Alun Armstrong shines in, and lifts, a slight play

To Have and to Hold is the new play from Richard Bean, writer of the massive global hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, and takes place in the Yorkshire village of Wetwang – and yes, it’s a real place.

 

There, we meet Jack and Florence Kirk, a couple in their 90s, both struggling with ill health and the realities of old age. They are joined by Rob and Tina, their adult children, who live far away from Yorkshire. Rob, a novelist and screenwriter, flits between London and LA, while Tina, who runs a group of private GP services, is based in the south west of England and is contemplating a move to Australia.

 

The siblings have been invited home by Jack, who knows that they need to discuss, as a family, the failing health of both himself and his wife. He has already had prepared power of attorney documents.

 

Which is pretty much the plot – although that needed discussion never really happens. We do get a slight (very slight) subplot about a crime, while ex-copper Jack, when alone, spends time preserving stories of his favourite cases on an old tape recorder.

 

There are light references to the generational divide in such things as the internet – and Jack gets to have a very a good riff on smartphones and how people have stopped seeing the world around them because they’re always looking down at their small screens – plus nods to the difficulties the elderly face when, for instance, the local Post Office closes.

 

But the main idea of the piece seems to be how university education that was opened up after WWII for the likes of Rob and Tina saw them move away – not just physically, but in terms of class too. Flo and Jack are very much still working class, but their son and daughter have become very much middle class. The contrasts in their speech/accents reflect this.

 

The elderly couple rely for help – and company – on local character Rhubarb Eddie and vet’s nurse Pamela, Flo’s niece.

 

It’s funny – very much a two-hour sitcom – you have a sense what you’re getting with the first entrance: on a Stannah stairlift. There are running gags and word play, such as Flo getting ‘prostate’ confused with ‘prostrate’ – and it’s arguably at its best when she and Jack are bickering.

 

But in general, it all feels rather directionless. The characters of Tina and Rob are sketches and the subplot – like so much else here – is never really resolved.

 

What saves To Have and to Hold are, first, the performances (more of that in a moment) and James Cotterill’s absolutely magnificent set – a beautifully naturalistic and detailed living room (with front door, back door, stairs, and a serving hatch from the kitchen. All very retro and all with a sense of a home that has been loved and nurtured.

 

It’s quite a static play, and directing duo Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson do a good job keeping as much movement in it as possible.

 

But yes – the performances. Adrian Hood as Rhubarb Eddie is a vast man mountain (he was Norman, the bread delivery man in dinnerladies, but I had no idea just how big he is!) and is very funny and affectionate in the role. Hermione Gulliford (Tina), Christopher Fulford (Rob) and Rachel Dale (Pamela) do sterling service with limited help from the script. 

 

Marion Bailey was apparently a late casting replacement as Flo and that simply makes one admire what she does here even more. It’s a very good performance.

 

But the reason I booked (perhaps ironic given the subjects of age, infirmity etc) for my first live performance since The Other Half died in September, was Alun Armstrong, who plays Jack here.

 

He’s not – that I’m aware of – done much stage work in recent years. Having become aware of him first via the televised version of the RSC’s epic production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (he played Wackford Squeers), I’d seen him on stage in the 56-performance West End musical The Baker’s Wife(revival next year!), as the Olivier-winning, eponymous Sweeney Todd in the magnificent 1993 National Theatre chamber opera version of the Sondheim classic, and then as Willy Loman in the National’s 1996/’97Death of a Salesman.

 

He should have won again for that too, in my opinion. I saw it – as a reviewer – in the Lyttleton stalls and wept absolute buckets.

 

In 1998, he was appearing as the editor in The Front Page at the Donmar Warehouse. As part of my long-term project to get The OH to see actors I very seriously rated, we got tickets. Hildy was played by Griff Rhys Jones, who was very good. Armstrong’s character, editor Walter Burns, makes his first appearance about half way through the three-act piece.

 

Around five minutes after Armstrong had arrived on the Donmar stage, Tony leaned into to me (he was sitting on my right) and said: “I get it”.

 

This is the first time I’ve seen him live since, so thanks so much to a friend for alerting me to this production. 

 

It is an absolute joy to see him back on stage. His comic timing is simply superb. But he also gives the piece its most genuinely emotional moments – Armstrong, who never had a formal theatre training, has real heft as an actor. He can go from making you laugh to making you blub in moments. One of the finest actors of his generation. 

 

So, in summary: the play is slight (very), but it’s important to note that that’s not necessarily bad. Set – brilliant. Cast – all of them do wonders with slight material. Alun Armstrong? Absolutely every bit as fabulous as the last time I saw him on stage.

A killer of a film ... if you've not watched the genre extensively

David Fincher’s new film, The Killer, is based on a French graphic novel and centred on an unnamed contract killer, played by Michael Fassbender.

It opens in Paris, where the eponymous assassin is stationed in an empty building opposite a posh hotel, waiting for his target to arrive. Narrated by The Killer himself, he explains his processes, the “logistics” of the what he does and his philosophy – essentially, that he must have no empathy whatsoever and that, in a world where few are able to be at ‘the top’, he has chosen to be one of those.

But when the contract arrives, it all goes pear shaped and The Killer must take action fast if he is to escape.

