as a Mrs Alving rapturously besotted with her boy and quiet yet firm in her defence of his freethinking; and from Treadaway as an Oswald whose mind as well as his clothes might have been dragged through the jungle. I’ve seen some good Ghosts in my time, but none better than this.

The Times, Benedict Nightingale

The play works powerfully in Frank McGuiness’s unstuffy new translation. Glen is both comic and chilling as the self-righteous Pastor Manders and his moral collapse when his integrity is subjected to Ibsen’s forensic examination is a joy to behold… Lesley Sharp goes right to the heart of this domestic tragedy. Harry Treadaway memorably captures the twitchy terror of a disease he doesn’t understand and there is strong support from Jessica Raine as the pert maid who isn’t quite what she seems and Malcom Storry as her devious father.

The Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Credits

Mrs Helene Alving

Lesley Sharp

Pastor Manders

Iain Glen

Oswald Alving

Harry Treadaway

Engstrand

Malcolm Storry

Regine Engstrand

Jessica Raine

Director

Iain Glen

Designer

Stephen Brimson Lewis

Associate Director

Amelia Sears

Lighting

Oliver Fenwick

Sound

Richard Hammerton

Photographer

John Haynes

Reviews

Philip Franks’s superb production of Separate Tables which once again reveals Rattigan’s empathetic ability to reach deep into the heart of quiet desperation. Set in a private hotel in Bournemouth this beautifully constructed double bill brings a large supporting ensemble of hotel residents to life while focusing on two separate stories… Gina MeKee’s mixture of manipulation and increasingly desperate loneliness and Iain Glen’s burning passion and disappointment are superbly caught… But is is the second piece, Table Number Seven, that holds the greater interest, especially since Chichester is presenting the play in a version never performed in Rattigan’s lifetime. Because of theatre censorship, and Rattigan’s fear of exposing his own homosexuality, it originally concerned a bogus major convicted of touching up young women in the local cinema. But in this alternative version “Major Pollock” has been bound over for soliciting men on the esplanade, an idea partly inspired by the notorious arrest of John Gielgud in a public lavatory. It makes more dramatic and emotional sense, and Glen gives one of the finest performances of his career as a man whose life has been blighted by fear and sexual shame… There are moments here as moving as Chekov and as painful as Strindberg.

The Times, Charles Spencer

It’s heartening to see the continuing rehabilitation of Terence Rattigan, previously condemned as an irredeemably middle-class writer of “well-made” plays. This elegant, sensitive revival of his 1954 masterpiece , rounding off another cracking season for a revitalized Chichester, reminds us that Rattigan sets off all manner of emotions pulsating under the polished surfaces of his dramas. His master touch in this interconnected double bill is to have the two leading actors – a terrific pairing of Gina McKee and Iain Glen – play two different characters either side of the interval, while everyone else in this private Bournemouth hotel remain the same. In the second half, Stephanie Cole’s redoubtable battleaxe, Mrs Railton-Bell comes into her own, persecuting the Major (Glen, a wrenching tangle of borrowed pride and own-brand shame) and condemning her adult daughter (Gina McKee) to perpetual childishness. She hasn’t, however, counted upon the proto-liberal sympathy expressed with classic British reserve, stirred up by worldly-wise landlady Miss Cooper (spot-on Deborah Findlay). In ever sense, another victory for Rattigan.

Evening Standard, Fiona Mountford

Festival 2009 at the CFT ends on a gloriously high note with director Philip Franks’ superlative double dose of Terence Rattigan at his very best… It’s the highlight of the main-house summer season – a faultless production engages from the very first moment.

Chichester Observer, Phil Hewitt

Chichester Festival Theatre has come up with a handsome production of this fine play.

Daily Mail, Quentin Letts

Credits

Iain Glen

John Malcolm / Major Pollock

Gina McKee

Anne Shankland / Sibyl Railton-Bell

Stephanie Cole

Mrs Railton-Bell

Deborah Findlay

Miss Cooper

Josephine Tewson

Lady Matheson

John Nettleton

Mr Fowler

Veronica Roberts

Miss Meacham

Connie Walker

Mabel

Lia Rogers

Doreen

Geoff Breton

Charles Stratton

Holly Cross

Jean Tanner

Director

Philip Franks

Designer

Stephen Brimson Lewis

Lighting

Paul Pyant

Photography

Manuel Harlan

Reviews

The role of Wallenstein is a great one, endowed by Iain Glen with the perfect mix of arrogance, idealism, vanity and vulnerability. One only wishes Glen spent more time on the classical stage. Angus Jackson’s hurtling production has first-rate support from Anthony Calf as the devious Octavio, John McEnery as a spidery war minister, Tom Brooke as a calculating Swedish colonel and Charlotte Emmerson as the hero’s ruinously intemperate sister-in-law. If you relish historical-political drama on the grand scale, get down to Chichester.

The Guardian, Michael Billingtom

Schiller’s verse drama of a fallen idol, rarely seen here, deserves to be much better known, especially in such a thrilling production as this one by Angus Jackson… Completed in 1799, the trilogy can run to ten hours, and has here been compressed, by Mike Poulton, to less than three…it does not feel rushed – rather, jet-propelled. A superb cast, whose verse-reading is supple and muscular, drive this tale of a military commander who defies God, emperor, and nation until all that awaits him is a knife or a noose.

The Independent, Rhoda Koening

Mike Poulton is becoming Britain’s Friedrich Schiller… Here’s a piece that makes Shakespeare’s history plays seem morally unsubtle. What’s the meaning of duty, loyalty, oaths? With the protestant Wallenstein obsessively poring over astrological charts, what’s the place of chance, fate, faith, religion in human affairs? Anyone who thinks complexity is a dramatic plus will relish this brisk, bold revival. Glen catches the contradictions of the soldier who sees himself as a new Julius Caesar: chivalric yet arrogant, charismatic yet naïve.

The Times, Benedict Nightingale

Chichester Festival Theatre has come up with a handsome production of this fine play.

Daily Mail, Quentin Letts

Credits

Iain Glen

Prince Albert von Wallenstein

Jessica Turner

Elizabeth von Wallenstein

Anthony Calf

Count Octavio Piccolomini

Paul Hickey

Count Terzky

Charlotte Emmerson

Countess Terzky

Max Irons

Max Piccolomini

Annabel Scholey

Princess Thelka

Fergus O’Donnell

A friar / Gotz

Denis Conway

Buttler

Tom Brooke

Gustav Wrangle

Ferdy Roberts

Isolani / The Mayor of Eger

Sebastian Armesto

Illo

John McEnery

von Questenberg / Gordon

James Atherton

Kinsky / Page

Andrew Westfield

A butler / Soldier

Director

Angus Jackson

Design

Robert Innes Hopkins

Lighting

James Whiteside

Sound

Jonathan Suffolk

Fight Direction

Terry King

Photographer

Catherine Ashmore

Reviews

Nunn’s production is all the more powerful for the concentrated performances he draws from all five performers.

