Russell's Theatre Reviews

Masterclass - Vaudeville Theatre, Friday 27th January 2012

2012-01-29T18:49:00.000Z

Synopsis:

In the 1970s, the legendary opera singer Maria Callas gave a series of opera masterclasses at Julliard University in the USA. The play traces the course of one of these classes, as Callas wrestles with her own past and the demons which haunt her while destroying the hopes and dreams of her unlucky students.

Cast:
Maria Callas – Tyne Daly
Stagehand – Gerard Carey
Emmanuel Weinstock – Jeremy Cohen
Sharon Graham – Naomi O’Connell
Sophie de Palma – Dianne Pilkington
Anthony Candolino – Garrett Sorenson

Creative Team:
Written by – Terence McNally
Set – Thomas Lynch
Costumes – Martin Pakledinaz
Lighting – David Lander

OK – here it comes. If you only go to the theatre once this year, make it this. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such a wonderful show. I’m a huge fan of Tyne Daly anyway, and having seen the other half of the partnership late last year, was looking forward to this evening immensely. On paper, the play isn’t much, but you really do get your money’s worth – and more. Daly truly inhabits the role of the fearsome Maria Callas, a brilliant yet tragically flawed woman. Stalking the stage like some elegantly dressed raven, she tears her victims into emotional shreds and feeds on their flesh, all the while unwittingly exposing her own insecurities and hate.

The set-up of the play is very clever – we, the audience, are playing a part in the action. Its immediately clear that we are not just passive observers but actually there in the lecture hall to observe, learn and have our personal fashion choices subjected to withering scorn (don’t sit in the front row!). Callas/Daly orders us about, instructing how and when to applaud (or not) and takes the reins almost from the very beginning:

“So. How is everyone? Can you hear me? I don't believe in microphones. Singing is first of all about projection. So is speech. People are forgetting how to listen. They want everything blasted at them. Listening takes concentration. If you can't hear me, it's your fault. You're not concentrating.”

This woman is IN CHARGE, and she ain’t gonna let us forget it. In fact, so caught up did I become in the action that Daly and the Vaudeville receded and I was actually there, at Julliard, and not daring to applaud because Ms. Callas had forbidden it. The three hapless students just become conduits for her own memories and recollections, and literally fade from the stage on several occasions as the stage at the Vaudeville/lecture hall at Julliard become the stage of La Scala, Milan where Callas is fighting her art, her audience and her upbringing every step of the way.

"A performance is a struggle. You have to win. The audience is the enemy. We have to bring you to your knees because we're right...Dominate them...Art is domination".

What is doubly clever is that, if you actually pay attention to Daly/Callas, you may very well learn something about the art of theatre and how to work the stage; Callas discusses making an entrance, holding the focus of the audience (in one wonderful moment, Callas retires to her seat and drinks from a glass while one of the students is preparing to sing and comments aside sardonically “Look, I’m simply drinking a glass of water and I still have presence”), interpreting the music and building a character. You’re unlikely to remember most of this, however, as you either dissolve in a welter of laughter or are held completely spellbound when Daly becomes caught up in her reveries of appearing in La Sonambula and Macbeth. Take a pencil.

Of course, every monster needs victims, and Daly has five – a stagehand who refuses to be impressed, an adoring accompanist, a mediocre soprano, an arrogant tenor and a second soprano who is well on her way to becoming just as much a monster as Callas herself and who isn’t willing to play the role of victim. Gerard Carey plays the first, but inhabits such a tiny character that little can really be said about it. Jeremy Cohen makes a very good job out of the thankless role of the accompanist, and I hope Daly buys him a red sweater at the end of the run (an in joke – go and see the show). As the first of the sopranos, Dianne Pilkington makes a good impression at first, (hilariously getting only as far as “Oooooohhhhh……” in her aria before being peremptorily halted in her tracks by Callas) but is unfortunate in that her role is swiftly forgotten once Garrett Sorenson’s bumptious tenor and Naomi O’Connell’s fire-breathing soprano appear. Both actors are legitimate singers in their own right and desevedly get applause for some breathtaking vocal fireworks. But its Daly who – rightly – bestrides the show like a colossus and makes it her very own. This woman can act. She simply becomes Maria Callas. Don’t take my word for it. Just buy yourself a ticket and see for yourself. In fact, buy two tickets – one for yourself and one for me, because I’d gladly go see this again. Tomorrow.

This was a preview performance. Reviews will be posted when they become available.

The Lion in Winter - Haymarket Theatre, Wednesday 25th January 2012

2012-01-28T11:53:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Christmas, 1183. His eldest son having died, an aging King Henry II summons his family (including his imprisoned wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine) to a reunion at which each of his three surviving sons hope to be named his successor. Henry favours John, his youngest son, and Eleanor is bend on securing the throne for Richard while Geoffrey is left to scheme for himself. Plots and counter-plots abound as each faction bends and shifts allegiances in an attempt to destroy the other.

Cast:
Henry II – Robert Lindsay
Eleanor of Acquitaine – Joanna Lumley
Richard – Tom Bateman
Geoffrey – James Norton
John – Joseph Drake
Phillip of France – Rory Fleck-Byrne
Princess Alais of France – Sonya Cassidy

Creative Team
Author – James Goldman
Director – Trevor Nunn
Set and Costumes – Stephen Brimson Lewis
Lighting – Peter Mumford
Music – Steven Edis

This is a very odd play indeed. I think James Goldman had just had a particularly horrendous family Christmas (is there any other kind?) and needed to exorcise some demons when he decided to write this; although the action concerns Henry II’s attempts to sort out who is going to succeed him to the thrones of England and France, with a slight tweak here and there, a change of set and the addition of a cocktail cabinet, glasses of whisky and some cigarettes this could easily be a cross between Seasons Greetings and something written by Edward Albee in the “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” vein – you know, vile people being vile to other vile people, but given extra angst by being set at Christmas. In fact, the play is so chock full of anachronisms that it starts to become a contest between what you are seeing (Norman arches, stone flagged floors and medieval costumes) and what you are hearing (modern dialogue, references to Christmas trees and dahlias). Gradually the dialogue wins and you start to tune out the visuals. It takes a while for this to happen, and until it does, the play staggers slowly uphill until you reach the crest, and then you just start to coast down the far side. Its an uneasy blend, however – you start to look for the cocktail cabinet and the ashtrays. Added to the problem is that there are odd elements of farce – two characters end up hiding behind the arras to eavesdrop – and a bizarre “gay clinch” between Prince Richard and the Crown Prince of France, which is interrupted by the entrance of another character, so Richard rushes to the four poster bed, jumps in and pulls the curtains. Its all neither fish nor fowl – neither historical drama nor family comedy but an uneasy blend of both.

There’s quite a lot of pain and hurt in the play and the text isn’t best served by the broad style of acting adopted by most of the cast – Richard Lindsay struggles to make Henry anything more than a direct ancestor of his character in My Family (and in fact now I think of it, the entire play could be summed up as no more than a feature length Christmas episode of this unaccountably popular sitcom. Substitute Zoe Wannamaker for Joanna Lumley and all it needs is canned laughter). Still, the humour isn’t subtle, so I suppose the best way of dealing with this is just to point yourself towards the end of the play and go for it. There is a certain amount of scenery-chewing but compared to the film its all pretty tame stuff.

Lindsay, as I said above, makes Henry just a medieval Ben Fowler and Joanna Lumley is really just Joanna Lumley in a wimple. She mugs just that little bit too much and brings little of Eleanor’s regality to the part, there’s a distinct lack of gravitas here. The three princes are more or less indistinguishable and therefore interchangeable, but Lindsay and Lumley really do show that they are masters of their craft in comparison, with their every consonant pointed and every syllable audible, whereas Messrs Bateman, Norton and Drake all seem to have their volume setting turned down to “indistinct”. The roles played by Ms. Cassidy and Mr. Fleck-Burne are so negligible anyway alongside all the roaring, pacing about and barbed witticisms that they never really register on your consciousness.

The set is pretty and quite clever, with a double revolve disguised as the circles of stone flags around two columns of a Norman-arched nave, and this brings on and takes off various bits of furniture, but its all too clean and pretty to be anything like realistic. There's little sense of it being winter - certainly everything looks bright, warm and cheerful. Costumes are kind of “all purpose 12th century” and the lighting is effective and well thought out. But the slightly ridiculous plot and modern dialogue make it an odd evening. It’s a little like a theatrical version of “Horrible Histories”.

What the critics thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8892426/The-Lion-in-Winter-Theatre-Royal-Haymarket-review.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-24010434-the-lion-in-winter.do

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831321437061/The+Lion+in+Winter.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/nov/16/the-lion-in-winter-review

Ready for a bit of scenery-chewing?

The Wizard of Oz - London Palladium, Friday 6th January 2012

2012-01-08T22:18:00.001Z

Cast:
Dorothy – Danielle Hope
Aunt Em – Kate Coysten
Uncle Henry/Guard – Stephen Scot
Hickory/Tin Man – Edward Baker-Duly
Zeke/Lion – David Ganly
Hunk/Scarecrow – Paul Keating
Miss Gulch/Wicked Witch – Marianne Benedict
Glinda – Emily Tierney
Professor Marvel/Wizard/Doorman – Michael Crawford
Creative Team:
Additional Lyrics – Tim Rice
Additional Music – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Director – Jeremy Sams
Lighting – Hugh Vanstone
Choreographer – Arlene Phillips

You know, I really am getting sick to the back teeth of the Andrew Lloyd Webber juggernaut, which rolls on and crushes great theatre under its wheels. Once again, ALW has persuaded the BBC to give him hours of prime-time advertising under the auspices of a “search for new talent”, has persuaded the Great British Public to part with its hard-earned by promising a vast, exciting phantasmagoria and has churned out a cheap, damp squib masquerading as a wonderful new reinterpretation of a much-loved classic piece of history. Not content with butchering Oliver and The Sound of Music, ALW now turns his attention to possibly the best-loved film Hollywood ever made (at least his next outing will be to butcher one of his own works – rumour is that the next BBC talent show will be to look for a new Jesus for Superstar, a thought that fills me with dread). What really pisses me off about ALW is that he promises everything and delivers precious little, much like the title character of this show. Its all smoke and mirrors. ALW has the money and the talent pool to present something spectacular beyond our wildest dreams, and what we eventually get once again is him as Chief Peddler of Tat to The Masses.

Regardless of the fact that The Wizard of Oz is a classic loved by millions with a glorious score, ALW is so convinced of his own superiority that he can’t resist fiddling with it and stamping his tawdry mark all over it. So he’s re-written a script which doesn’t need re-writing (at the expense of several characters), turned it into a star vehicle for Michael Crawford, shoved some of his own music into it (mercifully, most of it is instantly forgettable), stripped out a great deal of the wonderful orchestrations from the film soundtrack and thrown onto the enormous stage of The Palladium an ensemble of 20 who look completely lost on it. They’ve been directed and choreographed (if I can call it that – both are horrifically and woefully thin) with the absolute minimum of effort and with a tiny orchestra and some truly lousy scenery and yet Joe Public lap it up by the bucketful and shout for more. Honestly, I don’t know whether I was more disappointed by this show or by the undiscriminating idiots who think that ALW shits pure gold. Its not as if it hasn’t happened before. But nobody takes any notice of the man behind the curtain who is pulling the levers and throwing glitter in their eyes until they can no longer see his deception clearly enough to call “foul”.

OK, he was up against the films’ reputation and that of its star, so he was on the back foot to start with. This is the stuff that peoples’ memories are made of, and you fuck with that at your peril. But instead of giving us what we want, ALW gives us what he thinks we should have. Take the character of the Wicked Witch of the West. What we want is Margaret Hamilton screeching and cackling in a black pointed hat but what we get is a WWotW watered down to the point where the character becomes merely eccentric and unpleasant – think of the Bette Midler character in the film Hocus Pocus – wearing a split skirt, lacy tights and knee-high boots. There’s no real evil here, and the revisionist script doesn’t help. We want Dorothy sitting on a piece of farm machinery with Toto, backlight against the sunset and tearing our hearts out with Somewhere over the Rainbow while birds sing in the distance. What we get is Danielle Hope front and centre on an almost completely darkened stage, wearing a pair of dungarees and not coming anywhere close to the emotional pull that you get when watching the film. We want dozens of Munchkins waving goodbye as Glinda disappears in a big pink soap bubble, and what we get is ten children backed up by five adult ensemble members waving goodbye as Glinda hitches up her skirt and strolls off Stage Right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set so paltry as this Munchkinland, which seems to consist of a small hillock covered in that green pretend grass you used to see in butchers shop windows, dotted with tissue paper flowers that look as if the local primary school kids have made them in a craft lesson. ALW’s bank balance runs into untold millions, yet this Wizard of Oz feels for the most part skimped and cheap. I sat open-mouthed at the gimcrack paltriness of the poppyfield scenery. And the emotional quality is lacking too – just like the man made of tin, this production has no heart. It’s a cynical money-making exercise for ALW, never mind the quality, feel the width. Nearly everything about this show – the amount of people on stage, the orchestra, the orchestrations - needs to be doubled up before it really befits the stage of the London Palladium.

I missed the wonderful underscoring of the original film music. There were no fighting apple trees, no “If I Were King of the Forest” for the Cowardly lion. I didn’t like the way the break between the acts was moved to the point where the Wizard instructs Dorothy and her friends to go and kill the WWotW (ensuring that Mr. Crawford could end the first act by booming through the auditorium in exactly the same fashion as he did in Phantom of the Opera). I hated that there wasn’t a drop of water, real or otherwise, in the bucket that Dorothy dumps over the WWotW.

