"Gods & Kings" / "The Story" / "Grease" / "The Invisible Woman" / Roathbud

Another startlingly diverse couple of weeks of theatre reviewing. Starting in Newport with the mental health themed monologue “Gods & Kings”, cleverly staged as a duet between actor Robert Bowman and sign-language interpreter Sami Thorpe; then came Tess Berry-Hart’s clever and pointed political allegory “The Story” at The Other Room, the latest in their Violence Series. In stark contrast was a large-scale touring production of 1950s-set, 1970s-written “Grease” at the Wales Millennium Centre, beautifully performed by a largely youthful cast, if not entirely coherent plot-wise; and, in the same building, “The Invisible Woman”, a lively piece about a disregarded middle-aged woman which kicked off their Performances For The Curious season.

Hannah McPake and Siwan Morris in "The Story" (Photo: Kirsten McTernan)

There’s no Made In Roath arts festival this year, but there was a Roathbud film event last night, at which my Delia Derbyshire / John Peel film had its first public screening, along with several other intriguing pieces.

"Joker"

I’ve long since ceased trying to keep up with comic-book films from the DC and Marvel universes, with notable exceptions (“Wonder Woman”, “Black Panther”); and I only got a few minutes into the first of director Todd Phillips “Hangover” movies before wishing a horrific death on all of its protagonists. But I was drawn to his “Joker”, because of an admiration for the intensity customarily shown by star Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master” and “You Were Never Really Here” being particular favourites.

In “Joker”, which is set in a Gotham City which resembles an autumn-toned New York from the early 1980s, Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a failing clown-for-hire and aspiring stand-up comic who is struggling with mental health issues, under stress through looking after his ailing mother (Frances Conroy), and afflicted by a proneness to inappropriate hysterical laughter. Eventually, after one setback too many, he reacts violently and unexpectedly becomes a focus for city-wide protests against the wealthy.

An emaciated Phoenix is simultaneously vulnerable and frightening as Fleck, and one is painfully aware that Arthur’s few lifelines – a crush on his single-parent neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz), hero-worship of TV talk-show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro in a clever reference to Scorsese’s “The King Of Comedy”) are fragile. It is only when he finally dons the Joker “mask” that Fleck seems fully at ease, albeit in a somewhat maladaptive manner.

"Joker" (Warner Bros)

There are no super-powers on show here, and the only elements of the tale which truly situate us in the “Batman” universe are Fleck’s problematic interactions with the Wayne family. Instead, this is a tale of a deeply troubled man losing touch with reality, with catastrophically violent results. “Joker” is as far from comic-book fluff as it is possible to get; one imagines that the worried reactions of some critics stem from its incisive take on the roots of toxic masculinity.

The bleakness on show makes it hard for one to love “Joker”, but Phoenix is a truly compelling presence, and while the message is hardly novel – bad people sometimes become bad for perfectly understandable reasons – it is a story told with great skill and commitment.

"On Bear Ridge" / "American Nightmare" / "Say When" / "The Creature"

Cardiff’s August theatre drought (Edinburgh Festival-related) came to an end with the launch of the autumn season at The Other Room – The Violence Series starting with Matthew Bulgo’s “American Nightmare” (an expanded version of a play I worked on at the venue’s Young Artists’ Festival a couple of years ago); a futuristic vision of war and technology. There was also Robert Bowman’s “Say When”, a solo piece about male body-image/weight issues and their relationship to environmental concerns. Equally in tune with straight-from-the-headlines concerns, but rather more elliptically, is Lucy Gough’s “The Creature”, a take on extreme youth criminality told through the prism of “Frankenstein”.

"American Nightmare" (photo: Kirsten McTernan)

The undoubted highlight, though, and the nation’s most high profile production for a while has to be Ed Thomas’ “On Bear Ridge”, from National Theatre Wales and The Royal Court Theatre, featuring Rhys Ifans’ first ever appearance on the main stage at the Sherman Theatre – more war and dystopia, but with a distinctive and surreal rural Welsh accent. One waits, agog, to see what the London audience will make of it.

"On Bear Ridge" (photo: Mark Douet)