The Independent, Lynne Walker

The emotional range of the leading roles is a rare gift for Iain Glen and Imogen Stubbs, whose performances are of a quality that audiences travel miles for they are both brilliant.

Birmingham Post, Terry Grimley

Stubbs enjoying a terrific stage partnership with that superb actor Iain Glen. He brilliantly nails his character’s insufferable vanity in the opening scene and his many subsequent cruelties. He also captures both the gnawing sexual discontent and the way that old sparks of desire never quite die, in a brave performance that does not seek the audience’s sympathy in it’s exploration of the dark side of the male psyche.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Glen is superlative as the chilly and unlikeable Johan, full of savage asides – yet even while almost bouncing at the prospect of freedom, he is on the verge of tears.

The Sunday Times, Christopher Hart

Credits

Iain Glen

Johan

Imogen Stubbs

Marianne

Dominic Jephcott

Peter/Arne

Tilly Blackwood

Katerina/Eva

DeNica Fairman

Mrs Palm/Mrs Jacobi

Adaptation

Joanna Murray-Smith

Director

Trevor Nunn

Designer

Robert Jones

Reviews

Yep, that’s six stars. The first full house the theatre section has awarded. Dominic Cooke’s intense, driven production brings new life to a play that can sometimes tip over into melodrama. It’s a real pleasure that this production is very much an ensemble piece. In the performance of his career, Iain Glen plays the hard-working, no-nonsense Proctor as a towering oak of a man. Michelle Terry is also excellent as a pent-up Mary Warren, as is Robert Bowman as the Reverend Hale, who desperately tries to control the madness he first unleashes.

Time Out, Jane Edwardes

Cooke’s gripping and gutting production. With stage presence to burn, Iain Glen is superlative at each stage of Proctor’s anguished journey, he conveys both the sturdy, rustic ordinariness of the character and his growing moral stature. You feel this Proctor truly could fall like a tempest on James Laurenson’s coldly determined Danforth and his court, if part of him weren’t so eaten up by guilt. When battered, fettered Glen sinks to his knees and struggles between a longing for life and a desire to do right; the naked, un-sentimentalised agony of it breaks your heart. Essential viewing.

The Independent, by Paul Taylor

Its last new production before their Shakespeare marathon, the RSC’s revival of Arthur Miller’s the Crucible is a riveting choice. Dominic Cooke’s superb production not only brings of the play’s political urgency but liberates it from historical naturalism. But the real revelation lies in Cook’s staging. While staying in period, he brings out the play’s metaphysical dimensions. Hildegard Bechtler’s set is a hinged white box that gives tantalizing glimpses of the Rousseau-like forest that lies beyond these clapboard houses, Jean Kalman’s magnificent lighting also shows sunlight penetrating the plain interiors as if seeking permission to enter. Nature and order are seen in opposition.

Iain Glen is sensational. His monumental John Proctor is a figure of Lawrentian power and sensuality eternally cursed for his momentary aberration with the teenage Abigail. Elaine Cassidy’s Abigail is not the usual diabolical nymphet, but a young girl whose sexual stirrings find no outlet in this community. And Helen Schlesinger’s Elizabeth Proctor marvellously completes the pattern by suggesting the physical coldness behind her charity.

The Guardian, Michel Billington

Cooke directs a shatteringly powerful production that never relaxes its grip for a moment, and wisely allows the audience to spot contemporary parallels without directorial nudging. There are outstanding performances from Ian Gelder as the craven Rev Parris, James Laurenson as the icily authoritarian Danforth (all the more frightening because he genuinely believes he is doing God’s work), and Robert Bowman as the witch hunter who painfully learns the error of his ways.

The Telegraph, Charles Spencer

What a fresh, unnerving air of topicality Arthur Miller’s allegoric masterpiece about the late 17th-century Salem witch-trials has achieved. Dominic Cooke’s remarkable production, with its keynotes of menace and simmering hysteria, premiered this September in Stratford-on-Avon, where I and a swarm of critics applauded it.

Miller’s hero, farmer John Proctor, superlatively brought to anguished, outraged life by Iain Glen in the performance of his career. Glen, a muted, staggering wreck of a man, faces his climatic, elemental struggle over whether to save his name or his life. As if to symbolize his escape the set walls open up as he walks out of the scene, which like The Crucible itself, leaves you overwhelmed.

Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh

This is one of the greatest plays by the greatest dramatist of the 20th century, and Dominic Cooke’s production rises to it with a sense of harrowing intensity. Iain Glen gives the most commanding performance of his career.

Sunday Times, John Peter

Dominic Cooke’s splendid, tense production reminds you of what a master of dramatic momentum Miller was. The ensemble playing is flawless and Iain Glen’s Proctor superb… the passion in his performance is consuming and unforced. He is a series of heatwaves, scorched by truth, hanging for it.

The Observer, Kate Kellaway

Awards

Olivier Awards 2007

• Won Best Revival
• Won Best Director
• Nominated Best Actor- Iain Glen
• Nominated Best Lighting

What’s On Stage Awards – Five Nominations Including:

• Best Actor- Iain Glen
• Best Revival

Credits

Iain Glen

John Proctor

Helen Schlesinger

Elizabeth Proctor

Robert Bowman

Reverend John Hale

Ian Gelder

Reverend Parris

Zoe Thorne

Betty Parris

Trevor Peacock

Giles Corey

James Laurenson

Deputy-Governor Danforth

John Stahl

Judge Hathorne

Lorna Gayle

Tituba

Elaine Cassidy

Abigail Williams

Laura Elphinstone

Susanna Wallcot

Caroline O’Neill

Ann Putnam

James Staddon

Thomas Putnam

Alison Garland

Mercy Lewis

Michelle Terry

Mary Warren

Darlene Johnson

Rebecca Nurse

Clifford Rose

Francis Nurse

Ken Bradshaw

Ezekiel Cheever

Tim Chipping

Marshal Herrick

Susan McGoun

Sarah Good

James Pearse

Hopkins

Catherine Skinner

Ensemble

Dominic Cooke

Director

Hildegard Bechtler

Designer

Jean Kalman

Lighting

Photography:

David Scheinmann – Crucible Image
Keith Pattison – All other photos

Reviews

Richard Eyre’s thrilling production at the Almeida re-administers, as if for the first time, the devastating shock and the sheer affront of Ibsen’s drama. Best is sensationally good. Her Hedda is achingly alive in her deadliness, and unsentimentally poignant in the way she shows you the underlying vulnerability of this manipulative, socially-conditioned bully. The production is superlatively cast. Iain Glen is all suavely lethal insinuation in a frock-coat as Judge Brack. Lisa Dillon projects a wonderful, dogged, fierce integrity (so goading to the heroine) as her antithesis, Thea. Gilian Raine beautifully presents the resented Aunt JuJu. Richard Eyre is doubly to be congratulated, for he has directed the play using his own custom-built translation, which is alert of every blackly comic twist and turn.

