Sondheim's Cain and Abel

Well, not quite - I don't think it's a spoiler if I say that no-one in Road Show gets killed, but there are slow deaths of the soul involved - quite quick ones, actually, done with the master's usual succinct virtuosity, since this is a (long) one-act distillation of what started life as Wise Guys in 1998, became Bounce in 2003 and ended up in its present form five years later. Don't know how I missed the UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2011, and only heard of this Union Theatre staging in time thanks to a punter commenting on my Arts Desk review of Chabrier's L'Étoile at the Royal Opera (his gist was that the Union evening turned out wittier and all the more effective for being done imaginatively on a low budget, and he turned out to be right). All production photos here by Scott Rylander.

Anyway, the show smacks neatly of so many American myths - the Cain and Abel aspect of Steinbeck's East of Eden, the get-rich-quick side of Brecht and Weill's Mahagonny and the schizoid relationship of their two sisters journeying through America to make money in The Seven Deadly Sins, not to mention its feeling at times like the third in a chamberish trilogy by Sondheim himself (Pacific Overtures and the IMO much stronger Assassins being the first two instalments).  Needless to say, the real-estate aspect is the most pertinent, as a clever final tableau at the Union underlines.

The two facets of the same personality are to be found in Sondheim's and John Weidman's portrayal of real-life Wilson and Addison Mizner, jumpers on the bandwagon of the new (20th) century. Wilson is the brilliant short-hauler, the doer whose plans never come to proper fruition (brilliantly captured in the ensemble number 'That was a year'). Addison has a run of bad luck to start with - comparable treatment in 'Addison's Trip', pictured above, encapsulating two years' of world wanderings - but builds on his mistakes. Quite literally, in his dubious success with serving up the rich villas in hotchpotch styles in Palm Beach. He, at least, doesn't pretend or falsify; but when Wilson comes back fatally into the picture to develop a Mahagonny at Boca Raton (that delightfully hooey fantasy sequence pictured below), it all goes decisively pear-shaped for the last time.

All this is economically staged, with slightly irritating invisible props, by Phil Willmott, whose Lear with Ursula Mohan at the Union I so admired, and the entire company struts its thoroughly professional stuff very well indeed in the tiny space. But what makes this an unforgettable evening is the superb casting of the four main roles. You can tell that huggable Howard Jenkins (pictured up top on the right with Andre Refig) is keeping his Broadway belt in check to suggest the sensitivity of gay Addy, and when he does explode towards the end, it's spine-tingling (I can't tell if the music is up to the mark here, but the performance absolutely is). Refig's Wilson might arguably be a mite more charming, but we do get to see his vulnerability.

Joshua LeClair (pictured above with Jenkins and Refig) is spirited as the poor little rich kid Hollis whose dreams of an artists' colony are doomed along with his reciprocated love for Addy. This is a first for Sondheim, a mutual gay declaration of [You're] 'The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened To Me' that doesn't make a fuss about itself - the relationship just is, even it's bound to be destroyed by Wilson. Cathryn Sherman's Mama Meisner is so good and true that I had to wonder why I didn't know this singer-actress.

Her 'Isn't He Something' is the nearest Road Show gets to deeply moving. But it's always effective, and the contrast between American dreams and the shoddy reality is typically strong. Even middle-range Sondheim is better, in the way the lyrics so effortlessly fit the tunes, than any musical by anyone else currently operating, at least that I've seen (the hit-and-miss Grey Gardens, for example). Fabulous musical underpinning, too, by MC/pianist Richard Baker, violinist Katt Robb and percussionist Richard Burden - and look, no miking (except behind the mirror). I'd like some company to perform all three (or four) versions of this experiment that Sondheim never lost faith in, but in the meantime catch the Union's Road Show if you can, and if/while there are still tickets - not easy to come by in this lovably miniscule venue. It's on until 5 March. In the meantime, I've bought the Nonesuch recording, and perhaps I ought to invest in Bounce as well.

Lear, in tears

She moved me very much, as only Kathryn Hunter before her had on the stage (and I've seen a few King Lears. Jacobi's is probably No. 1, but his I experienced in a livescreening). Unlike Hunter, though, Ursula Mohan is not playing a man. Her Queen Lear makes sense from the start, where we see her joshing at the piano with her Fool (a male nurse as played by Joseph Taylor: and why not, said Ursula afterwards - isn't it the case with so many old people that their carers are the last to stand by them?) Phil Willmott's production is fluent, the ideas of its contemporary setting all followed through and its engagement with a tiny audience total (50, I think, the maximum in the tiny Union Theatre we love so much).