I did like the fact that the costumes were clearly based on the illustrations from the original book. I did like the fact that the Tin Man was played butch, forming a very solid centre to the ensemble of four who were clearly working as a team, bouncing off each other with no obvious “star” and no obvious “underdog”. I did like the fact that the Cowardly Lion wasn’t played as a raving poofter. I did think the Witches’ castle set was spectacular (no hourglass though – shame). I did think that Danielle Hope gave it her best shot. But I would rather pay to see Ravensbourne Light Opera Society’s amateur production of The Wizard of Oz at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley again were it possible than Mr. Lloyd Webber’s current offering. Yes, I am a grouchy old bugger on occasion and I’ve had readers of this blog wonder publicly whether I like anything but I was so disappointed last night that I could have cried. Like I said, you fuck with a classic at your peril.

One of the pro critics called this production “soullessly efficient” and I would heartily agree. You’d be far better off renting the DVD and settling in with a pot of tea and a packet of chocolate HobNobs on a rainy afternoon to ensure that the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

What the critics thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8355293/Andrew-Lloyd-Webbers-The-Wizard-of-Oz-London-Palladium-review.html

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831299024429/The+Wizard+of+Oz.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/mar/02/the-wizard-of-oz-review

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-wizard-of-oz-palladium.html

http://westendwhingers.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/review-the-wizard-of-oz-london-palladium/

A Round Heeled Woman - Aldwych Theatre, Wednesday 14th December 2011

2011-12-20T21:46:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Based on a true story. In 1999, Jane Juska, a retired English teacher, placed an advert in the New York Times Review of Books:

“Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me”.

Cast:
Sharon Gless (aka The-blonde-one-out-of-Cagney-and-Lacey) – Jane Juska
Beth Cordingley – Natalie/Miss Mackenzie
Barry McCarthy – Jonah/Sidney
Kenneth Jay – Eddie/Robert/John (understudying for Neil McCaul)
Gwyneth Strong – Celia/Jane’s Mother
Michael Thomson – Graham/Andy

Creative Team:
Set design – Ian Fisher
Costume – David Blight
Lighting – Nick Richings
Executive Producer – Andrew Welch
Producers – Sharon Gless (aka The-blonde-one-out-of-Cagney-and-Lacey), Brian Eastman

Do do do doooo, dah dah dahdah dada, doo doo do dooo – OK, it’s a tough job rendering the theme tune to Cagney and Lacey in print, but at least I made the attempt. If Ms. Gless had walked on to the stage and started humming that, I think the audience would have probably stormed the set and torn the poor woman to bits in a frenzy of adulation. Me included, most likely. Given the affection in which (apparently) the entire population of the known world hold Cagney and Lacey, this was going to be a success however bad it turned out to be. And honestly, it was better than I thought it would be – and then again not as good as I thought it would be. I honestly thought this was going to be a one-woman show along the lines of Shirley Valentine or Educating Rita- and lets face it, most of the audience would have come along to hear Detective Cagney read from the telephone book. It would have worked very well as a monologue; even Him Indoors cooed “Oooh, there are other people in it” as we walked into the theatre. I’m not sure either of us really got what we were expecting. On the one hand, this is an interesting piece of theatre which explores female sexuality and ageing, nicely adapted for the stage and weaving in some obscure literature (Anthony Trollope’s little-known work Miss Mackenzie). Its slightly raunchy in places, a little melancholic in others, celebratory and life-affirming in others. And on the other hand its trite, hopelessly self-indulgent and created for groups of middle-aged women who feel the need for a girls night out and Ladies and Gentlemen in Sensible Shoes.

It’s a comforting little play, not likely to change the world other than making you feel that your life isn’t that bad and that you too could set of on a voyage of sexual adventure (if only you had the time and it wasn’t for the mortgage and Him/Her Indoors/The Kids. In fact, it’s the perfect “filler” show after Dirty Dancing (indeed, the auditorium looked more than a little bashed about, probably as a result of bottles being thrown by coach-parties of Essex Girls getting over-excited during the encore of “The Time of My Life”. We won’t mention the disaster that was Cool Hand Luke which followed it into the Aldwych and for which they literally couldn’t give tickets away). I just wish that Ms. Gless could have had better support from her fellow cast. She’s a great actress and she seemed surrounded by mediocrity, particularly from the two other women in the cast, who drifted on and off and occasionally forgot which accent they were using. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered, nor indeed talented. And it seemed particularly unfair that Neil McCaul’s understudy was so unlike him physically; from his programme pictures, Mr. McCaul looks tall, slim, quietly good looking and a bit of a catch – whereas his understudy is, well, short and rotund and a bit like yer UnkelArfur. As the other men in her life were being played by short, rotund and somewhat ferrety Barry McCarthy, Ms. Gless seemed to be dating an unending procession of short, rotund and somewhat seedy old men. One feels that a bit of glamour in the trouser department was sorely missing. In an ensemble piece like this, the “star” should be surrounded by a bit more talent, otherwise its all desperately uneven. Perhaps the bill for Ms. Gless is so high (she does, after all, according to the programme notes, have five homes to maintain, poor cow) that the producers didn’t have very much money left to play with.

I’m not entirely convinced that weaving in appearances from one of Trollope’s heroines really worked or was entirely necessary, nor that it was totally above board to give away the ending of the novel she appears in. Some of the writing seemed extremely clunky – there are several occasions when Gless addresses the audience directly, and there’s an excruciating “OK, it’s the interval now so lets all get a drink from the bar and I’ll see you in the second half” moment, which is truly cringeworthy. The show doesn’t really do Ms Juska many favours, as she often comes across as sounding spectacularly self-indulgent and occasionally self-obsessive (indeed, her programme biog reveals that she spent many years in psycho-analysis). I can’t remember from her original book whether this actually deals with her major issues with her mother and son, but these are the bits of the play that start feeling preachy and self-obsessive. The set is multifunctional and multi-levelled, but a bit too “unit set” for true comfort – the whole play is “on” the entire time, leaving one wondering why Ms. Gless has a tomb in her garden. Answer – she doesn’t; there are about 20 seconds in the second half where she visits a cemetery, but the demands of the “unit set” mean that the tomb sits just to the left hand side of the mailbox all night, which is odd and slightly disconcerting.

So, A Round Heeled Woman is OK. Its not a play that’s going to set the world alight, merely divert the audience for a couple of hours. But we both left the theatre feeling that it could have been so much better had Ms. Gless not been like the proverbial thoroughbred in the glue factory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/dec/01/a-round-heeled-woman-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8929189/A-Round-Heeled-Woman-Aldwych-Theatre-review.html

http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/review-a-round-heeled-woman.aspx

Pippin - Menier Chocolate Factory, Friday 22nd November 2011

2011-11-30T23:39:00.001Z

Synopsis:

Pippin is the story of the French Prince Pippin, son of King Charlemagne. The show begins with the Leading Player and the other players (an acting troupe) inviting the audience to watch their magic as they help to tell the story. They then introduce Pippin as a young man just out of a university. He tells us how he is searching for the meaning of his life, Pippin's father welcomes him home from school. Pippin tells his father he wants to go to war with him. His father eventually agrees with him and we soon see them and some soldiers learning their battle plan.The leading player goes on to tell the audience about the virtues of war and about King Charles’ victory. The soldiers join him in "saluting" their King. Next, the leading player sings a song about how people need some small amount of happiness in life that wealth and fame can't bring you. By now, Pippin has decided that being a war hero is not what he wants to do with his life. So, he goes to his grandmother, Bertha, and asks her what she thinks he should do. She tells him to just live life to the fullest and to enjoy his youth because time goes by so fast. Pippin next looks to women to see if they are the answer to his life. He experiments with sex - symbolically, of course. The act ends with Pippin deciding to lead a revolution against his father.
After this we see Pippin's step-mother, Fastrada, as she plots to get her son, Lewis, to be the heir to the throne instead of Pippin. Pippin is now trying out a political life, revolting against his father and considering assassinating him. When he does do this and becomes the new King he decides that a peaceful time, without war and slavery, is long overdue. When he realizes that this isn't the right job for him, he prays to have his father return. The leading player magically brings King Charles back to life.

Pippin is by now very distraught about his failing search for a meaning to his life. The leading player tells him not to worry, he's on the right road to finding what he is looking for. At the end of this number Pippin collapses to the floor and a pretty young woman, Catherine, finds him and brings him to her house with her small son. She tells him that she is just an "average" girl. Pippin comes to live in her house and do household chores which he finds degrading because he thinks he is above that kind of work. Pippin and Catherine fall in love but when Catherine asks Pippin to become "the head of the household,he runs away.
Pippin has come to the end of the road and has no idea what to do next. The leading player tells him that the only way that he will be remembered now is if he kills himself. Pippin is afraid to do this because he knows that if it is the wrong thing to do, then it will be too late for him to do anything else. The leading player, Fastrada, and all the other players urge Pippin to go ahead and burn himself until he dies. They tell him to think about his life and all of the things he wanted from it. Pippin is almost convinced when Catherine and her son show up. He decides that he will settle for love and not commit suicide.

Cast:
Leading Player – Matt Rawle

Pippin – Harry Hepple

Charles – Ian Kelsey

Lewis – David Page

Estrada – Francis Ruffelle

Berthe – Louise Gold

Catherine – Carly Bawden

Creative Team:

Libretto: Roger Hirson

Music and Lyrics: Stephen “Wicked” Schwartz

Director/Choreographer – Mitch Sebastian

Design: Timothy Bird

Costumes: Jean-Marc Puissant

Anybody who has the unfortunate task of sitting next to me while I suffer through another production of (for example) Jesus Christ, Superstar will know just how much I loathe 70s rock musicals. They’re so irredeemably naff – showing their age but not yet dated enough to become “period” (such as the big Ivor Novello or Noel Coward shows of the 1950s). No doubt to people a generation younger than me, Jesus Christ, Superstar is shit-hot retro. But I think that 70s rock musicals are just shit. And anyone who has had the patience to read the synopsis above will probably be only too happy to agree with me that the plot of Pippin sounds naff to the nth degree. It doesn’t even sound cheerily naff like the plot of Blondel – Pippin just sounds awful. So what would you think when you found that you were going to see Pippin and it had received an 80’s makeover? Reader, your worst nightmare is only just beginning.

Yes, a particularly naff 70s rock musical has been reworked, rewritten and made “contemporary” by being updated to the early 1980s – the decade when every pubescent boy wanted a Atari Games Console in his Christmas stocking. Preferably with a “quest”-type computer-game – slow to load and even slower to play, with heavy, byte-eating graphics and, by today’s standards, laughably ponderous plotlines. Pippin, dear reader, is that quest game. The character of Pippin is now an 80s geek who is magically zapped into his Games Console (“Tron” is referenced not only in the new libretto but also in many of the production’s costumes). The “players” are now no longer of the type described as the “troupe of strolling” kind but that of the “games console character” type. The blank walls of the theatre are covered in projected 80’s games console-style graphics in order to provide scenery etc. Problem is, all the electrical wizardry necessary to achieve this aim, plus banks of enormous stage lights, plus the heat coming off a large audience packed very tightly together heats the small, fairly cramped auditorium to “High Noon on a Midsummer Day in the Kalahari Desert” temperatures. Lord only knows what the actual temperature was, but outside in the interval one can find large groups of sweaty, whey-faced people gulping down the cool night air while they fan each other with programmes and cling to the walls. As it was a fairly chilly night, I’d almost gone to the theatre wearing a jumper over my shirt and a T-shirt under it, but thank god I didn’t otherwise I might just have evaporated – or combusted – completely. As it was, I had galloping indigestion thanks to Him Indoors thinking that its possible to meet friends, eat a two course dinner in a popular restaurant in central London on a Friday night and then get to the theatre in a total of an hour and 15 minutes (I do like Taz as a restaurant and I’m really looking forward to finishing a meal there one day). So I was horribly, horribly uncomfortable.The Menier really need to review the space they allocate to each seat and increase this – they really do love to pack people in until one cannot shift slightly in one’s seat without incurring an accusation of inappropriate intimacy from one’s neighbour. If you’re on the end of the row, forget getting both your buttocks on the seat. You heard it here first.

If you want your plots to be cohesive and make sense, forget it. Updating the story has had no effect on this and it is crazily disjointed and incoherent. The only time you hear groups of previously unknown-to-each-other people actually making conversation is when they have all been involved in some kind of disaster; train derailment, earthquake or on the way out after a show is if its been so dire it beggars belief or nobody has understood a single word of what they have been watching – I heard lots of “What the Fuck was That All About?”-type conversations springing up, punctuated by shrieks of slightly hysterical laughter. Updating the production itself has merely managed to overlay 70s naff with early 80s naff, making it doubly indigestible (or maybe that was just the broad bean salad). Add an attempt at incorporating loads of Fosse-esque choreography (Bob Fosse choreographed the original production, and if you haven’t a clue who Bob Fosse was, he also choreographed Cabaret, so think bentwood chairs, bowler hats, “jazz hands” and cross-kicks) and you really have got a mess on your hands. The graphics are inventive and fun to watch for a while if you like that kind of thing but rapidly become tedious, and when webcam’d “chatroom” heads pop up and start conversations, they are incongruous, distracting, anachronistic (heavily Noughties) and just bloody irritating. God only knows what happens when the computers refuse to co-operate or someone inadvertently hits Ctrl Alt Dlt backstage – no show, presumably. Its bound to happen at least once in the run. Most of the costumes are standard “computer game character” style – a heavy and bewildering mishmash range of Shogun/Monghal/Harem Girl/Medieval European, with a bit of Tron/bag lady/Star Wars thrown in. The supporting chorus are all wearing skin tight grey body suits making them look like your standard computer game avatar in the preparation stage of the game before you get to choose its clothing. I bet the dressing room stinks already – Christ only knows what its going to smell like by the end of the run; the only way of getting rid of the smell would probably be to firebomb the theatre and rebuild.