The Independent Review, Paul Taylor

In Richard Eyre’s fine new production, Eve Best gives us a dazzling ironic Hedda: one aware of life’s absurdity and viewing it with a mixture of dark humour and angry exasperation:it is a triumphant performance shot through with a cold-hearted humour and acute self-loathing:Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent Tesman is not some slippered pantaloon but a youthful scholar who takes his work seriously. Even Mrs Elvsted, dismissed as a “chumpî by Hedda, becomes a vibrant and positive force in Lisa Dillon’s performance. And Iain Glen is a superb Judge Brack: not just a predatory lounge-lizard but a man who sees instantly though Hedda’s mixture of cowardice and social pretence.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

There is not a weak link in the cast, and Richard Eyre’s production, based on his own sharpening of the text is an exercise in virtuoso stagecraft. The final suicide is a real Tarantino moment, and alone worth the price of the ticket.

Sunday Telegraph, John Gross

Best, with a hectic flush on her face and commanding the stage with a wired, dangerous energy, nails all the paradoxes of this great role. Eyre’s production, simply yet atmospherically designed by Rob Howell and making telling use of Saint-Saens’s ominous Danse Macabre between acts, is blessed with some marvelous supporting performances. Benedict Cumberbatch memorably captures both the infatuated love and the moral cowardice of Hedda’s second-rate academic of a husband, while Iain Glen is hypnotically sinister as the blackmailing Judge Brack. Jamie Sives harrowingly captures the despair of alcoholic relapse as Eilert Loevborg and Lisa Dillon is deeply touching as the woman who loves him so fervently:the Almeida has an electrifying hit on its hands.

Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Glen is superb as the dangerous Brack, creeping into Hedda’s life like smoke under a door. She never realizes she is being outmanoeuvred at every turn, yet the audience feel a frisson of sexual alarm when he straddles the bench behind her, eyeing her up like a market trader, letting his well-groomed facade drop for the briefest second.

Sunday Times, Victoria Segal

It is rare for a West End transfer production to move with total assurance into its new home, with nothing lost en route – but Richard Eyre’s magnificent, must-see revival of Hedda Gabler, which started out at the Almeida slots into place at the Duke of York’s as neatly as if it had know itself destined to take up residence there all along. Unreservedly recommended.

Daily Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish

Awards

Laurence Olivier Awards 2006:

• Best Revival
• Best Actress, Eve Best
• Best Director, Richard Eyre
• Best Set Design, Rob Howell

And 2 Olivier Nominations.

Credits

Eve Best

Hedda Tesman

Benedict Cumberbatch

George Tesman

Gillian Raine

Juliana Tesman

Iain Glen

Judge Brack

Lisa Dillon

Thea Elvsted

Sarah Flind

Berthe

Jamie Sives

Eilert Loevborg

Richard Eyre

Direction

Rob Howell

Design

Peter Mumford

Lighting

John Leonard

Sound

John Haynes

Photography

Reviews

The Seagull is a big, beautiful, slow-burning, but finally rich and almost flawless piece of theatre, so profoundly entertaining that I felt I could happily have watched these characters evolve over days and weeks, rather than three and a half hours:This sense of dramatic space is magnificently reflected in Ferdinand Woerbauer’s set, which opens up the great expanse of the King’s Theatre stage so that even as the setting changes between acts, we can see the materials for the whole play spread out before us throughout the evening. Stein’s mysterious way with time itself, allowing it to ebb and glow at what seems like the speed of ordinary life, but with an added dimension of compelling intensity.

The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan

The acting across the whole ensemble is a sublime mix of understatement and melodrama, pinpointing the passions raging beneath the deathly civility of everyday life. You couldn’t ask for a better production.

The List (Glasgow & Edinburgh events guide), Mark Fisher

Fiona Shaw presents us with a woman who is wreathed in actorly display yet is also in a state of nervous panic: This kind of behavioural detail extends to all the characters. Iain Glen’s Trigorin is a revelation in that, for once, we grasp that it is partly the novelist’s self-loathing that leads him wantonly to destroy Nina. When Glen talks of his “literary storehouse”, he beats his brains as if aware that he uses experience as a substitute for imagination. Jodhi May’s Nina, desperate for celebrity seduction, is like a bird walking naively into the waiting trap.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

The Seagull takes fresh flight. Peter Stein’s sensational, superbly acted production of Chekhov’s tragic-comedy of unrequited love liberates the play from the familiar frame of sexual obsession and its slant upon Hamlet-like mother-son relations.

Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh

There is fine work from Charlotte Emmerson as a sharp, chronically depressed Masha; Paul Jesson as a touching Sorin; and Tom Georgeson, in magnificently unpleasant form as that most disobliging of stewards, Shanraev.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Glen exudes a magnetic charge, his ardour slowly burning through his cool slouch. Pennington’s performance is exceptionally fine-tuned as well, with the Doctor’s caring sagacity giving way to callous shrugging at the incurability of the human condition.

The Independent on Sunday, Kate Bassett

As AJ Weissbard’s slow-burning lighting draws ever gloomier, the tattered remains of Konstantin’s once-proud theatre look for all the world like a ship run aground, the dead bird beside it the most haunting of totems in this vivid, brilliant production of insight and profundity.

The Herald, Neil Cooper

Credits

Elliot Cowan

Medvedenko

Charlotte Emmerson

Masha

Tom Georgeson

Shamraev

Iain Glen

Boris Alexeyevitch Trigorin

Paul Jesson

Sorin

Jodhi May

Nina

Dearbhla Molloy

Polina Andreyevna

Fiona Shaw

Irina Nikilayevna Arkadina

Cillian Murphy

Konstantin Treplev

Michael Pennington

Yevgeny Sergeyevitch Dorn

Janine Mellor

Housemaid

Ronnie Simon

Yakov (a labourer)

Jordan Young

Cook

Peter Stein

Director

Ferdinand Wogerbauer

Set Designer

Arturo Annecchino

Composer

Reviews

This is a time for superlatives. Trevor Nunn’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire (Lyttelton) is one of his, and the National Theatre’s, most brilliant achievements, and it confirms, if it needs confirming, Tennessee Williams’s status as one of the greatest tragic writers of the 20th Century. Glenn Close plays Blanche DuBois, and the moment she appears, you know that she is one of the lost ones. Close moves tentatively yet purposefully: she knows that Blanche is both a fugitive and an aggressor. This is a great, subtle performance thrillingly theatrical but unostentatious, and as powerful, intelligent and moving as anything I have seen on this stage.

