London Theatre

We saw three plays in London last week; each had a highlight, each left me with quibbles. Grace Pervades featured acting by Ralph Fiennes that took my breath away; Inter Alia had a provocative argument (or more) with no easy answer; Les Liaisons Dangereuses was simply a spectacular production.

Grace Pervades, David Hare’s 32nd play(!), provided a history of English theater in the late 19th century through the persons of Henry Irving (Fiennes) and Ellen Terry (Miranda Raison). There was more biography than drama, which was well enough for what it was. The subplots involving Terry’s two children added flesh to the story, although I found the acting by the lesbian trio a couple notches below the stars’. When I came across Irving’s portrait by Bastien-Lepage in the National Portrait Gallery later in the week, I felt I knew him.

Inter Alia’s Rosamund Pike has been praised so widely that she won’t mind my saying that I personally found her performance off-putting. She commanded the stage every second, and if she wasn’t talking frantically she was changing her costume. After half an hour, before the play’s plot point had even been introduced, I was thinking, “enough already!” I think I could still have been absorbed in the serious issues the play raised with a lot less frenzy on stage.

We saw Liaisons after a private backstage tour of the National Theatre, which provided context for the fabulous costumes and swirl of scenery the production offered, but no hint of the swooping choreography of the 18th-century courtiers that lifted the story above and beyond its sordid liaisons. When not dancing, unfortunately, the play came down to earth, and of the seven leads I enjoyed the company of but one. I wish Valmont (Aidan Turner) had not been so slimy and resistible, Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville) not so aged, and the color-blind actors better actors. I was the furthest right in the eighth row of Lyttleton Theatre and still felt I had a good seat, adding to a very positive impression of the NT as an institution if not–after watching videos of The Importance of Being Earnest and War Horse–of its acting.