Its difficult to pick performances out of the mess. Matt Rawle plays the Leading Player as a kind of megalomaniacal Tim Curry lookalike, all greasy black hair and teeth like a cross between Red Riding Hood’s Wolf and a piano keyboard. His diction is at times so bad that regardless of the fact that he’s miked and no more than 15 feet away, a lot of his words sound like he’s got a feather pillow over his face. The dialogue is so toe-curlingly naff (particularly towards the end) that I’m quite relieved that I can’t hear most of it. Harry Hepple is likeable enough as the ingénue-in-Wonderland title character looks uncomfortable and more than slightly embarrassed at what he has having to do to get himself through until another job comes up in the spring. Frances Ruffelle tries to turn the thankless role of Fastrada into a comedy turn from TOWIE but it falls pancake-flat against the high twaddle factor of the libretto. Nobody can really come out with any honours when the material is so excruciatingly bad. You’ll either love this or loathe it, and personally I think that the Menier has a dead duck on its hands of Paradise Found proportions. I’ve been wrong before and not afraid to admit it, but Pippin is a seriously rotten apple.

What the critics thought:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-24019218-pippin-menier-chocolate-factory---review.do

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8941430/Pippin-The-Menier-Chocolate-Factory-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pippin-menier-chocolate-factory-london-35-6273390.html

Ruddigore - Opera North @ The Barbican, Wednesday 23rd November 2011

2011-11-25T15:12:00.000Z

Synopsis:

A remarkable feature of the Cornish village of Rederring is that it possesses a corps of professional bridesmaids, whose services are much underused of late. They suggest to Dame Hannah that she might marry, but Hannah, the victim of an unhappy girlish romance, is pledged to eternal spinsterhood. She had fallen in love with a young man who courted her under an assumed name but who, on their wedding day, she discovered to be no other than Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, one of the bad Baronets of Ruddigore (and the uncle of the current baronet), on whom there is a strange curse. Madly as she loved him she left him there and then. Dame Hannah tells the chorus about the legend – the first Baronet was a witch-hunter, and while being burned at the stake, one of his victims vowed that he and all his male heirs must commit at least one crime a day or perish in agony.

Rose Maybud arrives. Rose is a foundling. She was discovered on the steps of the workhouse with a book of etiquette tucked into the basket. She has kept this book ever since and lives by its instructions. She is fond of a young farmer, Robin Oakapple (who is in reality Ruthven Murgatroyd. In dread of the terrible curse, he fled from home, while his younger brother, Despard, believing him to be dead, succeeded to the family title and the curse). Robin is greatly attracted to Rose, but he is too shy to tell her that he loves her.

A stir in the village heralds the arrival of Richard Dauntless, a sailor, on leave. Robin enlists his services to propose to Rose on his behalf. In doing so, however, Richard falls in love with Rose himself, proposes on his own account and is accepted. But when Rose learns the true state of affairs she transfers her affections to the shy and modest Robin, and Richard in revenge reveals the identity of Robin to Sir Despard Murgatroyd; in consequence Robin has to re-assume his family title with its terrible curse. Sir Despard, now free, proposes to Mad Margaret, a poor, crazed creature whose brain has been turned by his previous heartless conduct; while Rose, in horror of the dreadful curse, once more bestows her affections on Richard.

In the picture-gallery of Castle Ruddigore hang portraits of the baronets from Sir Rupert, the witch-hunter, to Sir Roderic, the most recent. Robin is now in residence with his faithful servant, old Adam Goodheart. They are discussing what the crime of today is to be. Alone before the portraits of his ancestors, Robin confides to them his detestation of the curse and begs to be released from it. His ghostly ancestors come down from their frames, making it clear to Robin that their patience is running thin with his pathetic attempts at crime. He is ordered for his next crime to carry off a lady, and after Robin has promised to be obedient in the future, the ancestors change back into pictures. Adam sets off to capture a lady from the village.

Robin receives a visit from his brother Despard and Mad Margaret, who are now married and devoted to good works.. Despard points out to Robin that he must realize that he is morally responsible for all crimes committed during Despard's occupation of his place, and Robin is more than ever determined to find some means of freeing himself from the conditions of this dreadful curse.

Old Adam returns to Ruddigore Castle having abducted Dame Hannah. She is in a rage at the treatment she has received. Robin in alarm calls to his uncle Roderic for help, and once again he descends from his picture-frame. He denounces Robin for carrying off the lady who was once engaged to him. Seeing their happiness in their reunion, Robin has a brilliant idea. He puts it to Sir Roderic that a Baronet of Ruddigore can only die by refusing to commit a crime and that is tantamount to suicide. But suicide itself is a crime [or it was when the operetta was originally written]. They ought therefore never to have died at all. Consequently they are all alive. It is obviously impossible to contradict this sound logic and there are finally plenty of weddings for the Bridesmaids to attend.

Cast:

Rose Maybud – Amy Freston
Dame Hannah – Anne-Marie Owens
Robin Oakapple – Grant Doyle
Old Adam – Richard Angas
Richard Dauntless – Hal Cazalet
Mad Margaret – Heather Shipp
Sir Despard – Richard Burkhard
Sir Roderic – Steven Page

Creative Team
Words – W. S. Gilbert
Music – Sir Arthur Sullivan
Director – Jo Davies
Set – Richard Hudson
Costumes – Gabrielle Dalton
Lighting – Anna Watson

How lovely to see that one of G&S’s relative failures can still pack out an entire theatre, and how wonderful to hear Sulliivan’s score played by upwards of 30 musicians (with a second trombone, yet!). How splendid to see a creatively directed production that had had shedloads of money chucked at it. And how disappointing that the singing wasn’t up to anything like scratch. Opera North should be able to field some better principals than this – perhaps they were saving their Big Guns for their production of The Queen of Spades? Whatever the reason, the somewhat limited vocal talent on display serves this production very ill. I’ve actually heard better amateur voices. Amy Freston got quieter and quieter the higher up the stave she climbed, and there were very few – if any – occasions when you heard any of Rose Maybud’s top notes sailing high over the chorus. Hal Cazalet sounded similarly underpowered as Richard Dauntless – in the trio “When Sailing O’er Life’s Ocean Wide” both Freston and Cazalet were roundly trumped by Grant Doyle’s Robin Oakapple. The greatest disappointment was Steven Page’s Sir Roderic – the character only has one song (When the Night Wind Howls) which should be delivered in the kind of deep, fruity bass-baritone that makes the floorboards vibrate. His somewhat reedy baritone totally failed to make the grade for me. Only Heather Shipp’s Mad Margaret and Richard Angas’ Old Adam sounded like they were being sung by members of a well-regarded opera company.

I enjoyed the central conceit of updating the action to the early 30’s, (although this did tend to make a bit of a nonsense of the libretto’s slightly affected early 19th century style) and it was clever and interesting to present the show as an old, faded movie of the kind you get on Sunday afternoons on TV. What didn’t work well was the mixing of this style with the attempt at taking Ruddigore back to its roots in 19th century stage melodrama – there were prominent footlights across the stage of the kind seen in an old “palace of varieties” and several of the numbers were given in a vaudeville style in front of a dropped frontcloth. Use of the footlights and tracking spotlights reinforced this feel, and I began to feel as if I were being dragged backwards and forwards in time constantly while the production tried to settle into a particular period. The design on the drop cloth, while pretty and well realised, was inappropriate to the given location of the operetta being a Cornish fishing village, as it showed a romantically overgrown garden with steps and crumbling columns. Again, fine for “The Good Old Days” variety hall but out of synch with both the 30’s and the supposed village setting. The problem with making everything fit with the “old sepia-toned film” is that the set and costumes had to follow a very proscribed colour range of whites, creams, blacks, browns and pinks – pretty enough in itself but visually quite dull; after a while one’s eyes start to crave the sharp contrast of a splash of sharp blue or green; proof of which came in the form of Mr. Punch (in cherry red) and the bright green crocodile who appeared during the Punch and Judy show. Immediately the eyes of the entire audience were focussing only on them – which was probably deliberate because its probably the funniest bit of the entire show. One of the ghosts was dressed in a dark red Elizabethan costume and, again, the sudden visual contrast meant that my eyes, hungry for colour, immediately focussed on him alone.

What I particularly enjoyed was the “back story” of young Hannah and her relationship with Sir Roderic being presented as a silent film during the overture – if you’ve never seen the show, this “back story” is easy to miss as its explained in a very brief exchange of dialogue, and, if you do miss it, it can leave you wondering what the hell is going on, with serious consequences for your enjoyment of the piece. I also loved the fact that a great deal of thought had gone into scene changes during Act 1 – for the finale, we find ourselves suddenly inside the village church, which fits perfectly with both plot and music.

The chorus of professional bridesmaids were given plenty to do, with lots of highly inventive business and each seemed to have been given a distinct character. If I am going to be really, really picky (and believe me, I am) I would say that the waistlines of their dresses were in completely the wrong place for the 1930s – waistlines were at the natural waist and therefore insufficiently low to give the correct period line.

The technical demands of the second act were extremely well handled, although the sightlines from my seat didn’t enable me to see the entire stage and therefore I missed a fair bit. The “trial” scene was a very good idea and I anticipate this being pinched by at least one amateur director of my acquaintance. The “disappearance” of Sir Roderic could have been a real coup de theatre but I think a lot of people didn’t register it because his cloak was more or less the same colour as the set and so the “trick” was very easily missed if you happened to be looking elsewhere at the time, which was an incredible shame as it should have been a real “oooooooh!” moment. And the director in me was praying that something was going to be done with the polar bear rug – someone should have tripped over it or wrestled with it, or perhaps its eyes should have lit up.

Yes, I have really picked this production to bits rather. But only because it was thought-provoking and enjoyable. Had I loathed it, then I really wouldn’t have invested the time and effort into being quite so pernickety. It can be a tough life being a theatre critic sometimes – your critical judgement gets sharpened to the point where it becomes practically impossible to just sit back and enjoy things on their own terms. So a big round of applause for Opera North for having the guts to revive a lesser-known G&S work and for doing a damned good job with it.

What the critics thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/7130347/Opera-Norths-Ruddigore-review.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9aaefc30-101b-11df-841f-00144feab49a.html#axzz1ejHCRShM

http://www.opera-britannia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=206:ruddigore-opera-north-31st-january-2010&catid=8&Itemid=16

http://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/ruddigore-opera-north

Death and the Maiden - Harold Pinter Theatre (formerly The Comedy Theatre), Friday 11th November 2011

2011-11-13T22:06:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Years have passed since political prisoner Paulina suffered at the hands of her captor: A man whose face she never saw, but whose voice she can still recall with terrifying clarity.

Tonight, by chance, a stranger arrives at the secluded beach house she shares with her husband Gerardo, a human rights lawyer. a stranger Paulina is convinced was her tormentor and must now be held to account…

Cast:
Paulina: Thandie Newton
Gerardo – Tom Goodman-Hill
Roberto – Anthony Calf

Creative Team:
Written by Areil Dorfman
Director – Jeremy Herrin
Set and Costume design – Peter McIntosh
Lighting – Neil Austin
Sound – Fergus O’Hare

Its not often that I am sitting at my PC when an offer of cheap tickets drops into my inbox. Sure, it wasn’t for anything that I was desperate to see, but there was a certain “why not?” feeling about my decision – it was either that or sit and stare at the TV all Friday night until my eyes started to bleed. And Him Indoors sounded vaguely amenable to coming. So we went. And rapidly realized that we probably should have stayed at home.

There was a moment of high comedy as we went to the theatre to collect the tickets before heading off for an extortionately priced cup of coffee round the corner. I’d literally put my foot on the first of the steps leading up to the entrance when I was accosted by a slightly over-enthusiastic chap with one of those little earpieces sticking out of his lug. “Are you here to collect your tickets?” I paused for a second or two, wondering why on earth I would be entering a theatre an hour before curtain up otherwise. Perhaps he thought I was a terrorist? “Er….. yes”, I replied. “You’ll be able to get them from the Box Office”, he said, “which is over there”. He pointed to the small window about 8 foot away from me across the nastily patterned carpet. The window had the words “Box Office” painted over it in big gold letters. Perhaps he thought I was a stupid terrorist? “I think I could have worked both those things out for myself, thanks”, I replied, rolling my eyes mentally, “I have done this kind of thing before”, desperately wanting to say “Oh thanks! I had intended to wander about aimlessly in your very small foyer for 20 minutes trying desperately to work out where to collect my ticket” instead. Possibly there have been an influx of people going to the theatre recently (probably to see Ghost or Rock of Ages) who don’t realize that one collects one’s tickets from the box office, people who can’t read or work out the directions to the Box Office even though its quite literally in spitting distance, has “Box Office” painted up over it and is in plain view from the door. Or possibly the guy with the little earpiece worked for the Department of The Bleeding Obvious? Is theatre dumbing down that much? Honestly.