Iain Glen gives a bravura performance: he uses his body like a matador: ruthless, confident, provocative, alert. The angle of his head, his loose, animal walk, suggest pent-up violence that enjoys exploding. Like Howard Wagner, Willy Loman’s boss in Death of a Salesman, Stanley represents the aggressive confidence and casual brutality of a victorious nation. Essie Davis is the best Stella I have seen: sensuous, tolerant, funny, mature. Robert Pastorelli turns in a wonderful performance, hard and self-deprecating: a touching but unsentimental portrait of a strong and vulnerable man to whom devotion is second nature. Bunny Christie’s magnificent set turns on the big revolve and Blanche walks, with a final effort at gentility, through the shabby rooms. Like all the truly tragic characters, she’s both a self-destroyer and a victim. She takes the doctor’s arm and puts her head on his shoulder like a dewy-eyed girl from the great house, moving towards her promised land with a protective, old-fashioned beau.

The Sunday Times, John Peter

Shame on those Equity chauvinists who say that Tennessee Williams’s greatest creation, Blanch DuBois, should be played by a British actress. They should instantly skulk back to their lairs. Glenn Close answered them last night in the best possible way: by giving a performance that was incisive yet passionate, intelligent yet deeply moving. In one corner is Stanley Kowalski: in Iain Glen’s fine, fierce performance not a straightforward yob but a sexually besotted husband who, thanks to his limited imagination and quick temper, sees in Blanche only pretension, folly and a threat to his marriage. In the other is Close’s Blanche, who is a lot more than the cracked belle that actresses have made her. But Close couldn’t flower if Trevor Nun’s direction hadn’t combined with Christie’s designs to create so rich a setting. A black woman sings the blues. A chimney sweep pushes a pram complete with brushes. A prostitute propositions a sailor. It could be fussy, but in fact it’s liberating. Everywhere there’s hubbub – but above all in Blanche’s soul.

The Times, Benedict Nightingale

One of the defining plays of the last century has been given one of the defining productions of this at the National by Sir Trevor Nunn. he poetry, jazz and steaminess of Tennessee Williams’s New Orleans tragedy has been fully realised in a way I never expected to see. The role of Stanley Kowalski, the chippy Polish-American hunk, is taken by our own brilliant, bestial Iain Glen. This Polish-American bruiser seduces his wife’s sister, the flaky alcoholic Blanch DuBois, in one of the most explicit and disturbing rape scenes ever written. And going to pieces as Blanch proves Glenn Close’s finest hour as an actress.

Kowalski’s charged, violent marriage to Blanche’s sister Stella (superbly played by Australian actress Essie Davis) is unparalleled still in modern drama. And Sir Trevor’s production, opening up the suffocating proximity of the play with a new momentum on a stunning, revolving design by Bunny Christie, does this masterpiece a real favour of poetic realisation.

Daily Mail, Michael Coveney

To bring out the comedy and the tragedy of Blanche, the fake grandeur and the genuine pain, is a great achievement. And Close is much helped by Nunn’s fine production which turns the play into a tenement symphony and which shows the surrounding life of the quarter.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

Glenn Close slipped into Blanche’s pretentiously over-decorative shoes and brought the house down. And in this dazzling three-hour production everything revolves around her character Blanche: her pretence, lies and haunting memories. The debilitating reality of Blanche’s dirty past are all brought grippingly to life. And Iain Glen was a revelation as Ms DuBois’ rough and ready brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. A complex character; in turn funny, detestable, hateful and desirable – tells Blanche’s suitor Mitch (Robert Pastorelli) all about her shady past. As her sympathetic little sister, Stella, Essie Davis is excellent.

Daily Mirror, Kevin O’Sullivan

Iain Glen is in sensational form as Stanley Kowalski, lean, sexy and thrillingly dangerous.

Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Awards

Laurence Olivier Awards 2003:

• 2 Wins and 2 Nominations

Credits

Iain Glen

Stanley Kowalski

Robert Pastorelli

Harold Mitchell (Mitch)

Essie Davis

Stella Kowalski

Glenn Close

Blanche DuBois

Sue Kelvin

Eunice Hubbel

Sam Douglas

Steve Hubbel

Gary Oliver

Pablo Gonzales

Jonathon Forbes

Young Man

Valerie Farr

Mexican Woman

Katherine Reilly

Prostitute

Jack Pierce

Drunkard

William Hoyland

Doctor

Miquel Brown

Negro Woman

Andrew Westfield

Man

Jack Pierce

Sailor

George Eggay

Tamale Vendor

Joanna Hole

Nurse

Billie Baker

With

Trevor Nunn

Director

Bunny Christie

Designer

Paul Pyant

Lighting Design

Catherine Ashmore

Photographer

Reviews

Hare’s free adaptation brings the piece bang up to date. Set in modern London with the shadow of Aids looming in the background. His script is also packed with excellent jokes. Mendes directs with precision and wit – all 10 sex scenes take place in a black-out, with a caption dryly informing us just how long each coupling lasts – though this most humane of directors also finds moments of unexpected warmth undreamt of by Schnitzler. Mark Thompson contributes a neon-lit set of impeccable minimalist cool, and there’s a hip electronic score by Paddy Cuneen.

Best of all there are Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen, each playing five characters with bravura skill, real feeling and a sexual charge that at times threatens to blow the roof off the theatre. Everyone’s reaction to this show is going to be conditioned by their own sexual preferences. Even I found time to notice that Glen is a handsome hunk with fine cheekbones, who ranges from London cabbie through awkward student to hilariously affected playwright with superb detail and definition. Kidman is a terrific actress who brings all five of her roles to instantly distinctive life, whether she’s playing a cheap tart, a sophisticated married woman, a coke-sniffing waif of a model or a femme fatale of an actress. In this production, you might just as well lie back and enjoy the sheer style and sexuality on display: it’s pure theatrical Viagra.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Sam Mendes has mounted a brilliant counterattack to the play’s drawbacks. First, his script is a new version by David Hare that is not just updated but upbeat. Second, and far more importantly for the word at large, he has cast two gorgeous creatures – Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen – to lay all the parts. Nicole Kidman has a delicate, lovely beauty that makes her instantly vulnerable on stage. Iain Glen meanwhile, turns in a cracker of a performance, both wonderfully charismatic and delightfully funny, as he slithers from one plausible liar to another.

