Thursday September 24, 2015, H&H Series 3 Reviews :Theatre Kidman play is pure theatrical mogadon

PHOTOGRAPH 51 NOEL COWARD THEATRE ##$$

It’s hard to make science dramatic, and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen this is not. The reuniting of director Michael Grandage with the star wattage of Nicole Kidman 17 years after that ‘theatrical viagara’ moment appears to have blinded some (male) critics to this poorly characterised, dry stick of a play. Anna Ziegler’s reclaimed herstory of Rosalind Franklin, narrated (ironically?) by the men who leeched off her, features a cold, humourless heroine whose meticulous I Nicole Kidman as scientist Rosalind Franklin pic: Johan Persson work photographing cells was effectively stolen by Crick cancer. drably dressed in bluestocking and Watson to discover the Ziegler’s bid to right that stout shoes and a brown structure of DNA. wrong casts the men as gown, does her best with slim Methodical always-right old cartoonishly sexist while pickings, ‘I must get on with Rosalind would never speculate suggesting Franklin’s struggle the work’ ‘can’t they see, the or publish unti certain. But to be taken seriously - by her proteins are on the outside!’ her collaborator, bumbling father and an institiontionally none of it adds up to layered chauvinist Maurice Wilkins sexist scientific community - characterisation, formal (Stephen Campbell Moore) necessitated a distant steely daring or thrilling dialogue. showed them the eponymous determination. Ziegler’s tell don’t show revelatory photograph they While Christopher Oram style also fatally fails to needed for their blue sky stunningly evokes the bombed- explain the wider resonance of thinking. The trio scored the out remains of King’s College discovering what one character Nobel Prize, while Ros died in where Franklin toiled, and a calls ‘the secret of life’. obscurity aged 37 from ovarian poised, controlled Kidman, Bridget Galton Dystopian I Sarah Middle- ton as Keaton vision thrills Picture: Richard Davenport POMONA NATIONAL THEATRE TEMPORARY SPACE ####$

Last year, new Orange Tree artistic director Paul Miller electrified his theatre by programming Alistair McDowall’s brilliant and brutal dystopian thriller. Now it occupies the National’s Temporary space, with most spectators are plunged into its grounds the wild imaginative of its excellent original cast nightmarish heart. leaps, and draws out some intact. Yet this is also a playfully indelible performances: Nadia The title refers to an island in postmodern piece, breaking Clifford’s distinct twins, the centre of Manchester that away from the grimy and Rebecca Humphries’ damaged “looks like the world’ll be in a grotesque for a winking but good-hearted working girl, few thousand years”. That’s cultural reference or genre Guy Rhys’s chicken nugget- where Ollie hopes to find her subversion, framed by the guzzling oddball, Sean Rigby’s missing twin sister, who may Lovecraft-referencing role- troubled hitman, Sam Swann’s be the victim of organised playing game that bleeds eccentric loner, and Sarah crime, either prostitution or into life. McDowall asks Middleton’s eerily equivocal grisly organ harvesting. whether we can really ignore Keaton, at once sweetly girlish Ollie’s quest is folded the suffering in front of us by and harbinger of doom. into McDowall’s dazzling, consigning it to a separate Georgia Lowe’s drain-like stubbornly elusive maze-like space, either the physical set, Elliot Griggs’s queasy structure. Reality, sci fi and island or a fantastical realm. lighting and Polly Bennett’s fantasy blur until there’s no That gains added resonance astute movement direction refuge left: the monsters are with the current debates about vitally contribute to this urban real, and they are emerging intervention versus closing off horror for the hyper-connected from the shadows. The mode some parts of the world from contemporary age of storytelling, more than the others. bleak subject matter, ensures Ned Bennett skilfully Marianka Swain