Anyway, it rapidly became clear that the success of the entire play rests very firmly on the shoulders of whoever is playing Paulina. And that when she is being played by someone who has never set foot on the stage before, it isn’t going to work. Sure, the woman may be an experienced film actress but honeychile, they is two completely different things, an’ jus’ cos you is good at the one, doan mean that you is goin’ to be any good at the other. Sure, the role of Paulina is a difficult one; you need not only vulnerability but a core of hardened steel that makes the audience agonise over what you are doing and why. You need to be a frightened woman capable of suddenly turning the tables on both the man you think repeatedly raped you 15 years ago and the entire audience. Juliet Stephenson created the role in London and I bet the atmosphere in the theatre back then was electric. It wasn’t last night. You need an actress with balls of steel and a hell of a lot of stage expertise. This, however, was a horribly, embarrassingly misguided choice of role for someone making their stage debut, someone who should have listened to that irritating voice inside the head that we all have; the one that, however much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, is always bloody right. If Newton had pulled this one off, it would have made her a star overnight. But my advice to her would now be “Stick to films love”.

Ironically, this then throws a more intense light on the two male actors who then have to carry the play. Ordinarily, you would hardly notice their performances because you would be so wrapped up in the action. But here, it becomes rapidly obvious that they are both bloody good actors who have learned their trade well. Tom Goodman-Hill comes out of this particularly well – his character is one of those irritating “Shall I, shan’t I? type of men that would usually just come across as vacillating and a bit wet. Against Newton, you can see that he is actually doing a very good job with a very poorly written part.

Stupidly, the producers seem to have incorporated an interval in the play. Not only is there no natural place for this (reflected in the fact that, during the first part of the run – and very possibly other productions - it was a straight-through, one act, 100 minute play), but the interval means that any tension built up during the first half drains away from the auditorium completely and then struggles – and fails – to build up again in the second. So the second half is an almost complete flop. Lets face it, with the current fashion for no-interval plays, 100 minutes is nothing much anyway – I’ve sat there for 2 ½ hours without an interval in the past. With a decent actress the play would fly by, becoming almost unbearably tense; I have a sneaky suspicion that the lack of interval was having an effect on bar takings at the theatre. The piece would run much better without a break. As it is, most people seem to use the extra time to discuss the shortcomings of both the piece and the leading lady. Or perhaps they are struggling with Ordnance Survey maps and Kendal Mint Cake in the foyer trying to find their way back to the Box Office.

What the critics said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/8860259/Death-and-the-Maiden-at-Harold-Pinter-Theatre-Seven-magazine-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/oct/30/death-maiden-thandie-newman-review

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/death-and-the-maiden-harold-pinter-theatre-london-2376268.html
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-24002076-death-and-the-maiden-the-harold-pinter-theatre---review.do

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas - Union Theatre, Wednesday 19th October 2011

2011-10-27T20:45:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

It is the late 1970s, a brothel that has been operating outside of fictional Gilbert, Texas for more than a century. It is under the proprietorship of Miss Mona Stangley, having been left to her by the original owner. While taking care of her girls, she is also on good terms with the local sheriff, Ed Earl Dodd. When crusading television reporter Melvin P. Thorpe (based on real-life Houston news personality Marvin Zindler) decides to make the illegal activity an issue, political ramifications cause the place to be closed down.

Cast:
Sarah Lark as Miss Mona.
James Parkes as Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd
Leon Craig as Melvin P.Thorpe
Nancy Sullivan as Shy
Frankie Jenna as Angel
Stephanie Tavernier as Jewel
Lindsay Scigliano as Doatsey Mae
Tony Longhurst as Senator Wingwoah

Creative Team:
Directed by: Paul Taylor-Mills
Musical Director: Tom Turner
Choreography & Musical Staging by: Richard Jones
Production Designer: Kingsley Hall
Lighting Design: Howard Hudson

TBLWIT is an odd show. Plot lines run nowhere, some characters seem superfluous, the things you expect to develop into a story don’t. The two halves don’t seem to fit together properly – in Act 2 you seem to be watching a different show with a different plotline from Act 1. Your human sympathy is milked hard for characters which emerge, then fade away completely. Other characters take more prominence in the plot than would seem entirely necessary. The book is dated - stuck firmly in the 70s which, as far as most of the audience is concerned, might just as well be the late Cretaceous era. It doesn’t help anything to play this piece over the top – it needs simplicity, delicacy and a certain touch of realism to paper over the glaring inadequacies of the script. It needs to be sung and acted with clarity, and above all it needs a gentle hand from the director. Well, we didn’t get it. Paul Taylor-Mills directs with all the finesse of a sledgehammer in the nuts, too many people give us accents so over-broad in their attempt at authenticity that they become completely inaudible and a major character over-plays his role to such an extent – perhaps ill-advisedly trying desperately to inject some life into the show - that it becomes a) impossible to understand what he is saying and b) a total relief when he is not on stage.

At some points there is so much schtick going on that the entire piece grinds completely to a halt. A couple of performances are not being given to the back wall as much as given to Southwark Tube Station and possibly further. In a small, confined space, it is extremely badly judged to hit your audience in the face with a sledgehammer where a certain amount of restraint would serve so much better. This is partly the fault of the book – there is none of the coy tenderness of Dames at Sea, just over-gagging and too many badly drawn characters, leavened with attempts at cutesy-pie, homespun wisdom – and partly the fault of the production; think Country and Western music mixed with the excesses of Jerry Springer The Opera.

The entire production failed to gel together for me. It was too loud, too top-heavy, too brash. I could have done without Leon Craig playing Melvin P. Thorpe as a cross between Mr. Toad on speed and a 3rd-rate panto dame with a blonde mullet and dialogue delivered with all the precision and subtlety of a breezeblock (I don’t think I heard a single consonant from him all night). In fact his constant, frantic mugging and melodrama-baddy over-acting just irritated me from the word go. Some chap in the back row seemed to be having a great time guffawing loudly at every gag, and I began to think that Craig was milking the role just for him. I could have done without Tony Longhurst’s risible diction as Senator Wingwoah (couldn’t understand a single, sodding word) and I could have done with the band not playing so goddamned loudly that it made drowned most of the lyrics and made my head hurt into the bargain. I could have done with Miss Mona being played by someone rather more mature and world-weary, rather than the odd mix of a young Dolly Parton and an extremely young Prunella Scales. Here’s a role that should be comforting and motherly, but wasn’t. There was no chemistry between Lark’s Miss Mona and Parkes’ Sheriff Dodd , nor did there look like there had ever been any. In fact, if Parkes had spent a bit less time looking soulful and given his character a bit of backbone (or indeed some mental acuity) then the relationship might have sparked more.

In terms of the manifold failings of the book, I could have done with the Doatsey Mae character being explored more fully - either that or got rid of completely; the role goes nowhere and, depending on how you feel at the time, is either a missed opportunity for character exploration or a complete irrelevance - and I could have done with the characters of Shy (small town girl new to prostitution) and Angel (weary tart with a heart) not disappearing into the chorus 15 minutes after we are first introduced to them and then barely appearing until the final curtain. These are sympathetic characters and you want to know more about them, but the script just dumps them while careering away with other storylines.

I've no idea why the Union decided to put this show on. Its dated and desperately flawed as a show, and the production values were, in my opinion (lets just get this straight before you all start leaving rude messages; IN MY OPINION) very low indeed. The evening fell flat with a resounding splat and with so many good shows to choose from, I'm sure that the Union could have come up with a more inspired choice. 75% of the Union shows have been fantastic - this one is a turkey.

What the critics thought:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831319197118/The+Best+Little+Whorehouse+in+Texas.html

http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/the-best-little-whorehouse-in-texas/

http://passionfortheatre.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/review-the-best-little-whorehouse-in-texas-union-theatre/

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/33962/the-best-little-whorehouse-in-texas

Anna Bolena - Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Saturday 15th October 2011

2011-10-21T16:14:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

England, 1536. At Richmond Castle, courtiers discuss the state of royal affairs: Queen Anne’s star is sinking since King Henry VIII has fallen in love with another woman. Jane Seymour, Anne’s lady-in-waiting, appears, followed by the queen, who admits to Jane that she is troubled. Anne asks her page Smeaton to sing a song to cheer everyone. His words remind her of the happiness of her first love, which she gave up to marry the king.

Alone in her bedchamber, Jane — who is in fact the king’s new lover— is conscious-stricken about her betrayal. Henry appears and passionately declares his love, promising Jane marriage and glory. She is disturbed by his threats about Anne’s future but realizes that it is too late for her to turn back

Anne’s brother, Lord Rochefort, meets Lord Richard Percy, the queen’s former lover, in Richmond Park. Percy, who has been called back from exile by the king, admits that his own life has been miserable since he and Anne have been apart. The king arrives with a hunting party. He coolly greets his wife, then tells Percy that he has the queen to thank for his pardon. In fact, he has arranged Percy’s return as a trap for Anne. He orders one of his officers to spy on the couple. Smeaton, who is in love with the queen, is on his way to her apartments to return a miniature portrait of her that he had stolen. He hides when Anne appears with Rochefort, who persuades his sister to admit Percy. Anne admits that the king hates her, but she remains firm and pleads with Percy to find another woman worthy of his affection. Just as he draws his sword and threatens to kill himself, Henry bursts in. Smeaton proclaims the queen’s innocence and in the process the furious king seizes the miniature, providing him with welcome proof of his wife’s seeming infidelity. Anne, Percy, and Smeaton are arrested

Anne has been imprisoned in her London apartments. Jane arrives to tell her that she can avoid execution by pleading guilty and confessing her love for Percy, thereby allowing the king to remarry. Anne refuses, cursing the woman who will be her successor. Jane admits that she is that woman. Shocked, Anne dismisses her . Smeaton has falsely testified to being the queen’s lover, believing that his confession would save Anne’s life, but in fact he has sealed her fate. Anne tells the king that she is ready to die but begs him to spare her the humiliation of a trial. Percy claims that he and Anne were married before she became the king’s wife. Even though he thinks this is a lie, Henry triumphantly replies that another, worthier woman will ascend the throne. Jane pleads with Henry for Anne’s life, but he dismisses her. News arrives of the council’s verdict: The royal marriage is dissolved and Anne and her accomplices are to be executed.

Her fellow prisoners are brought in and Smeaton blames himself for having caused Anne’s impending death. When bells and cannon fire are heard, announcing the king’s new marriage, Anne suddenly comes to her senses. She furiously curses the royal couple and goes off to face her execution.

Cast:
Anne Boleyn - Anna Netrebko
Jane Seymour - Ekaterina Gubanova
Smeaton - Tamara Mumford
Richard Percy - Stephen Costello
Henry VIII - Ildar Abdrazakov

Creative team:
Music: Gaetano Donizetti
Production: David McVicar
Set design: Robert Jones
Costumes: Jenny Tiramani
Lighting: Paule Constable

No, I haven’t suddenly decided to take a short break in New York – this was the first in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011 “Live Transmission” series, which I saw from a very comfortable seat at Greenwich Picturehouse. Sure, I wasn’t there in person, but feel that a live relay entitles me to write a review as if I was. And hey, its either write a review of Anna Bolena or do the washing up, and I know which I’d rather do, frankly. The main reason we went was that Anna Netrebko was starring in the title role – and as regular readers will know, the woman is practically the House Goddess around here. I have to admit that on paper, she’s not the first person you would think of when casting this role – Boleyn was in her late 20’s when she was scheming and screwing her way to the top, and Netrebko is now 40 and, frankly, rather matronly. If anyone’s writing an opera about the life of Catherine of Aragon, Netrebko is definitely your diva. Seeing her as Anne Boleyn is admittedly a stretch, although perhaps not quite so much a stretch as seeing Ekaterina Gubanova as Jane Seymour, resembling as she did more resemblance to an animated sofa than to the pale and submissive teenage Queen-in-Waiting. Anyhoo, Anna Bolena takes a shedload of historical liberties with the story anyway so I suppose this was just one more liberty the audience had to swallow. Mind you, the audience in Greenwich was so old and doddery the majority of them were probably at Court when Anne Boleyn was still in nappies – one old cove a couple of rows behind us could be heard pontificating that “the entire intelligentsia of SE13 are here this afternoon”, obviously failing to realise that some of the said intelligentsia had travelled all the way from the cultural deserts of SE9 to be there. I do love opera audiences; they’re always so entirely convinced of their own superiority over other people. It’s a pleasure to listen to them sort their world into “opera lovers” and “scum”. Fortunately, if I get “Opera Snob DTs” I can always listen to my own personal Opera Snob waffling on about “the vocal instrument”. and "snatching at the top D in "Visi tui".

The problem with this opera is that you cannot do anything with it. It has a specific setting in a specific historical period and this means it can’t be fiddled with. Allied to this problem is that it’s very much a “stand there and sing” piece – lots of declaiming, very little action. There are no choruses of jolly villagers to leaven the mix and bring a bit of light relief. There’s no humorous mistaken identities, nobody dressing up as someone else and not being recognised until the final scene. Everyone is angst-ridden and watching their neck, the story is set in a particular groove and all that the performers can do is get through it as best they can. This is old-fashioned opera – everyone standing around singing at each other wringing their hands and emoting like crazy. So it does make for a fairly static production even at the best of times, and the Met’s stab at it is no exception. Jenny Tiramani’s costumes do little to leaven the gloom – for the most part everyone is dressed in sombre colours so there’s little to look at when the going gets heavy. Tiramani was interviewed backstage in the interval – she bears more than a passing resemblance to Edna Modes from The Invincibles – and gave a spirited defence of her designs, saying that she had used Holbein portraits as her inspiration, so they were historically accurate. That’s all well and good, but this is opera, for pete’s sake – you can get away with murder if you want to; people will swallow big lies in opera but choke on the little ones. I don’t see any reason why things couldn’t have been brightened up a bit. I had a major problem with the female cast’s headdresses – Anne Boleyn was educated at the French court, and popularised French fashions in England when she became queen. Anna Bolena herself only appeared in the French hood once when she should have been wearing it constantly and every other woman on stage wore the Gable hood, a by then very old fashioned style; Netrebko later appeared wearing a type of headdress more associated with Anne of Cleves and which was not fashionable in England at the time. Every woman at court during Anne’s reign would have followed the fashion set by the Queen. What is worse, the Gable hood doesn’t suit women with large features, and Gubanova looked like somebody had dropped a small house on her head. So much for authenticity of research – it was simply wrong. Another major historical inaccuracy was having Netrebko make her first entrance accompanied by a young girl with long red hair – presumably this was meant to be her daughter, the future Elizabeth I – yet Elizabeth was barely 3 years old when Boleyn died.