Financial Times, Sarah Hemming

One actor and one actress – Iain Glen and Nicole Kidman – play all the roles: five each. The result is a dazzling exhibition of acting, brilliantly and cunningly crafted but completely unostentatious. Kidman makes a thrilling stage debut, all the more so because in this small theatre, not the minutest nuance of voice or movement goes unobserved. Iain Glen returns from the work of big musicals to the straight theatre in glittering form. Hare’s version is, in the deepest and most essential sense, completely faithful to Schnitzler. His changes reflect Schnitzler’s point that sexual and social morality mutually shape one another, and that a sense of need and dominance are simultaneously sexual and social. Who you are and where you are make a difference.

Sam Mendes’s production has a masterly fluency, but it is never fluid at the expense of definition or clear lines of power.

Sunday Times, John Peter

Both performers have the skill and versatility to embody very different people in basic as well as surface ways. Together they give you glimpses of the excitement, wariness, pretension, hypocrisy, callousness, yearning and disappointment of the chase and its aftermath.

The Times, Benedict Nightingale

Glen acts as tuning fork and lightning conductor, always setting the right note, always earthing Kidman’s erotic charge in a carefully defined reality. Sam Mendes’ direction provides the perfect context. The pace is rapid but never rushed. The movement is clear and unfussy. The tone is precisely as it should be: sympathetic but detached. It all makes for a funny, intelligent and razor-sharp satire that strips bare not just the follies of the flesh but also the delusion of desire itself.

Daily News (Broadway), Finton O’Toole

Awards

1999 Laurence Olivier Award Nominations:

• Best Actress, Nicole Kidman
• Best Actor, Iain Glen
• Best New Play, David Hare
• Best Director, Sam Mendes
• Best Set Designer. Mark Thompson

1999 Laurence Olivier Award:

• Best Lighting Designer, High Vanstone

1999 Drama League Awards (Broadway)

• Best Actor, Iain Glen
• Best Actress, Nicole Kidman

1998 Evening Standard Award:

• Special prize for unique Contribution to London theatre
  (Nicole Kidman)

Credits

Nicole Kidman

The girl
The au pair
The married woman
The model
The actress

Iain Glen

The cab driver
The student
The politician
The playwright
The aristocrat

Sam Mendes

Director

Mark Thompson

Designer

Hugh Vanstone

Lighting

Paddy Cuneen

Original music

Scott Myers

Sound

Mark Douet

Photographer

Reviews

For the third time in little more than a decade, or so it would seem from all but about two of the first dozen reviews, Alan Boublil and Claude-Michel Shonberg have written a great and classical musical which nobody likes except the public. When they come to write the history of our theatre in the second half of this century, and in the process to rewrite the first reactions to it, they will, I now firmly believe, come to realize that one team outclassed in ambition and sometimes also in achievement even that of Lerner-Loewe or Rodgers-Hammerstein or Rodgers-Hart. We are now being told that Martin Guerre is ‘not as good as Les Mis’ when that opened to equally dismissive notices. Martin Guerre is as much a masterpiece of musical magic and mystery as that earlier score. The new story, lighter and brisker than Les Mis, is again the story of a community in transitional historical crisis… Declan Donellan as director wondrously brings his own intimate experience with his Cheek by Jowl and such other revolutionary small-scale touring companies as Theatre de Complicate and Shared Experience to recreate the tensions of an isolated village community… And Cameron Mackintosh’s hugely loving production ensure that whenever spectacle is needed we get it.

The Spectator, Sheridan Morley

Iain Glen’s performance is in a league of its own. In his musical debut, Glen betrays none of his inexperience and displays a pleasing light tenor voice that complements his first-calibre acting.

Plays and Players, Amanda Hodges

Now that it has reopened, Martin Guerre (Prince Edward) is a big, magnificent, epic musical, powerful and thunderous. It is what, in the old days, used to be called a great evening out… Declan Donnellan’s direction begins with an air of lavish competence, but soon explodes into tense, controlled drama. The music has an epic sweep and can release huge waves of feeling that wipe out the occasional inanities in the lyrics. Iain Glen is a heroic hero: manly, attractive and passionate. Everyone involved should feel proud of it.

The Sunday Times, John Peter

The romantic story has acquired much greater depth and feeling: Iain Glen is a handsome, rugged hero who radiates an innate decency, and Juliette Caton is now a far more touching figure, with a stronger role in the narrative.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Awards

Laurence Olivier Awards 1997:

• Best Musical, Martin Guerre
• Nomination for Best Actor in a Musical – Iain Glen

Credits

Iain Glen

Arnaud Du Thil

Juliette Caton

Bertrande De Rols

Jerome Pradon

Guillaume

Matt Rawle

Martin Guerre

Michael Matus

Benoit

Ann Emery

Hortense

Sheila Reid

Celestine

Julia Sutton

Ernestine

Susan Jane Tanner

Madame De Rols

Martin Turner

Pierre Guerre

Marcus Cunningham

Father Dominic

Paul Leonard

Judge Coras

Nathan Harmer

Andre

Stephanie Putson

Catherine

Michael Cahill

Notary

Declan Donnellan

Director & Co-Adaptor

Cameron Mackintosh

Producer

Nick Ormerod

Designer

Edward Hardy

Lyrics

David White

Musical Supervisor

David Charles Abell

Musical Director

Jonathan Tunic

Orchestrator

Bob Avian

Choreographer

Craig Revell Horwood

Resident Choreographer

Michael Le Poer Trench

Photographer

Reviews

Michael Boyd’s lucid, superbly acted production brings a distinctive masterpiece to compelling life. The lead casting – Emma Fielding’s stoically frozen Penthea, Iain Glen’s fatally obsessed Orgilus, and Philip Voss’s possessively besotted Bassanes – is superb: three doomed figures performing a present-tense action on borrowed time.

The Times, Irving Wardle

How wonderful to see a grand period piece in a superlative production which respects its style and its tradition with the most scrupulous intelligence. The setting may be ancient Sparta, but Boyd knows that this is essentially a Caroline drama. The atmosphere is both sultry and grand: a resplendent English baroque. Ford’s writing is both muscular and florid, shifting between passion, bombast, ribald comedy and blind rage, and occasionally stopping your heart with flashes of almost great poetry. Ford is portraying broken hearts: people who suffer, and contemplate their agony with a dark, doomed relish. This is the psychology of melancholy, in which pain is nourished with pride. The acting, clear and, so to speak, ornately classical, is first rate. Iain Glen is Orgilus, a proud, tortured man wounded beyond pride or shame. Emma Fielding’s Penthea is a study in blasted feeling.