From then on, as his own life is threatened, he can no longer play by his own rules, but has to improvise.

The film has had mixed reviews – primarily because many reviewers note that the ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ has been done many times before – sometimes better and sometimes worse.

For me, that wasn’t a problem – I’ve not even seen The Day of the Jackal all the way through – so it never felt like a rehash of something I’ve seen countless times before.

Fassbender is utterly chilling – most particularly in the long opening scenes where he’s waiting and preparing – his face, physicality and voiceover mesmerising. I have seen reviews that regard the narration, which carries on throughout the film, as ‘pretentious’, but for me, it worked very well and helps illustrate just how much the character has cut himself off from humanity.

Or has he?

Part of the fun here is seeing where, in the circumstances in which he finds himself, he breaks his own ‘code’. And whether he really is as utterly emotionless as he likes to claim.

Erik Messerschmidt’s cinemaphotography is striking. The use of tracks by The Smiths throughout – The Killer finds their music helps him concentrate – should perhaps make one want to slit one’s own wrists, but (and I am no Smiths fan) I think it works really well here, with more than a hint of the ironic.

As already said, you can’t take your eyes off Fassbender. Kerry O’Malley is really good as the secretary to a lawyer, but Tilda Swinton, in a cameo late in the film is simply … well, Tilda Swinton! She absolutely crackles and brings humour to the film – albeit it in a very dark form.

So my very personal take is that it’s worth seeing on a big screen – it’s distributed by Netflix, is on at only a select number of cinemas (I saw it at a Curzon) and is streaming now – but if you’ve seen lots of those ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ movies, you might not be as impressed as I was. 

It’s so much not my usual type of film – and I really wondered whether it would be too violent for me. I can’t watch much of The Sopranos or Deadwood – even though I completely understand that they are superb works of TV drama – because the violence (physical and language-wise) becomes overwhelming for me after a short while.

Here, Fincher has made a violent film that reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs, in that the actual violence itself is clear – and not remotely celebrated – but also not filmed in ways so as not to make it gratuitous.

I’d also note that, at 118 minutes, it’s really tight and not self-indulgent in an era when many films seem to come from a starting point of having to be over two hours.

A much-needed examination of gender identity

Given how much trans people have been weaponised for the sake of the culture wars, it feels like an extraordinarily brave thing for award-winning Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren to make her feature film debut with a story about a young trans girl exploring her gender identity.

Brave – and necessary. Solaguren – who also wrote the script for 20,000 Species of Bees – was inspired by the suicide of a 16-year-old trans boy Ekai Lersundi in 2018.

Here, we find a family that lives in the French Basque Country. The parents are on the cusp of splitting up and of the children (teenage Nerea, 10-year-old Eneko and eight-year-old Aitor) the boys seem to constantly fight, while Aitor – also known as the less gender specific Cocó – is clearly unhappy and constantly acting up.

Their mother Ane takes the children with her for an extended summer holiday in the Basque Country south of the Pyrenees, where they will stay with her mother, Lita. Gorka, their father, stays at home.

Ane has allowed Cocó to wear their hair long and use blue nail polish, and they are quietly pleased when the local old ladies congratulate Lita on having a lovely granddaughter, but the conservatively religious grandmother nags her daughter to go to a hairdresser and get Cocó a “boy cut”.

 

Wary of local children, Cocó increasingly spends their days with Aunt Lourdes – a local ‘wise’ women, who lives alone, keeps bees and uses them to cure neighbours of a variety of ailments. There, they start to open up, often describing themselves (unprompted) as behaving like a girl.

 

They question what went “wrong” with them in their mother’s womb and why they are “like this”.

 

But Lita is becoming more strident in her approach, trotting out tired clichés about Ane having over-indulged the child, and the great patriarchal one that the problem is that Cocó is surrounded by women (which doesn’t seem to have changed Eneko’s gender identity).

 

Ane is confused about the issue – but also hits back at her mother, who had done nothing to tackle a dirty little family secret about her late husband, a sculptor.

 

Cocó prays to become Lucía – and even asks her aunt if she can’t die and come back as a girl.

 

Essentially an all-female ensemble piece – it won an award for the best female ensemble cast at the Guadalajara International Film Festival – it’s moving, yet never mawkish or sentimental, and is tackled with great sensitivity and humanity.

 

To help ensure accuracy, Naizen, a regional association for the families of transgender children, worked with Solaguren and provided guidance for Sofía Otero, who plays Lucía.

 

Otero carries the film on her eight-year-old shoulders – a simply outstanding performance that saw her become the youngest ever winner of the Silver Bear for best leading performance at the 73^rd Berlin International Film Festival in February, just one of many awards that the piece has already garnered. In September, it was put forward for nomination for next year’s Academy Awards.

 

Patricia López Arnaiz as Ane and Ane Gabarain as Lourdes also turn in superb performances, while Gina Ferrer García’s cinematography is top notch.

 

If you can, do see it. It’s also on Curzon Home Cinema now. It is a film that will stay with you a very long time.

As Solaguren put it in an interview: "The girl does not transform. Throughout the film, she acquires the tools to express who she is. What is transformed is the family."