Anyway, I have digressed and found myself stuck in a slight backwater here. Meanwhile, in another room in the castle……One thing I did enjoy about the production was that the set allowed for a great deal of listening at doors or processing along shadowy corridors while the principals slugged it out centre stage, which really brought home just how dangerous a place Henry’s court was – you were never alone, even when you thought you were. There was always someone sneaking around picking up little snippets of information to be stored away and used against someone at a later date. And I enjoyed Netrebko’s performance thoroughly – crikey, that woman can act. She can switch from fury to terror in the click of a finger, and I thought she brought Donizetti’s somewhat two-dimensional heroine fully to life (charmingly, in her pre-performance interview, she confessed to having watched several episodes of The Tudors as research). Ildar Abdrazakov (a name which sounds more like a sneeze every time I say it) left his audience in no doubt that his Henry was a man used to being obeyed instantly and constantly frustrated that his Queen refused to be brought to heel. Henry VIII is somewhat of a cardboard king anyway – we all know (or think we know) what Henry was like because of the way he is portrayed in portraits, in films and on TV, and Mr. Sneezy managed to flesh out his portrayal excellently. Gubanova was awful – far too old, far too fat, far too wooden; a really unlikely choice of shag for the King of England when he’s got Netrebko’s Boleyn to get jiggy with.

So it was an interesting evening – an interesting experience to see a live transmission and what could be done to make a really boring, static opera more accessible (answer: not that much). It was hilarious to hear Renee Fleming, hosting the transmission, make an appeal for donations to the Met (probably the richest opera house in the entire world) when they get corporate sponsorship by Bloomberg, a deeply nasty corporation devoted to the evils of Capitalism and with trillions in the bank and Toll Brothers, “America’s luxury home builders” who design “trophy homes” for America’s most evil Capitalists. But it was not so much fun sitting next to one particular old cow in the audience. I’d been running the tail end of a bad cold during the week and had just reached the “oh god I can’t stop coughing” stage. I’d managed not to cough at all during the first three hours or so, but the dry air in the cinema caught up with me by the final act. Its not like I was coughing up blood like some tubercular heroine or something, and I did have a handkerchief with me that I used to muffle the sound as much as I could. But the more I tried to relax my throat, the more persistent the tickle got and inevitably, the coughs came. I left my seat at the end, wriggled out past said old cow and then stood to one side to let other people pass while Him Indoors gathered up his opera glasses and his fur stole. Old Cow obviously thought I had left, because she boomed out to her companion “I could have walloped that fool who ruined everything by coughing all the way through”. The red mist descended and I told her in no uncertain terms that I’d done my best a) not to cough to start with and b) be as quiet as I could and that coughing was a human function with no laws against it in public places. Unfortunately for Old Cow, she decided to counter this by telling me “You should have stayed at home”. I was sorely tempted to ask her if I she'd rather I wasted my ticket and stood in the broom cupboard at home instead, but contended myself by telling her to hurry home in case someone dropped a house on her too. Silly old bitch.

What the critics said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/arts/music/the-metropolitan-opera-performs-donizettis-anna-bolena.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/opera-review-anna-bolena-at-metropolitan-opera/2011/09/27/gIQAJY5y2K_story.html

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/netrebko_makes_anna_xtroardinary_8NwuRWsmFVT8Dyx2rDSP5I

The Madness of King George III - Richmond Theatre, Saturday 10th September 2011

2011-09-11T22:22:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

The story begins nearly three decades into George's reign, in 1788, as the unstable king begins to show signs of increasing dementia, from violent fits of foul language to bouts of forgetfulness. This weakness seems like the perfect chance to overthrow the unpopular George, whom many blame for the loss of the American colonies, in favour of the Prince of Wales but the King's Prime Minister William Pitt and his wife Queen Charlotte are determined to protect the throne. Doctors are brought in, but the archaic treatments of the time prove of little value. In desperation, they turn to Dr. Willis, a harsh, unconventional specialist Willis struggles to break through to the mad king, treating him with an anger and haughtiness George has never before experienced.

Cast:
George III – David Haig

Queen Charlotte – Beatie Edney

George, Prince of Wales – Christopher Keegan

Frederick, Duke of York – William Belchambers

Lady Pembroke – Charlotte Asprey

Captain Fitzroy – Ed Cooper Clarke

Captain Greville- Orlando James

William Pitt – Nicholas Rowe

Charles James Fox – Gary Oliver

Sheridan – Patrick Moy

Sir George Baker – Peter Pacey

Francis Willis – Clive Francis

Creative Team:

Written by Alan Bennett

Director – Christopher Luscombe

Designer – Janet Bird

Lighting – Oliver Fenwick

Costumes – Hilary Lewis

Ah, leafy Richmond, home of ~~designer boutiques for adults and spoilt children, trendy homewares stores and designer cupcake shops~~ empty shops, the final days of Habitat’s closing down sale (£95 lampshades on offer for a fiver) and …erm…more empty shops. Looks like the recession is biting hard when Jocasta and Sebastian’s favourite outlets are all going tits up. Leafy Richmond, where you can eavesdrop on conversations in one of the many charity shops about how “no, we don’t sell knitting wool, can’t get it dearie, nobody round here buys it anyway, there’s a shop near Teddington station that sells it”. Looks like the Richmond Mummies’ Knitting Circle are having to import supplies for their “Chat and Knit Sessions” in Starbucks then. Things must be getting bad. In fact, things are so bad in Richmond that even the theatre has stopped selling programmes. Apparently they weren’t selling enough (probably because they were too bloody expensive in the first place) and they told their printers to reduce the print runs. “Bugger off” said the printers (I paraphrase here), “You can have 500 less per show”. “Not enough”, says the Theatre, “we need less”. “Well you can take your business elsewhere then” said the printers and put the phone down. Now, is that the right attitude to take during a recession? Telling your customers what they can have and what they can’t for their money? Shouldn’t they be grateful for the business, even if the customer wants less than before? So, Dear Reader, if you know a local printers that’s looking for work, tell them to give Richmond Theatre a call, because at the moment their customers are having to make do with photocopied cast lists – which is a big bummer because if there’s one kind of show that needs programme notes on the historical background, it’s “The Madness of King George III”, as evidenced by the idiotic American tourist in the row behind me asking his mother what the show was about. I longed to turn round and say “The clue’s in the title, you colonial fool”.

The lack of a programme didn’t seem to be preventing Fat Boy sitting next to us from hoovering up an entire bag of Opal Fruits during the first half (you know, Opal Fruits, those sweets in the really crackly bag and even more crackly wrappings round each one). Fat Boy was so excited by the prospect of consuming about 18,000 calories during the performance that at one point he was actually lining the sweets up on his leg in clumps of individual flavours, pausing only to wipe copious amounts of drool from his front and completely ignoring his father in the next seat along who was doing equally serious damage to a Value Pack of Revels (in an equally crackly bag). The clock was running so each was pushing in entire handfuls at a time in an attempt to reach Sugar Overload before the final curtain; according to the Box Office, “the performance finishes at 10:06pm – if its any later it will be because of human error”. I swear I don’t make these things up.

Anyway, I digress. This is a touring production so its leaving Richmond as we speak and heading for pastures new (details below). Catch it while you can because its worth every penny of the ticket price. Its necessarily pared down in terms of scenery (the play is notorious difficult to stage because of its many changes of scene), costumes (they could have invested in a few more costumes and had better quality ones, I think – I can cope with a sparse set but I think scrimping on costumes and wigs really makes a production look cheap, particularly for a historical play. Poor Queen Charlotte had to wear the same frock for the entire 9 years of the play’s action and the same awful wig which made her look like she had a bedraggled tabby cat sitting on her head. Mind you, some of those Royal palaces were notorious draughty. Perhaps British Gas should adopt a new slogan. “Save gas – get a cat to sit on your head”) as well as in length (in the original production, it ran nearly three hours. Here, Act I is advertised as “1 hour 38 minutes” and Act 2 “43 minutes”. Obviously Richmond are strict on timing – I had visions of people acting with an eye on the clock and frantically ripping pages out of the prompt copy while the woman in the Box Office checks her watch and jots down notes under the heading “Human Timing Irregularities during Performance”. So it looks a bit scrimped, and feels a bit rushed in places. Walls slide on, doors slide off and actors rush to keep up with them.

Fortunately, David Haig is completely in control as George III and would only need to fix his beady eyes on a retreating wall and shout “Stay still Sir! What what!” and it would creep back on its runners looking shamefaced. The play is, necessarily, almost entirely his and by heck does he work. It must be an exhausting part to play every night. He has an incredibly deft hand for comedy and also for pathos – his scenes with Queen Charlotte were almost unbearably touching in their domestic simplicity. It is a superb performance. Beatie Edney makes a wonderful foil for him as the homely and fat Queen Charlotte, worn out by 15 pregnancies yet clearly still besotted with her husband. Her accent is impeccable – she manages to sound exactly like a German matron speaking heavily accented yet formally correct English. If it wasn’t for that bedraggled tabby cat on her head…..Christopher Keegan was perfect as the Prince Regent – like an empty-headed Augustus Gloop obsessed with waistcoats and rococo furniture instead of chocolate. If I have one criticism about the performance of Clive Francis as Dr.Willis it is that he seemed to me to have modelled it far too closely on that of Ian Holm in the film version, right down to the facial expressions. This also seemed to be casting to type – there is absolutely no reason why Dr. Willis cannot be played by someone tall.

What could have a been an overpowering set is kept light and airy by Janet Bird’s pale wood designs, scored across in diagonal parallel lines to suggest the sheen of dark varnish on doors and panelling. Three enormous pairs of double doors are cleverly mixed and matched with rows of empty picture frames suspended above wainscoting to suggest a variety of rooms and corridors, and the pale wood flooring manages to suggest all sorts of open spaces and interiors given a few bits of furniture. Costumes, as pointed out above, were adequate and could have done with having a bit more money spent on them.

Appropriately for a play dealing with the Monarchy, there were no “communist bows” as Him Indoors calls bows for the entire company only. There seems to be a creeping egalitarianism in theatre curtain calls of late, as if directors think that it would be demeaning for those in smaller parts to have a proper “walk down” at the end. I don’t agree - yes, theatre is teamwork, but the audience should be given the opportunity to reward individual actors with applause if they deserve it. I “bravo’d” for Beatie Edney’s performance and was glad to see that she heard this and appreciated it. And by jehosaphat did Mr. Haig deserve his standing ovation from the majority of the audience. In fact, I’d got so caught up in the story of this unhappy monarch that I confess to having contributed a “God Save Your Majesty!” in the middle of it.

See this if you can. It deserves your support and you’ll come away having been thoroughly entertained, Which is, as they say, A Good Thing.

The production tours to:

Newcastle Theatre Royal Sept 12–17;

Norwich Theatre Royal Sept 19–24;

Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham Sept 26–Oct 1;

Nottingham Theatre Royal Oct 3–8;

Cambridge Arts Theatre Oct 10–15;

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury Oct 17–22;

Milton Keynes Theatre Oct 24–29;

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford Oct 31–Nov 5;

Hall for Cornwall, Truro Nov 7–12;

Chichester Festival Theatre Nov 14–19.

What the reviews said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8734662/The-Madness-of-George-III-Theatre-Royal-Bath.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576532310073672534.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/31/madness-george-theatre-bath-review

Road Show - Menier Chocolate Factory, Wednesday 17th August 2011

2011-08-23T21:08:00.001+01:00

Synopsis:

After the death of Addison Mizner, people who knew him, including his estranged lover Hollis Bessemer, comment on his life and the way he squandered his talents. Addisonclaims that his brother Wilson was the cause of all his failures.

On his deathbed, Papa Mizner charges his sons with the task of using their gifts to shape America. Mama Mizner tells the brothers that their family's wealth has been eaten away by Papa's long illness and advises them to seek gold in Alaska; Addison is reluctant, but goes along with Wilson anyway.

In Alaska, Wilson leaves to get supplies while Addison works the claim: Wilson is lured into a game of poker, which he is initially bad at but masters quickly. Addison comes to find him, and is shocked to discover that his brother has become a gambler. Wilson stakes their gold claim in a poker game and wins the saloon in which the game is taking place.

Addison leaves in disgust with his share of winnings and travels around the world searching for business opportunities and a sense of purpose . All of his ventures fail due to bad luck, and he is left with nothing but a collection of souvenirs - but the souvenirs inspire him to take up architecture so that he can design a house in which to show them off. Meanwhile, Wilson's businesses in Alaska have failed, and he comes south in the hopes of getting help from Addison. Addison has only just begun to practice as an architect, and Wilson seduces and marries his first client, a rich widow, and fritters away her money on various flashy endeavours. Mama Mizner, who is being looked after by Addison and never receives any visits from Wilson, enjoys reading about Wilson's exploits.. Only Addison remains uncharmed by Wilson, and when Wilson finally comes back, his resources exhausted, he finds that Mama has died in his absence. Addison angrily throws Wilson out of the house.