Sunday Times, John Peter

Michael Boyd’s enthralling Royal Shakespeare Company production, greatly admired at Stratford last autumn, reaches London further improved. The memorable acting of Iain Glen and Emma Fielding as the lovers doomed never to have their fill of each other, or indeed to have each other at all ought to wring even metal-plated hearts. Emma Fielding’s magnificent, anorexic Penthea is a searing portrayal of female desperation. With pallid face, and in virgin-white dress, hair severely scraped back, she has the air of the determinedly hopeless. Iain Glen as the object of Penthea’s desire astutely identifies Orgilus as a man deranged, nursing his murderous schemes under a velvet cover of smiling affability. But there’s no missing his rage and pain either – as his voice quavers, shakes and breaks under strain. In fatal revenge he ranges from violence to gentleness, and ends up slithering in his own blood-bath. It is a spectacular but truthful performance, brimming with sardonic humor and emotional dynamism.

Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh

This is exactly the kind of play The Swan was designed to revive; and Boyd’s production memorable suggests that the power of stoicism derives from the intensity of feeling it conceals.

The Guardian, Michael Billington

Glen is superb with Orgilus’s unstaunchable bitterness. Fully equal to the verse, which demands searching intelligence, he is vocally a model of eloquent variety – passion, sarcasm, obsequiousness and cold murderous glee. His lost Penthea is Emma Fielding, whose fine, ruined energy is very impressive. Melancholy, period-coloured music by Craig Armstrong sets the grievous tone with perfect tact. In timing and blocking, Boyd finds a lucid shape for the play (no mean task). We discover that The Broken Heart is actually a minor national treasure.

Financial Times, David Murray

Credits

Ewan Hooper

Amyclas

Olivia Williams

Calantha

Robert Bowman

Ithocles

Emma Fielding

Penthea

Tony Britton

Crotolon

Iain Glen

Orgilus

Philip Voss

Bassanes

Anthony Naylor

Armostes

William Houston

Prophilus

David Beames

Nearchus

Jonathan Dean

Amelus

Robert Gillespie

Tecnicus

James Barriscale

Phulas

Gwynn Beech

Lemophil

Anthony Cochrane

Groneas

Elaine Pyke

Euphranea

Fiona Tong

Christalla

Julia Crane

Philema

Doreen Hepburn

Grausis (An old woman)

Ken Dudley

Lord, Attendant

Michael Boyd

Director

Tom Piper

Designer

Rick Fisher

Lighting Designer

John Woolf

Music Director

Terry King

Fights

Allan Titmuss

Photography

Reviews

A great Henry V is born. Iain Glen makes a thrilling Stratford Début. The young director Mathew Warchus (at 27 he is the same age as Henry V at Agincourt) sees the play steadily and sees it whole. Having reminded us of modern parallels, Warchus’s production (atmospherically designed by Neil Warmington) doesn’t deprive us of the clanking armour and Plantagenet pageantry that are such an enjoyable part of the play. The battle scenes, with their great whooshes of real flame and deafening explosions, are every bit as exciting as they should be:Any production, however is going to stand or fall with the actor playing Henry V and Iain Glen doesn’t disappoint. He is very sexy (I predict crowds of swooning schoolgirls at the stage door) but he is much more than a slab of lean beefcake. There is a sense of formidable intelligence as he delivers the verse, and he powerfully captures the king’s tortured humanity. In the notorious speech at Harfleur, when Henry V threatens “fresh fair virgins” with the sword, he is clearly a decent man playing a hard-hearted, politically expedient role which he finds almost intolerable. On the eve of Agincourt, his lonely sleepless agony is reminiscent of Christ in the garden. But Glen also touchingly suggests the king’s warm sense of fellowship with his men (especially in the beautifully delivered St Crispin’s Day speech) and, in the lovely wooing scene at the end, this exceptional actor reveals a real flair for comedy. There are other performances to savour. Lional Haft is wonderfully funny as that absurd and garrulous Welshman, Fluellen and Clive Wood plays Pistol with roaring vigour. But this production will undoubtedly be remembered for the achievements of two young men of outstanding talent and extraordinary promise: Iain Glen and Mathew Warchus.

The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Iain Glen played Henry V last night and won a decisive victory. He went in at the deep end for his debut with the Royal Shakespeare company and emerged three and a half hours later looking like one of the most significant stars the troupe has recruited in a decade. His performance is a multi-faceted masterpiece, a bravura display of actorial skill that shows he has matured into a star in the very best sense of the word.

Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh

Shakespeare’s Henry V is the first play about war in the English language; and the moment Mathew Warchus’s new Stratford production begins, you realize that for him, as for Shakespeare, the play speaks with two voices. It speaks of the past, and to the present. Tony Britton is the Chorus, taking the stage with massive confidence: a rock-like, dignified presence in a modern military overcoat with a poppy in his buttonhole. Behind him, a medieval royal robe is displayed, surrounded by poppies on high stalks. You are, simultaneously, in the past and the present:

Iain Glen’s Henry is both prisoner and hero. His heroism, his frank, manly behaviour with his soldiers, is the conduct of a born commander, but also of the cool politician who knows that such inspiration is militarily priceless. His spontaneity is infectious; and yet there is also a deliberateness and a hard remoteness about him that confirms that he did indeed kill Falstaff’s heart and is perfectly capable of ordering the necessary execution. Role by role, Glen is confirming that he is one of the finest and most sensitive actors of his generation. He can create a thrillingly convincing personality out of the most disparate psychological ingredients.

The Sunday Times, John Peter

Glen is constantly engaged in the progress of Henry’s thought; seldom in Shakespearean acting do we find thought and word so spontaneously connected. Only while negotiating the terms of his victory after Agincourt does this King relax within his new authority; and in the glow of that relaxation he wins all hearts.

Financial Times, Alistair Macaulay

The stage is a hydraulic ramp emblazoned with Henry’s dates, and a portal upstage through which you see blue skies and cawing crows over Agincourt. Gruesome bits of limbs in armour are suspended on chains. This production at once allows us to enjoy the vigour and pageantry of Henry V and see it in varying perspectives. It tells the story, as W B Yeats said it should be told: “Cheerfully, as one watches some handsome spirited horse” but with “tragic irony”. Catch it if you possibly can.