The verse speaking always makes sense, however variable the cast, and certain themes are driven home with unrelenting pungency, like early-onset dementia, drug-taking and homelessness. If that feels right-on, it never seems so as you watch. We arrive in the dark space and stand for the first 20 minutes to witness the capricious division of the kingdom (selfie before it all goes wrong, Mohan pictured in one of Scott Rylander's superb production pictures with Claire Jeater's Goneril, Daisy Ward's Cordelia and Felicity Duncan's Regan) then seats are unobtrusively set up. The last third takes place with half the audience sitting around a white-covered table on which the scenes on the way to or at Dover are acted out with unremitting vividness.

Mohan's Lear launches her downfall in chilling confrontations with her three daughters, the horror of what she says offset by the bewilderment and confusion we register so closely in her face. Is an invocation of sterility on a thankless daughter the more horrifying when it comes from a mother? I felt so. And Harriet Walter's wise words on the human predicament affecting everybody chimed with the universality of this Lear. It felt absolutely right to me, at any rate; not a false note, no meaningless histrionics from Mohan.

Our central 'act' took place mostly in darkness, with torchlight adding to the atmosphere of the scenes on the heath (Mohan below with Taylor's Fool). If only the soundtrack of thunder, wind and rain had been turned down for the arrival in the hut: the words here weren't so easy to make out above it.

Action after the second interval was raised to an almost unbearable and unremitting level of tension. The absolute highlight for me, the point at which the tears really flowed, was the emergence of Mohan's flower-crowned Lear from cardboard packing to confront the blind Gloucester on the white table.

The official Gloucester, Richard Derrington, pictured above, was sick, so Simon Purse, the Doctor in the original cast (well adapted for the Fool) took over. He did it with the script until the blinding, after which he was truly moving without a prompt.

Among the very mixed blessings of the cast, Rikki Lawton's Edmund was the spunky prankster-villain to the life, winking and nodding at the audience to keep his soliloquies vivid, showing some good in the character at the end (Edgar is not exactly likeable in this production). Super-statuesque Claire Jeater was the stylish Goneril, pictured with Lawton and Duncan below.

Catch the run, if you can get a ticket, before it ends on Saturday, We went because our dear friend Kurt Ryz, who knows Ursula well, praised it to me - and I know he wouldn't say anything insincere. Usually wary about 'backstage' visits, but I and our Berlin friend Debbie York were so moved that we had to see her. And how lovely she was, with plenty of insights which chimed with what we'd seen. The upshot of which is Debbie, always looking for new ways of presenting recital programmes, thought she might like to collaborate with Ursula on one in future. The actress willing, of course.

I wasn't sure if Ursula would remember me from our one meeting some years ago, but she'd just seen me on the telly. Which means the Glyndebourne documentary aired on BBC Four on Saturday. All of it was interesting and a lot of the details in it new to me, though inevitably it was compromised by being half about the history of Glyndebourne and half about Richard Jones's new production of Der Rosenkavalier, which was where I came in, and eventually I got used more than I'd expected. Any excuse for using more images by Bill Cooper from that extraordinary show, so let's have one from each act with the lovely Kate Royal as the Marschallin, Tara Erraught as Octavian, Lars Woldt as Ochs and Teodora Gheorghiu as Sophie

Anyway, the dovetailing was skilful and I especially loved the enthusiastic contributions of Gheorghiu and the utterly delightful Tara, a woman who clearly has enough inner strength to have weathered the recent storm in a teacup - s'ist halt vorbei - and who likes as I do to walk across the Downs from Lewes to the house.

Nice contributions from easy-going Gus Christie and David Pickard, but Jones is the king of the idiosyncratic both in what he said about the opera and about Glyndebourne, undercutting everyone else's no doubt sincere comments about the beauty of working in deepest Sussex by saying how he sometimes wanted to get away from 'Planet Opera' and smell the fumes of his native south London as he got off the train at Clapham Junction. He also described the olfactory effects he wanted from each act, stopping short of saying what pong the inn scene should conjure.

You can see the documentary on the iPlayer until this Sunday evening (UK only, friends abroad tell me). I do recommend watching the whole thing.

STOP PRESS: Don't miss the chance, via what else but The Arts Desk,  to  win two tickets to Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni.  Sounds like an ace revival of a good show that's a hell (no pun intended) of a lot better than Kent's turgidly staged (but superbly sung and conducted) Manon Lescaut.

Later: wonders will never cease. Having alerted friends to Glyndebourne having the complete production up on its website until last Sunday midnight, I now find out it can be seen on the BBCiPlayer for another three months. Watch it here.