Later, there is a land boom in Florida. Addison travels to Palm Beach to take advantage of the many rich people settling there. On the train he meets Hollis Bessemer, with whom he is instantly smitten. Hollis explains his situation: he is the son of a wealthy industrialist, but he has been cut off by his father for refusing to enter the family business. His real passion is art, and although he is not himself talented enough to become an artist, he dreams of creating an artists' colony in Palm Beach.

Hollis and Addison arrive at Palm Beach, and Addison shows Hollis's aunt a plan for a house he proposes to build for her. Impressed, she agrees and offers to sponsor the artists' colony. However, Hollis and Addison, now lovers, are too busy designing resort homes for the rich and enjoying each other's company - until Wilson arrives destitute and sick. Addison reluctantly takes him in, and when Wilson has recovered he begins to work on Hollis, persuading him to be a patron to his newest scheme: to build a brand-new city in Boca Raton with Wilson as promoter and Addison as chief architect.

But Wilson's conman instincts resurge, and he promotes the Boca Raton real estate scheme with increasingly extravagant and eventually fraudulent claims, Addison goes along with this, and it is Hollis who finally puts a stop to both the real estate scheme and his relationship with Addison. Brought to a state of desperation by all that has happened, Addison tells Wilson to get out of his life

Returning to the first scene, Wilson realises that he, too, has died. Their differences no longer mattering enough to keep them apart, the brothers set out together on the road to eternity.

Cast:

Addison Mizner – Michael Jibson

Wilson Mizner – David Bedella

Mama Mizner – Gillian Bevan

Papa Mizner – Glyn Kerslake

Hollis Bessemer – Jon Robyns

Creative team:

Music and Lyrics- Stephen Sondheim

Director/set design – John Doyle

Costume – Matthew Wright

Lighting – Jane Cox

First, it is necessary to go back in time a bit. A couple of years ago, Him Indoors was muttering on about a gap in his collection of Sondheim CD. Something called Bounce. I hunted around on the internet, found a recording, bought it, wrapped it up. It was opened, duly listened to (while I was out) and more or less dismissed as “not that good – you can see why it never made it on Broadway”. The CD went into the rack and was more or less forgotten about; I don’t think it ever came off the shelf again. So much for birthday presents. Nothing more was said about it, And then about 6 weeks or so ago, a friend rang up and started gushing about something called Road Show. I didn’t think anything more about it, until Him Indoors announced that “The Menier are doing that new Sondheim show”. What new Sondheim show? “It was originally called Bounce and its now called Road Show. I suppose we’d better go see it, even though its dreadful”. If its that dreadful, why are we going? “I got cheap tickets”. Aha. We know its going to be dreadful but The Great God of Cheap Tickets has deemed that we go anyway. So I started planning the review in my mind – something about deformed offspring and the story of how this particular child been locked up in the attic by Papa Stephen and had now been let loose to horrify London’s Sondheim fans when it should really have been drowned in a barrel of rainwater at birth. You know, kind of a cross between Jane Eyre and Frankenstein, with a few touches of Rebecca. Reader, never let someone else’s opinion colour your judgement. go unlock the attic, turn on the light and take a look – and THEN make up your mind. For Road Show is (to further mangle the literary analogy) more like The Elephant Man than Frankenstein. Its unwieldy and somewhat misshapen sure; but underneath its perfectly sound and has not a certain lumpy charm all its own. Its not a Follies, Night Music or Into the Woods to be sure but, you know, all families have their black sheep. And to quote The Sound of Music: “the wool of a black sheep is just as warm”. I’ve have liked to have seen some information in the programme about the show’s genesis – were the Menier expecting all the Sondheimites to have this information at their expensively manicured fingertips?

What the Menier have done is work their own kind of magic on this ugly duckling (more mangling of analogies) and have managed to turn it into a reasonably respectable goose. There are a few golden eggs because people will go see anything that’s got “Stephen Sondheim” written all over it, and certainly one currently has to budge up quite a lot in the Menier’s rather cramped seats. If you’re not careful, you might have to sit next to a West End Whinger. Be warned though – 1) there is no interval (what it is with directors specifying “no interval” at the moment? 2) don’t be late and 3) once you’re in, you’re in for the duration – the way the show is presented means that you and your dicky bladder are just going to have to cross your legs and hope.

Various items of furniture are heaped along the two short ends of the performance space (with the audience sit in rows along the long ends) – this means that the very noisy air conditioning unit is at least partially hidden - and these are moved around and clambered all over in a fashion that reminded me very much of a previous Menier Gem (Flight, which should have got more recognition). In fact, its difficult to see how it could be presented otherwise – there are so many scenes and world locations that it would be practically impossible to perform the piece as a conventional production. Its still slightly unwieldy – there are some parts that seem far too long (the extended travelogue sequence), things that are under-developed (Sondheim’s first ever gay lovers), things that could have been jettisoned, things that could have been added (an interval – an hour and three quarters may not sound that long, but believe me, its too long). What makes it feel slightly hackneyed, I think is the fact that it’s a bit of a conventional plot for Sondheim – the life story of two brothers, neither of whom are without their faults, dealing with whatever cards Fate happens to deal them and trying to make the best of it in their own particular way. The “biography show” is a slightly old-fashioned concept, and I’m not entirely sure why Sondheim decided to use it. What is even more hackneyed is that Sondheim falls right into the expected trap of making one brother much more sympathetic and likeable than the other. Its almost as if the audience is being asked to cheer the hero and hiss the baddy at some points. So the evening is not without its faults, but neither is it without its good points. What disappointed me was that I had to jettison the review that was forming in my head before seeing it and realising that I would have to start from scratch, rather than it bursting from my forehead fully formed onto the page. Instead, as usual, I have had to sit here chewing a pencil and staring into space as usual, having to delete whole paragraphs because they were going nowhere and utilising “cut and paste” far too much to get this review born. So I feel sorry for Mr. Sondheim and his attempts to rehabilitate his deformed child. It can be difficult being a genius (and if you think that sounded pompous, I had intended to write something about incubating ideas for a long time and then finding that they hatched out all ugly. I even tried to lever in a witty play on the words oeuf and oeuvre but believe me, it didn’t fly).

What the reviews said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8623702/Road-Show-Menier-Chocolate-Factory-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/road-show-menier-chocolate-factory-london-2308091.html

http://www.fourthwallmagazine.co.uk/2011/07/review-road-show-menier-chocolate-factory/ (by heck, this is pompous)

Dames at Sea - Union Theatre, Sunday 14th August 2011

2011-08-21T21:05:00.001+01:00

Synopsis:

In the early 1930s, a Broadway musical is in rehearsal. Mona Kent is its temperamental diva star, Joan a wise-cracking chorus girl, and Hennesy the producer/manager/director. The naive Ruby arrives from Utah, with "nothing but tap shoes in her suitcase and a prayer in her heart" determined to be a Broadway star. Having not eaten for three days, she promptly faints into the arms of Dick, a sailor and aspiring song writer. Ruby gets a job in the chorus, but Hennesy informs the cast that the theater must be torn down, and they must find another place for the show. Joan and Lucky, another sailor and her former boyfriend, renew their romance while Ruby admits her feelings for Dick. Dick and Lucky persuade their Captain to volunteer the use of their ship. Mona recognizes the Captain as a former boyfriend. When Mona kisses Dick, to persuade him to give her one of his songs, Ruby sees and is despondent. Dick explains the misunderstanding and the couple make up. While rehearsing on the actual ship, Mona becomes sea sick; Ruby steps in to save the show and becomes a star The three couples decide to marry.

Cast:

Mona Kent – Rosemary Ashe

Joan – Catriana Sandison

Harry – Anthony Wise

Ruby – Gemma Sutton

Dick – Daniel Bartlett

Lucky – Alan Hunter

Captain Courageous – Ian Mowat

Creative Team:

Book and lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller

Music by James Wise

Director – Kirk Jamieson

Choreographer – Drew McOnie

Design – Kingsley Hall

Dammit, I must stop putting off writing reviews and then realising I’m so far behind that the show has actually closed. It doesn’t give you a chance to get to go see something I liked. Because you should have seen this, you really should.

Although I’ve seen a couple of productions that have started here at the Union and then moved to Wilton’s Music Hall, I’ve never actually made it here to the Union itself. We almost walked right past it – if you don’t know its there, you’ll never really see it, its so tucked away. And it doesn’t really look that prepossessing, let’s be frank. It was apparently a completely empty space until it was taken over by one of those far-sighted and highly driven souls who can look at coal and see the potential for diamonds. Not that there are many obvious diamonds out front – the guy who takes your ticket also serves you at the bar and the toilets – well, the thought still makes me shudder and go ick, frankly. There was something from Quatermass growing on the wall by the hand towel and another bit that looked like the Before bit in the ads for anything that kills 99.9% of all known germs DEAD. I suspect that anyone expecting glamour in the auditorium would run screaming from the room unless they found out beforehand that the seats were Glyndebourne chuckouts (totally true, and very comfy they were too, thank you). This is Functional Theatre, my friend.

But Functional doesn’t necessarily mean Bad Show. And in this case, far from it. I confess that I had been in a foul mood for most of the day beforehand, but even I managed to come out smiling at the end, having spent a couple of hours enjoying probably the silliest show ever written. For Dames at Sea, my friends, is a parody of those "Leading Lady Falls Ill On Opening Night, New Kid In Town Goes Out There A Chorus Girl And Comes Back A Star" movies that were going out of fashion even while Dick Powell was still doing his darndest to convince us he could play the Juve at 56. They don’t write ‘em like that any more – shame! But in the absence of the original, parody will do me just dandy, thanks. Make it a really good parody and I’m even happier. If its performed with gusto by a troupe of talented singers and dancers then hey, I might even crack a smile. Yes, the performance space was cramped to the point where those in the first row were in danger of being decapitated by a chorine’s kick; yes, Rosemary Ashe’s make up seemed to have been put on by a blind man with a trowel (still not quite sure whether this was deliberate or not) and yes; tall people need to duck in case they take out one of the spotlights but when there is clever choreography and a cast who know just how far to push parody before it becomes ridiculous, who cares?

Usually played with a cast of just six, the Union have managed to stretch their budget to accommodate three chorines of each sex, which I was very glad of; I think it would have looked a bit thin otherwise. As it is, all 12 on stage work their asses off. And they can all sing, and they can all act and they can all dance and dammit they can all do all three at the same effing time and I hate their guts for being so talented. The redoubtable Rosemary Ashe gives keeping up her very best shot and who can blame her if she sometimes looks knackered and in desperate need of a fag, a stiff drink, 10 minutes’ sit down and a good cough. Even her wig looks like it would appreciate a nice bowl of cold water by the second half but she keeps on hoofin’ while rivers of perspiration make slabs of makeup run down her face. I’m not going to pick out any of the principals for special mention, but a chorine, Meg Gallagher, for what I think used to be called “moxie”. Jesus that girl can hoof it. And for the very first time I think I began to understand what people mean when they say a girl has legs up to her armpits.

Even the interval was entertaining – as me and Him Indoors grabbed some fresh air outside, a specimen of the type known as My Wonderful Urban Life minced past. Cropped vest showing carefully trained abdomen muscles and carefully cultivated tan, shorts and expensive trainers, Victoria Beckham-esque shades, iPod, a couple of those big paper bags with string handles you get when you buy expensive clothes and Something From the Designer Deli Around The Corner For Dinner. A Walking Cliché, in fact. I laughed almost as much as I’d been doing during the first half of the show.

What the reviews said:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831312189951/Dames+at+Sea.html

http://westend.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-Reviews-DAMES-AT-SEA-Union-Theatre-August-2-2011-20110803

http://webcowgirl.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/review-dames-at-sea-union-theatre-southwark/

Don Quixote - Kirov Ballet @ ROH, Wednesday 3rd August 2011

2011-08-17T11:21:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Driven by the vision of his ideal woman Dulcinea, the aging knight Don Quixote begins his adventures with his trusty squire Sancho Panza in tow.

Kitri, only daughter of Lorenzo, the village innkeeper, is in love with Basilio, the village barber. Much to her chagrin, she learns of her father's plans to marry her to Gamache, a foppish nobleman. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza enter the village, causing great commotion. Noticing Kitri, Don Quixote wonders if he has, at last, found his Dulcinea. At the height of merriment, Kitri and Basilio, aided by their friends, Espada the toreador and Mercedes, sneak off followed by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Gamache and Lorenzo attempt to pursue the young couple.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza discover the fleeing couple hiding in a friendly gypsy camp. All are inspired by the romance of the night. As the vision of Dulcinea appears to him, Don Quixote realizes Kitri is not his "ideal", but indeed belongs with Basilio. Suddenly the wind gains momentum. Don Quixote foolishly attacks a windmill, believing it to be a giant threatening Dulcinea's safety. Caught up by one of its sails, he is thrown to the ground. Near death, Don Quixote has an enchanted dream of beautiful maidens in which the image of Kitri symbolizes his Dulcinea.

At sunrise, Lorenzo and Gamache manage to revive Don Quixtote. Sympathetic to the plight of the young lovers, the attempts to lead Lorenzo and Gamache astray.

Finally discovered, Kitri is forced by Lorenzo to accept the attentions of Gamache. The thwarted Basilio pretends to stab himself and Kitri implores Don Quixote to persuade Lorenzo to wed her to the "dying man” Instantly Basilio is restored to health! Triumphantly, Kitri leaves to prepare for marriage while Don Quixote and Basilio salute Lorenzo and Gamache for stoically accepting the inevitable.

The village celebrates the marriage. Don Quixote congratulates the couple, bids them a warm farewell, and resumes his ever-lasting adventures.