The Scotsman, Kate Clanchy

Awards

Evening Standard Awards:

• Nomination for Best Actor, Iain Glen

The Shakespeare Globe Classic Awards:

• Nomination for The Richard Burton Award for most promising newcomer, Iain Glen

Credits

Iain Glen

King Henry V

Ewan Hooper

Archbishop of Canterbury / Lord Grandpré/ Duke Of Burgundy

Kevin Doyle

Bishop of Ely/ Duke of Bourbon

Colin Jarrett

Duke of Gloucester / Lord Scroop

Sean O’Callaghan

Duke of Clarence

David Beames

MacMorris / Duke of Exeter

Ken Dudley

Duke of York

Gwynn Beech

Earl of Westmoreland / Dauphin

Tim Griggs

Earl of Warwick

David Hounslow

Bardolph / Michael Williams

Nigel Cooke

Nim / Montjoy, the Herald

Clive Wood

Pistol

Joanna McCallum

Mistress Quickly / Alice

Daniel Evans

Boy

Steven Elliot

Earl of Cambridge / Gower

Anthony Naylor

Sir Thomas Grey / Constable of France

Linal Haft

Fluellen

Liam O’Callaghan

Sir Thomas Erpingham / King Charles VI

Quill Roberts

John Bates / Duke of Berri

Adrian Irvine

Alexander Court / Duke of Orléons

Judith Sweeney

Queen Isabel

Julia Crane

French Ambassador

Monica Dolan

Princess Catherine

Mathew Warchus

Director

Neil Warmington

Set designer

Kandis Cook

Costumes designer

Alan Burrett

Lighting Design

Terry King

Fight Director

Marc Vibrans

Composer

Ivan Kyncl

Photography

Reviews

It’s a touching, brilliant construction. It’s both deeply thought and deeply felt. It works superbly in the intimate atmosphere of the Donmar. The acting is like Michael Blakemore’s direction: exquisite, hard, and precise. I should book soon if I were you.

The Sunday Times, John Peter

Under Michael Blakemore’s sensitive direction the cast perform with distinction. Iain Glen and Teresa Banham make us understand what it is like to be so newly-planted in love one is forever digging up its roots of see how they have grown.

Daily Mail, Jack Tinker

There are fine performances in the two main roles from Iain Glen and Teresa Banham: both of them are fresh and engaging, but neither of them tries to convert the play into the routine romantic drama which it isn’t. Brenda Bruce also scores as the disenchanted landlady who has seen it all before (not that she has necessarily got it right either), and Michael Blakemore directs the proceedings with the intelligence they deserve.

Sunday Telegraph, John Gross

Michael Blakemore’s fine production expertly keeps the mood upbeat but has sufficient flexibility to accommodate moments of wistful profundity or panic.

The Independent, Paul Taylor

Credits

Teresa Banham

Cath

Iain Glen

Phil

Brenda Bruce

Pat

Michael Blakemore

Director

Ashley Martin-Davis

Designer

Mark Henderson

Lighting designer

Conrad Blakemore

Photographer

Reviews

The Glasgow Mayfest has a production worthy of any great international festival: Iain Glen’s Macbeth at the Tron, directed by Michael Boyd, is the most exciting revival of the play since Judi Dench and Ian McKellen curdled blood at the RSC in the mid-1970s:Local hero Iain Gen completes a fine quartet of muscular Shakespearean performances. He is a very moving Macbeth, pitiful and dependent as his mind fills with scorpians, bent double with remorse before Banquo’s ghost. The onset of his resolution is frightening to behold. Glen is strongly partnered by Alison Peebles, whose Lady M is a wheel spinning free and coming to rest in the sleep-walking scene. The fight is tremendous and there is a particularly good Macduff from Peter Mullan.

The Observer, Michael Coveney

The temptation to rave about Iain Glen in the lead role has to be measured against the production’s many riches. This is no imbalanced star vehicle, but an intellectually, physically and emotionally coherent interpretation that makes sense at every turn: Michael Boyd has made this 400-year-old tragedy, for all its set-text familiarity, fresh and alive, newly gripping and brimming with ideas. A production worth two or three return visits.

The List, Mark Fisher

Iain Glen’s Macbeth is a performance of the utmost distinction. Lady Macbeth frets about the milk of human kindness in her husband: Glen is the first actor I have seen to show this in action. His Macbeth is both dreamer and doer, handsome, generous, frank-faced and anxious to be liked. His soldierly qualities seem beyond doubt:The Witches’ prophecy makes him uneasy: you watch the inner life of a highly emotional man being polluted by poisonous thoughts. His relationship with his spitfire wife (Alison Peebles) is more than just sexual À he is tied to her by a deep bond of feeling which strengthens rather than undermines his masculinity. This is a heroic Macbeth, but under the spreading mask of evil a sense of fugitive humanity keeps flashing at you. As the end draws near, Glen’s face begins to look battered and ravaged, a portrait of terror. He is both ominously calm and belligerent; symptoms of a permanent hysteria. Flecks of foam appear on his lips. A fallen angel.

Sunday Times, by John Peter

The production, set to somber playing by three all-seeing cellists, is brimful of stunning devices that eschew familiarity and force a radical re-examination of the play. The final sword fight between Macbeth and Peter Mullan’s Macduff is a breathtaking and stomach-churning clash for survival and revenge.

The Scotsman, by Richard Mowe

Glen gives a towering performance as Macbeth. His physical and emotional range is immense:It confirms its advance billing as a project which shows a way forward for the making of theatre in Scotland, not only as a collaborative funding effort but in the profundity of its artistic ambition.

The Herald, John Linklater

Awards

Glasgow Mayfest Awards:

• Best Actor, Iain Glen

Credits

Iain Glen

Macbeth

Alison Peebles

Lady Macbeth

Peter Mullan

Macduff

Fiona Bell

Lady Macduff

Tom McGovern

Malcolm

Stuart McQuarrie

Ross

Robert Carr

Banquo

Jimmy Chisholm

The Porter

Andrew Dallymeyer

Duncan

Tony Cownie

Lenox

Craig Smith, Kevin Macloed

Retainers

Michael Boyd

Director

Tom Piper

Designer

Craig Armstrong

Composer

Photography

Sean Hudson

Reviews

Max Stafford-Clark, recently remarked that he would have asked Shakespeare for a few rewrites if the Bard were around today. Such breathtaking arrogance conjured up a vision of director’s theatre at its most presumptuous, and I feared the mauling of a masterpiece. In fact the evening turns out to be a real success, occasionally provocative, to be sure, but blessed with a clarity and emotional intensity that reach to the heat of Shakespeare’s greatest play: Tom Wilkinson’s superb performance in the title role digs deep into the dark core of the drama. He’s a great bear of a man, and his awesome rages are both terrifying and strangely moving, the sheer pressure of emotion occasionally reducing him to baffled silence. His fear of madness is presented with heartbreaking simplicity: But there are a host of other striking performances. The Fool startlingly but effectively played by Andy Serkis as camp cockney drag artist, Lia Williams plays Goneril as an ice-cold beauty, proudly stalking the stage with regal hauteur. Her scene with Edmund (excellent work from Adrian Dunbar), achieves a thrilling erotic charge, while Saskia Reeves’s Regan has a neurotic nastiness that seems to verge on mental illness: her vivaciousness chills the heart.

