Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✭✩
by Mike Bartlett, directed by Dennis Garnhum
Grand Theatre, Spriet Stage, London
April 19-May 5, 2018
“Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight”
(from “Jerusalem” by William Blake)
I was very lucky to catch the second last performance of Chariots of Fire at the Grand Theatre in London. Based on the Oscar-winning film of 1981, the true story of two athletes competing in track events at the 1924 Olympics would seem impossible to turn into a play. Yet, British playwright Mike Bartlett and stage director Dennis Garnhum have found highly theatrical ways to translate a film so focussed on physical action to the stage and in so doing they make the story more immersive and immediate than any film can be. The amazing Grand Theatre production is a perfect blending of movement, spoken drama and design, and it ends Dennis Garnhum’s first year as Artistic Director of the Grand on an impressively high note.
When you enter the Spriet Stage of the Grand, you notice immediately that the auditorium has been redesigned. While actors in 1920s-style track outfits are stretching and exercising, you see that the seats of Rows F and G have been removed and an oval track has been built from the stage looping into this newly opened space in the midst of the audience. On stage there are two sets of outward-facing bleachers for audience seating thus turning that on-stage audience into fans of track and field gathered to watch the training and later the track events that occur throughout the show. Besides that, the stage is fitted with a donut turntable. The outer ring allows actors to runs in place and still seem to move or to run flat out as the revolve turns in the opposite direction.
Designer Bretta Gerecke has put red streamers all around a central ring on stage even extending to the top of the balcony to give the impression that the entire auditorium is a covered gallery watching the action. Garnhum has at least a third or more of the entrances to the stage come through the audience either via the regular aisles or via the track on the outward sides of the side seating. Those sitting inside the oval of the track will find they will constantly have to turn about to see actors speaking from the back of the auditorium or from one of the loges or even singing from the front of the balcony. Garnhum and Gerecke have thus made the audience feel that they are situated in the very midst of the action.
The story, as in the film, follows the lives of two runners of very different backgrounds. We first meet Harold Abrahams (Harry Judge) as he begins his studies at Cambridge University and experiences the not-so-disguised anti-Semitism of the staff and some students even after he proves himself one of the university’s greatest hopes in running.
Eventually, in races leading up to choosing the athletes who will compete for Britain in the Olympics, Abrahams and Liddell finally meet and race against each other. When Liddell wins, Abrahams, convinced he can still beat Liddell, hires the professional trainer Sam Mussabini (Anand Rajaram). Although his training is successful in increasing his speed, it draws the ire of the college masters at Cambridge for being selfish and unsportsmanlike. Abrahams says he’ll do whatever it takes to be as fast as possible and that such training is the way pf the future. Later, we discover that the American track team has all used professional trainers.
Act 1 ends with Liddell and Abrahams both being chosen for the Olympic team along with friends of Abrahams, Lord Andrew Lindsay (Kyle Gatehouse) and Aubrey Montague (Alex Furber). Act 2 presents the great spectacle of the Olympics, the team’s successes and failures and the moral dilemma that arises for Liddell, who refuses to race on a Sunday.
Not only are primary actors for the show physically fit, they are also all fine actors. As Abrahams, Harry Judge radiates a natural self-confidence which proceeds to dim the more he encounters anti-Semitism at university and among racing officials. Judge, however, give the impression that Abrahams uses this anger at such prejudice to fuel his determination to run faster than anyone has before.
As Liddell, Wade Bogert-O’Brien projects the altogether more reserved personality of a deeply religious man. Liddell resolves the question of competitive running by seeing it as a religious act. That, however, only makes his refusal to race on a Sunday more determined when one official after another, including the Prince of Wales himself, tries to persuade Liddell give up what to them is a meaningless objection. Bogert-O’Brien conveys Liddell’s mixture of anger and frustration not just through Liddell’s curt answers but through his entire body language.
As Abrahams’ friends, Alex Furber makes an open, warm-hearted Aubrey Montague while Kyle Gatehouse is a superficially self-important Lord Lindsay, who, in fact, is quite ready to be treated as an equal by his friends. Anwyn Musico is suitably prim and proper as Sybil Evers a star of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company with whom Abrahams falls in love. (By the way, the many excerpts of G&S performed throughout the show are so delightful, one wishes Garnhum might turn his hand to a full G&S operetta some day.)
Among the older generation, Thom Marriott plays several hardened anti-Semitic characters, perhaps the most insidious being the Master of Trinity, Abrahams’ own college, who refuses to believe he is wrong about Abrahams’ character despite all proof to the contrary. Kevin Bundy plays both the humble man who is Liddell’s father and the authoritative Mr. Birkenhead, who cares about Liddell and urges him to give up his ban on Sunday activity to save himself from his teammates’ and Britain’s anger. Charles Tomlinson plays a number of stuffy characters including the Master of Caius College, but he is most amusing as the aged 6th Earl Cadogan, who seems barely to know what is happening around him. Anand Rajaram is wise and canny as Abrahams’ personal trainer Sam Mussabini, who struggles to conceal his warm admiration for Abraham under a tough exterior, although it inevitably breaks out.
What drawbacks there are have to do with the play itself. Set up as it is in alternating between a focus on Abrahams and on Liddell, those unfamiliar with the story will naturally expect that the culmination of the play will involve a race between the two. This happens halfway through after which the play takes a different course and the two Britons have a common enemy in the American team. Also, Abrahams is repeatedly asked why he runs, yet even by the end we have no answer to the question. Does he run to gratify his own ego, does he really run for Britain or is it to prove his worth against anti-Semites, or perhaps some combination of the three?
In any case, Chariots of Fire is a spectacle that is both stunningly theatrical and emotionally involving. It is thrillingly directed by Dennis Garnhum, who seems determined to raise the status of the Grand Theatre from a regional theatre to a destination theatre. Were Ontario more like England, Garnhum’s Chariots of Fire is so well done it would surely be transferred to a theatre in Toronto or Ottawa for another run for more to see. It’s a show that deserves the largest audience possible.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Ensemble of Chariots of Fire; Harry Judge (aloft) as Abrahams with Ben Cookson and Joe Perry; Wade Bogert-O’Brien as Liddell. ©2018 Christina Kuefner.
For tickets, visit www.grandtheatre.com.
2018-05-06
Chariots of Fire