Cast:
Don Quixote – Vladimir Ponomarev
Sancho Panza – Stansilav Burov
Kitri – Yevgenia Obratztsova
Basil – Andrei Timofeev
Gamache – Solslan Kulave
Espada – Karen Ioanissiyan
Mercedes – Anastasia Petushkova
Queen of the Dryads – Ekaterina Kondaurova

Creative Team:
Music – Ludwig Minkus
Choreography – Alexander Gorsky, Nina Anisimova, Fyodor Lopukov
Design – Alexander Golovin, Konstantin Korovin
Sets recreated by – Mikhail Shishlinanikov
Costumes – Konstantin Korovin

Again, this review is being written a while after the event for various reasons, so its necessarily cobbled together from memory. Apologies for this!

As other reviewers have pointed out, Don Quixote is, more or less, a plotless ballet, so there’s not much to do as regards concentrating on a plot. You just have to sit there and let it all wash over you. Basically, the ballet is just a bit of an excuse for pretty costumes and a lot of enthusiastic dancing in a vaguely Spanish style. We “saw” the Marinsky perform this version of the ballet a few years back, but thanks to some rather strange seats in the slips (at stage level but tucked off right at the side, could only actually see about a third of the actual stage) so it was nice to see what we had missed last time! We actually managed to see a lot more this time round, thanks to Him Indoors’ impulsive purchase of a pair of binoculars in Suffolk a couple of weeks ago – even from the very back row of the upper circle, I was able to see costumes, facial expressions and footwork in incredible detail and it was just like having your own private performance as a result. Nice – we must do it more often.

There is a slight air of somewhat faded elegance about the Marinksy productions, I find – almost as if the weight of history presses heavily on the company. This was most evident in the scenery, which was scrappy and thin, and really didn’t do the production any justice at all. I suppose that when you are touring 10 individual ballets, the costumes take priority in the cargo containers and the scenery has to be whittled down as a result. Some of it seemed to have been left behind on the jetty completely – the prologue to this ballet is usually set in Don Quixote’s cottage but here it was simply played out against a black backdrop. There is, however, no excuse for paring down the ballet itself – other productions I’ve seen have been far more detailed in the storytelling and characterisation, and I desperately missed all those little touches that would have fleshed the story out a bit. I also thought there was far too much “panto” – characters such as Sancho Panza and Lorenzo were overplayed well past the point of caricature. I suppose when you have to get the essence of a character over to the poor buggers sitting right at the back of an enormous theatre, some overplaying is acceptable, but I am convinced that Sancho Panza went right through the back wall and out into Covent Garden itself, if not Trafalgar Square.

I felt particularly sorry for the “hired in extras” who had been brought in to decorate the set and do nothing else but sit there all evening at the back of the stage. On second thoughts, however, perhaps I should feel envious of them – not only did they have a ringside seat but they were getting paid for it! And I suppose they could put on their CV that they “…played Don Estelle in the Marinsky Ballet’s production of Don Quixote”. Their placing on set was a bit strange; although for most of the evening they were reasonably well incorporated into the scene, in the final scene they were all plonked in a straight line right in the middle of the set where they looked very uncomfortable indeed, having to do “ballet arms” every time one of the principals approached. Watch old productions of something like Swan Lake and you’ll see many examples of this awfully outdated practice in the castle scenes – every time someone approaches, all the corps have to raise an arm in the direction of their approach and it looks very silly, very dated and very, very artificial.

Andrei Timofeev seemed rather miscast as Basil – when did you last see a blonde Spanish man? He also seemed somewhat slightly built and was completely outdanced by Yevgenia Obratzsova’s spirited and passionate Kitri. ”. I also thought Karen Ioannissiyan’s Espada was a little underpowered – it’s the plum role of the sexy, hypermasculine matador and needs to burn up the stage. But it didn’t. I completely failed to see the point of Maria Shevyakova’s Eastern Dance (which basically consisted of a lot of sinuous arm waving and not very much else) – it looked horribly like she had got her dates mixed up and had been expecting to do La Bayadere instead. By the time someone had thought to tell her, she must have thought “Bugger it – I’ve spent an hour warming up my arms and I’ve put all this make-up on so I might just as well go on and be a “Spesh Act”, because there’s nothing on the TV tonight and I can sit in the dressing room and bum some fags off the corps de ballet afterwards”.

Anyway, it was an enthusiastically received performance, the auditorium was bulging at the seams and everyone had a good time. I enjoyed peering through the binoculars at the costumes (unusually, all the corps costumes were individually designed, rather than being uniform, and this extra effort really paid off well visually, making it a treat to look at), but didn’t really see quite how £25 a seat could be justified when, on a dockside somewhere in Russia there are some enormous boxes marked “Scenery for Don Quixote”.

What the critics thought:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/04/mariinsky-don-quixote-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/8679916/Don-Quixote-Mariinsky-Ballet-Covent-Garden-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/07/mariinsky-quixote-balanchine-robbins-review

Ah, the 80's! Check out the hairdo's - and try to ignore the rather odd wailing sounds at the start!

Anne Boleyn - Shakespeare's Globe, Thursday 28th July 2011

2011-08-11T15:58:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Hunting through an old chest, the newly crowned James I discovers the controversial legacy of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s notorious second wife - a copy of the Bible, translated into English. Time jumps back 70 years, when the witty and flirtatious Anne was in love with Henry, but also with the most dangerous ideas of her day. Conspiring with the exiled William Tyndale, she plots to make England a Protestant country – forever.

Cast:
Michael Bertenshaw - Robert Cecil
Sam Cox - Dean Lancelot Andrewes
Naomi Cranston - Lady Jane Seymour
Ben Deery - George Villiers/Countryman
Mary Doherty - Lady Celia/Countrywoman
Julius D'Silva - Thomas Cromwell
Sophie Duval - Lady Rochford
James Garnon - King James I
Peter Hamilton Dyer - William Tyndale/Divine
Anthony Howell - King Henry VIII
Colin Hurle- Cardinal Wolsey/Henry Barrow
Miranda Raison - Anne Boleyn
Dickon Tyrrell -Dr. John Reynolds

Creative team:
Written by - Howard Brenton
Director - John Dove
Designer - Michael Taylor
Composer - William Lyons

This is being written a couple of weeks after the event – things have been getting behind at RTR Towers what with all the riots outside in the street, and that’s just the Guildhall students burning effigies of me.

Know the saying “Be careful what you wish for – you might get it”? Well, I came away feeling that I should have listened. I pressed hard to go and see this at the Globe during its first run, and never got to see it. This time round I was taken after some very superior nagging on my part and have to say that I came away feeling that I really shouldn’t have bothered. Such is life eh?

I admit that I have a few problems with The Globe. Its always packed with tourists looking for yer acktual Shakespeeeerien experiunce, innit guv. Most of them haven’t really done their homework beforehand, and don’t realise what an uncomfortable experience it can be physically, standing in the sun for over two hours or wedged onto benches that aren’t terribly coccyx-friendly. There’s little scenery and no spectacular effects, and if they are bored teenagers then its not long before the novelty wears off and they start getting fidgety and start digging in their rucksacks for their iPhone. The stewards always put my back up as well – between the entrance to the theatre and our seats, we had our tickets checked three separate times. Well, I say “we” – I got separated from Him Indoors and the tickets on the way in so there were a series of increasingly terse exchanges between myself and the burgundy-tabarded Guardians of the Inner Sanctum. Then we found that our “restricted view” seats were slap bang behind one of the enormous pillars holding the stage gallery up, and it didn’t help a bit that the majority of the direction put people bang front and centrestage where we could neither see nor hear them (one of the major problems with The Globe is that very few modern actors know how to play a) in the open air and b) to an audience spread out round ¾ of a circle and at wildly differing levels. Very few modern directors can cope with this either – I suggest that during a dress rehearsal they move around the auditorium to check sightlines and audibility). And then I found that the play wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be.

Far from being a cosy re-telling of the Anne Boleyn story we all know and love – boy meets girl, boy has shedload of trouble getting a divorce, girl loses her head entirely – Anne Boleyn takes you backwards and forwards in time, investigating the religious problems the situation caused and – more or less – sidelining the more familiar bits. This makes the story considerably more difficult to follow and far more of an intellectual exercise than I think most of the audience were expecting. Not that I’m complaining about being made to think in the theatre but, as I’ve said somewhere before, if you don’t know much about the historical background, it can get very confusing and a lot of people are likely to switch off. I admit that my interest started to wane quite quickly (problems with audibility really didn’t help) but I gave it a good shot and my investment was repaid eventually after the interval, when for me the play really started to come into its own. This really is a play where, to get the most out of the experience, you need to read the programme notes from cover to cover first, do a bit of research on the internet and then see the play.

It doesn’t help either when your leading lady is not terribly sympathetic, and physically wrong for the part. I don’t mean the character of Anne is unsympathetic; far from it. Even though Anne was a scheming little minx who thoroughly deserved all she got (I always maintain that its Katherine of Aragon we should reserve our sympathy for), she makes a terrific character on stage or screen. She’s the baddy we all love to hate – dark, sexy, dangerously charming, highly intelligent, manipulative and out to get as many diamonds as she can lay her manicured little mitts on while keeping uber-stud Henry at groaning point (even Disney couldn’t have created a better villain). Even the programme notes describe her as “Nobody’s fool”. In short, she knew what she was doing until Fate moved some chessmen in unexpected ways and the whole shebang started to unravel. Miranda Raison, however, is gangly and somewhat plain, plays Anne as a slightly screechy jolly-hockeysticks type and is glaringly blonde. I thought she showed very little of Anne’s manipulative charm and wondered what Anthony Howell’s gorgeous and appropriately leonine Henry VIII could ever have seen in her The whole story falls apart if the portrayal of Anne is underpowered. Unfortunately one feels that with Anne the author has his own particular axe to grind, seeking to recast her as the Heroine of English Religious Reform – a slightly dodgy premise however you view it – against All Those Nasty Catholics. To bolster this, Brenton writes Cardinal Wolsey as a tub-thumping, sweaty proselytiser and Colin Hurley’s portrayal took this and swerved dangerously close to outright caricature with it. We are asked to swallow the idea that Anne can creep off into the woods around Hampton Court for a couple of meetings with the reformer William Tyndale (played by Peter Hamilton Dyer as an avuncular and faintly God-like presence). Tyndale was banished from England for what Henry and Cromwell considered to be his heretical translation of the Bible and was lucky to retain his head and his innards, yet for “banished” Brenton has substituted “Hidden In The Woods With A Troupe of Extramural Merrie Men Wearing Green Cloaks And Floppy Hats”. I’m finding it difficult here to extricate the faults of the play itself from the actual production. It happens sometimes so you will just have to bear with me. I also found it rather difficult to find Sophie Duval’s Lady Rochford as she seemed unconvincing and slightly too shrewish.

The “framing device” of King James’ finding of Anne’s copy of Tyndale’s Bible (which didn’t Lay in the House that Jack Built, despite how it sounds) was an interesting one. James Garnon’s James I was played just on the wrong side of caricature for me with far too much obvious playing for laughs. Campery is always a sure winner with the groundlings, and usually good for a chortle from the galleries but it can be overdone, both in the writing and the playing. Ben Deery was born to play his Love Interest George Villiers and I came away musing over the possibilities of a porn film called “Pretty Boys in Doublet and Hose”, say no more.

I was ashamed to find out on the way back to the station that The Globe isn’t actually built on the site of the original as I had thought, which is now home to a small block of flats of no architectural merit whatsoever. I would have loved to have hung around in the courtyard, shut my eyes and felt, but no, no time to dawdle, train to catch, hurry up, oooh look here’s some crab claws for sale in Borough Market, lets inspect these for 20 minutes. As I said, such is life.

What the critics thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/7916733/Anne-Boleyn-Shakespeares-Globe-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/29/anne-boleyn-review

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/anne-boleyn-shakespeares-globe-london-2041056.html

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/tls_selections/article7164896.ece

Once more into the breach......

2011-07-29T19:23:00.000+01:00

An article appeared in today's Guardian online by Michael Billington regarding the nature of criticism. One idiot, obviously still smarting from my review of Kiss Me, Kate, took it upon themselves to publish a link to this blog in the "comments" section. This resulted in several Guildhall students, and others, who had not previously been aware of my review, barraging me with vicious comments once again.

As a result, commenting on this blog is disabled (again) until people stop throwing toys out of prams.

I repeat - if you cannot hack criticism, what on earth are you doing entering a profession where your every move will be subject to it?

*sheesh*

The Beauty Queen of Leenane - The Young Vic, Monday 25th July 2011

2011-07-27T21:04:00.001+01:00

Synopsis:

Maureen, a middle‐aged spinster, lives with her elderly, manipulative mother Mag. in a remote cottage in Leenane, Connemara. Maureen’s sisters have flown the nest, escaping the drab family home, but Maureen, who has a history of mental illness, remains at home, trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her mother.

The arrival of an invitation sparks hopes of a last‐chance romance and offers Maureen the prospect of an escape to a new life. Things might just be looking up for her…but not if the interfering Mag has anything to do with it.