But if Lear shows mankind at its worst (the blinding scene is especially ghastly here), it also shows it at its best. Iain Gen is a splendidly sympathetic Edgar, barely able to maintain his disguise as Poor Tom in the face of so much suffering. There is equally fine work form Philip Jackson as the doggedly loyal Kent and Hugh Ross as a Gloucester who gains real vision in blindness.

Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Wilkinson takes the verse in his stride; he does not pander to it, but never squanders it. There are some wonderful moments. The scene where Edgar leads his father to the brink of suicide over the cliffs of Dover can scarcely have been better done. The tension in what by now has become a thriller is breath-taking. Iain Glen, playing Edgar, has a claim to being the most outstanding actor in the production after Wilkinson’s Lear…this is probably the most exciting production of Lear you will ever see.

Financial Times, Malcolm Rutherford

An invigorating, challenging production. Each scene is surely staged, richly considered.

Observer, Michael Coveney

Credits

Tom Wilkinson

King Lear

Philip Jackson

Earl of Kent

Hugh Ross

Earl of Gloucester

Iain Glen

Edgar

Adrian Dunbar

Edmund

Lia Williams

Goneril

Saskia Reeves

Regan

Cara Kelly

Cordelia

Andy Serkis

Fool

Peter-Hugo Daly

Duke of Cornwall/ Old Man

Nigel Lindsay

King of France/ Gentleman

Jason Watkins

Duke of Albany

Rupert Wickham

Duke of Burgundy/Curan

Fraser James

Oswald

Max Stafford-Clark

Director

Peter Hartwell

Designer

Rick Fisher

Lighting Designer

Photography

John Haynes

Reviews

The Chichester Festival has begun its 30th anniversary season with a thoroughly enjoyable Renaissance Theatre production of Coriolanus.

Financial Times, Malcolm Rutherford

Kenneth Branagh is as formidable a Coriolanus as we have seen for some time. With his hair slicked back and nothing but a silver breastplate over his torso, he has a sweaty, thuggish look. Any Tom Brown would think hard before jumping into the ring to try his luck with this primeval Flashman. Yet the really alarming part of the Branagh anatomy, one more cutting even than his sword, is his tongue: I haven’t heard anybody, either actor or aspiring politician, sneer so stylishly in ages: There are no tendentious interpretations, no fancy “directorial concepts” here; just Branagh’s electricity, Dench’s truculent punch, Richard Briers’s Menenius, a complacent housemaster out of his depth with a prefect as headstrong as Coriolanus.

The Times, Benedict Nightingale

Iain Glen exudes toughness confidence and menace and looks ripe for brutality. He is devious to his fingertips. When he sweeps Corialanus up in a homo-erotic embrace it could be to crush the life out of him.

Evening Standard, Nicholas De Jongh

Volumnia herself is played by Judi Dench: a fine stern portrait:but there are lots of other good things, from Richard Briers’s Menenius À half fogey, half old fox À to Susannah Harker’s touching performance as Coriolanus’s wife. Iain Glen makes Aufidius an opponent fully worthy of his great rival.

Sunday Telegraph

Awards

Regional Theatre Awards:

• Nomination for Best Actor, Iain Glen

Credits

Kenneth Branagh

Caius Martius

Richard Briers

Menenius Agrippa

Judi Dench

Volumnia

Iain Glen

Tullus Aufidius

James Simmons

Titus Lartius

David Gant

Cominius

Susannah Harker

Virgilia

Helga Brindle

Valeria

Alex Scott & Jamie Harvell

Young Martius

Jimmy Yuill

Sicinius Velutus

Gerard Horan

Junius Brutus

David Cardy

Roman Citizen

Conrad Nelson

Roman Soldier

Chris Barnes

Roman Citizen

Michael G. Jones

Senator

Rory Murray

Messenger

Theresa Fresson

Lady-in-Waiting

Tim Killick

Aedile

Andy Hockley

Volscian Soldier

Gary Mavers

Volscian Soldier

Tim Supple

Director

Bunnie Christie

Designer

Ben Ormerod

Lighting Design

Photography

Richard H Smith

Reviews

With Peter Wood’s affectionate production of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer (1973), the Chichester festival Theatre has a real hit with which to end the season:This is one of the most purely enjoyable of all English plays, combining a superbly inventive plot with a wonderful generosity of spirit:Peter Wood is a specialist in this period and as always treats the text with respect:The star of the evening is Iain Glen, and significantly he shows us the unattractive side of Marlow as well as his more amiable qualities. There is something faintly repulsive about a man who sets about seducing the lower orders with gusto but becomes entirely tongue-tied with women of his own class, and Glen’s prissily fastidious performance lets us see the arrogance that is often the reverse side of shyness. But the point isn’t laboured, and the character is redeemed by comic suffering. In Kate Hardcastle’s presence he becomes so overwhelmed that just sitting on a chair becomes a nightmare of stiff, unwieldy limbs while his protracted stammering, the single work “Madam” holding him up for as long as 20 seconds before he finally spits it out, is as agonizing as it is hilarious. This is comic acting of a very high order:The captivating Susannah Harker brings both sense and sensuality to the role of Kate, and the tender relationship with her father, played with a cherishable mixture of kindness and indignation by Denis Quilley is beautifully observed.

Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

Glen is wonderfully disarming and funny:paralysed by shyness with women of his own class but a bottom-pinching rake with the serving wenches. In the vicinity of Susannah Harker’s fine Kate, Glen develops an absurdly bashful-formal pigeon-toed gait, such as you might adopt if ever forced to process through Westminster Abbey naked, and his face virtually implodes with the effort of surmounting his dreadful speech impediment.

Independent, Paul Taylor

Chichester’s exuberant new staging of She Stoops To Conquer had the audience responding with wave upon wave of laughter and rounds of applause after several strong exit lines.

Financial Times, Alastair Macaulay

Awards

Regional Theatre Awards:

• Nomination for Best Actor, Iain Glen

Credits

Jean Boht

Mrs Hardcastle

Jonathon Morris

Tony Lumpkin

Denis Quilley

Mr Hardcastle

Susannah Harker

Kate Hardcastle

Leonie Mellinger

Constance Neville

Iain Glen

Charles Marlow

Tom Hollander

George Hastings

Gary Fairhill

Jeremy

Michael G. Jones

Sir Charles/ Roger

Theresa Fresson

Pimple

Peter Wood

Director

David Walker

Designer

Bill Bray

Lighting Designer

Corin Buckeridge

Music

Edward Hall

Assistant Director

Photography

John Haynes