Cast:

Maureen Folan – Derbhle Crotty
Mag Folan, her mother – Rosaleen Linehan
Pato Dooley – Frank Laverty
Ray Dooley, his brother – Johnny Ward

Creative Team:
Written by – Martin McDonagh
Direction – Joe Hill-Gibbin
Designer – Ultz
Lighting – Charles Balfour
Sound – Paul Arditti

Well, I haven’t had such a good time at the theatre in a long while. I’m going to try and not spoil the plot for you, because you really, really must phone the Young Vic and offer to sell your grandparents in exchange for a ticket. All I am going to say is that The Beauty Queen of Leenane is one of those plays which you think is going to be extremely straightforward, but which leads you very firmly by the hand up the garden path and then spins you round and pushes you into a ditch. You stagger out, continue up the path and arrive at the door, only to have the mat pulled out from underneath your feet. And then, having apologised profusely, welcomed you into the house and offered you a towel, the play then hits you round the back of the head with a saucepan. And runs away laughing. What appears to be a straightforward little play, in which the happiness of the lead character is all you hope for, comes all over Agatha Christie and starts throwing unexpected plot developments in your way. You know what you want to happen, you think you know what will happen – and then you sit there peering through your fingers muttering “Don’t answer the door – I know who’s going to come through it”. And they don’t, dammit. This is about 20 minutes after you have been lulled into a false sense of security by having something happen on stage that is utterly predictable the minute you see it coming. I got so wrapped up in the action it was as much as I could do not to start shouting out advice to the characters. Its soooooo clever – and if the seats at the Young Vic weren’t so damned uncomfortable anyway you’d be spending most of the evening perched on the edge. It’s a rare thing that gets members of the audience talking to the people next to them in the interval about what they think is going to happen and how, or discussing the plot twists on the way out.

The set is simple, yet extremely effective, and you’re given the usual Young Vic “total experience” by walking into the auditorium to the sight and sound of rain falling lightly yet incessantly down sheets of taut plastic stretched from floor to ceiling (which also gives the place an authentic Irish Croft kind of chill). For some time, I even thought the theatre were piping in the smell of slightly stale beer as well, until I realised that the woman sitting next to me was holding a glass of it. We had a good laugh about this in the interval, and we both agreed it should be suggested to the theatre management for next time (we could have had the whiff of fried noodles for The Good Soul of Schezuan, manky straw for [The] Government Inspector and perhaps warm cattle dung for Annie Get Your Gun).

It would be invidious to give out “acting honours” for the three main leads as they were all so perfectly cast. Derbhle Crotty (which sounds like something you need to rub ointment into before going to bed) tends to walk away with them, because the audience are all rooting for her so much. Rosaleen Linehan makes a formidable Mag, alternately vicious and sympathetic (watch her eyes closely during her first scene after the interval – that’s classy acting) and Frank Laverty gives such a perfectly judged performance that his Act 2 opening monologue deserved – and indeed got – a round of applause. In fact, by the time Act 1 was half over, people were applauding each individual scene, which I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. And its well deserved, believe me. And there was at least one Silence, if not two*. Johnny Ward is fine as Ray, but I think needs to settle down into the role slightly because there was just a touch too much of Dougal from Father Ted for my liking. It doesn’t help that he is never given a chance to be serious – all his scenes are slightly off the wall verbal sparring and one-liners.

Anyway, it was a grand night and one I enjoyed immensely. Go get your tickets now because a) its going to be sold out and b) you’ll come out afterwards talking to people you don’t know about what you’ve just seen. And you'll never look at your chip pan with quite the same eyes again.

* For those of you relatively new to this blog, a “Silence” isn’t when the audience is just quiet. Its when the audience is so wrapped up in what is happening on stage that there is a complete absence of sound. Not a cough, not a fidget, nothing. I’ve variously described it in the past as the sound of the entire audience collectively holding its breath, or the sound that black velvet would make if it could.

What the critics thought:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/jul/27/the-beauty-queen-of-leenane-review (slightly snotty review, I thought)

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/33047/the-beauty-queen-of-leenane

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831311756127/The+Beauty+Queen+of+Leenane.html

Kiss Me, Kate - Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Thursday 7th July 2011

2011-07-10T23:35:00.001+01:00

Synopsis:

A theatrical troupe is presenting Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in Baltimore, Maryland. The cast includes Fred Graham and his former wife, Lilli; also Bill Calhoun, an irresponsible gambler, and the girl whom he is interested in, Lois Lane. Bill breaks down and confesses to Lois that he is involved with gangsters, who have his I.O.U. for $10,000 from a game of cards. Bill, however, has signed it in the name of Fred Graham. This is not the first time Lois has had to tolerate Bill's escapades, and she inquires poignantly why he cannot behave himself. Meanwhile Fred and Lilli begin to realize that their one-time tender feelings for each other have not completely died out. They start to reminisce about the shows in which they appeared, including an old-fashioned Viennese operetta. Just before the opening night of The Taming of the Shrew, Fred sends flowers to Lois. By mistake they come to Lilli's dressing room - further proof (she thinks) that Fred still loves her. She now openly reveals that that love is reciprocated.

On stage, the performance of The Taming of the Shrew is taking place. As a play within a play, we learn that Bianca cannot get married until her older sister, Katherine, has found a husband. When Petruchio arrives in Padua to seek out a rich wife he is chosen for Katherine. She, (the Shrew of the title), makes no attempt to conceal her feelings about men while Petruchio knows that Katherine is not the woman of his dreams. Nevertheless, he agrees to marry her.
We are now transferred from Shakespeare's Padua back to the intrigues within the theatrical company. Having learned that Fred's flowers were meant for Lois, Lilli bursts into a fit of temper, and announces hotly that she is leaving the company for good. Her departure, however, is delayed by the arrival of gangsters coming to collect from Bill the $10,000 for his I.O.U. As it has Fred's name on it, they pursue him for the money, but, he says, if Lilli leaves the company, the show cannot continue and he will be unable to give them the money. To ensure that neither Fred nor Lilli leave until the money is paid, the gangsters become part of the show and accompany its two principals everywhere on stage during the performance.
In the second act we return to The Taming of the Shrew. Petruchio and Katherine are now man and wife. Since her violent tempers and caprices are complicating Petruchio's life to no end, he begins to recall nostalgically his single-blessedness Backstage, when Bill reprimands Lois for flirting with one of the actors, she makes light of her tendency to be fickle. But, for all his troubles with Lois, Bill has good cause for cheer. There has been a violent shake-up in the gangster world, as a result of which the I.O.U. is no longer valid. Bill and Lois are now reconciled, and Katherine and Fred return to each other.

Cast:
Lilli Vannessi/Kate – Alex Chatworthy
Fred Graham/Petruchio – Alex Knox
Lois Lane/Bianca – Kae Alexander
Bill/Lucentio – Joshua Miles
Gangster – Lewis Goody
Gangster – Stephen Wilson
Hattie – Mabel Clements
General Harrison – Kingsley Ben-Adir
Harry/Baptista – Josh Hart
Hortensio – Karl Brown
Gremio – Thomas Clegg

Creative Team:
Music and lyrics – Cole Porter
Book – Bella and Sam Spewack
Director – Martin Connor
Choreographer – Joseph Pitcher
Designer – Mark Bailey

Hurrah, a musical! Just when I was beginning to lose all hope (ironically, one based round a Shakespeare play), and a good one too, by more or less the same creative team as last year’s Curtains! Once again, it’s a “money no object” production as the mighty coffers of practically all the big London professional guilds drain into Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s bank account – there have been six months of rehearsals, 26 musicians in the pit and more backstage crew than you can shake a stick at, all of whom will soon be making their way into the big, frightening and expensive world backed up by Mummie and Daddies’ Trust Fund. For some, the big time beckons, for others it will be Casualty, and for a good few, life will be spent struggling to keep up with the demand for double-decaff-skinny-latte orders or spitting in the food of those who don’t leave a decent tip.

Like last year, there are slick production values, good scenery, great costumes and loads of bodies on stage, supplemented by a fair few from the singing courses. This year, however, its more difficult to pick out those who are not the natural stage animals, although there is the obligatory tubby guy in a horrendous costume beaming all over his face and having the time of his life as he hits his top notes and struggles to keep up with the choreography. What larks! How wonderful this week will be to look back on as he toils away the years as the assistant accountant for an agent, adding up all those lovely ten-per-cents that his erstwhile friends are racking up for his boss.

The trouble is that Kiss Me, Kate (note the comma, which for some reason is missing from the front cover and cast list page of the programme) needs a male lead with a few years under his belt. Fred Graham needs to be a world-weary, slightly washed up actor, anxiously scanning for crow’s feet and trying to hold age and an expanding waistline at bay with crimson lake and a tightly hitched corset under his costume. Alex Knox, although admittedly young and pretty, plays it young and pretty as well. For all his swagger, its like watching an ingénue making his first stab at King Lear. And he’s a tenor, for chrissakes; Fred Graham is a bass-baritone role (it was one of Howard Keel’s greatest screen roles). Although I enjoyed his performance throughout, Fred/Petruchio is not his role. Yet. Give it another 20 years and then we’ll see. Alex Chatworthy, however, manages to convey Lilli’s faded edges convincingly, does a great line in tired sarcasm, seems familiar with the bitterness of disappointment and yet looks astonishingly like a very young Jodie Foster. Her Lilli seems somehow much older than Knox’s Fred. Kae Alexander lands the plum ingénue role of Lois Lane and has a great time being irritatingly perky all evening, although quite what she sees in Joshua Miles’ rather dreary Bill is beyond me. Of the two gangsters, Stephen Wilson (in what is nominally the lesser role of the two) is by far the most entertaining, and pulls off the astoundingly difficult feat of singing all of Brush Up Your Shakespeare while constantly chewing gum. That, my friend, is talent.

The role of Hattie (technically Lilli Vannessi’s maid but in this version reduced to the status of dresser) isn’t the world’s best part but gets to start the ball rolling in both acts with one of musical theatre’s best opening songs Another Op’nin’, Another Show and also Too Darn Hot at the top of Act 2 – but is denied the former in this particular version in which there is not only no overture but in which Another Op’nin’ is doled out piecemeal between the entire chorus. Kingsley Ben-Adir scores an unexpected hit with the “straight” role of General Harrison (again, rewritten from the original version) and also gets the added bonus of the song From This Moment On, which doesn’t appear in the stage version but has been added from the film, sitting slightly awkwardly, I thought.

Although its slick, well sung and obviously very well rehearsed, the choreography is rather disappointing. For a start, there ain’t that much of it. Its there when you expect it – and nowhere else. There are a couple of places where Petruchio’s solos cry out for a bevy of beautiful hoofers, most notably during Were Thine That Special Face, whose rumba beat doesn’t so much cry out for it as sit up and beg for it. What choreography there is, is often slightly utilitarian, leaving me feeling that the whole show is somewhat meh in places when it could have been WOW. I enjoyed the slightly cartoony Taming of the Shrew sets but noticed a major error that someone on the design team should be roundly spanked for. When we see Fred and Lilli’s dressing rooms from the inside (with the doors upstage), Lilli is in Dressing Room 1 on stage left, and Fred in Room 2 on stage right. Therefore, when we see the dressing room doors from the other side (i.e. from the corridor) the door to Room 1 should be stage right and room 2 stage left - but they’re not. In fact, from the corridor, the doors (and therefore the rooms behind them) have somehow swapped sides. Neither has there been any effort made in getting Lilli’s bouquet (snowdrops, pansies and rosemary, according to the script) to look anything like snowdrops; pansies and rosemary – although one wonders where the snowdrops came from in midsummer Baltimore. Someone perhaps needs to change the script to “a bunch of generic stage greenery”. Yes, I know, I know!

The pleasure of seeing a good show with a lot of noise coming from the pit is enhanced later by scanning the “News of last year’s graduates” page in the programme. Some have indeed gone on to greatness, some fallen by the wayside with a single appearance in Casualty. Now that The Bill is no longer, things are tough out there. Still, spare a thought for some of the technical graduates, who have worked on such exciting things as Paul Daniels: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow (I kid you not), the WhatsonStage Theatregoers’ Choice Award Ceremony 2011 and, soul-destroyingly, the IBM Smarter Industries Symposium. I think I would rather gouge my own eyes out with a spoon. Or perhaps sit through Richard III again.

Richard III - The Old Vic, Friday 24th June 2011

2011-07-01T23:10:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Richard, the Yorkist Duke of Gloucester, has not stopped plotting since the defeat of Henry VI. He conspires to play his brothers, Edward (now King Edward IV) and George, Duke of Clarence, against each other in an attempt to gain the crown for himself. By insinuating charges of treason against George, Richard has him arrested. He also brazenly woos Anne, widow of the murdered Prince of Wales, in the midst of her husband's funeral procession. In the course of events, Edward IV, who is deathly ill at the beginning of the play, dies; Richard has already arranged for George to be murdered while imprisoned, and so it stands that Richard will serve as regent while Edward's son (also named Edward) can come of age.

In order to "protect" the Prince of Wales and his younger brother, Richard has them stay in the Tower of London. He then moves against Edward's loyalist lords; Vaughan, Rivers, Hastings, and Grey are first imprisoned, then executed. Then, with the aid of Buckingham, Richard declares that Edward IV's offspring are technically illegitimate. In an arranged public display, Buckingham offers the throne of England to Richard, who is presumably reluctant to accept. By this time, Richard has alienated even his own mother, who curses him as a bloody tyrant.

By now, Richard needs to bolster his claims to the crown; the young princes locked away in the Tower of London must be disposed of. Buckingham, until now Richard's staunchest ally, balks at this deed. Richard gets a murderer to do the deed, but turns on Buckingham for his insubordination. Now Richard—conveniently a widower after the suspicious demise of Anne—makes a ploy to marry the late King Edward's daughter, his niece. Elizabeth, Edward's widow, makes Richard believe that she agrees to the match; however, Elizabeth has arranged for a match with the Earl of Richmond.

Richmond, at this point in the action, is bringing over an army from France to war against Richard. Buckingham, finding himself out of favor with the king, gives his allegiance to Richmond. However, Buckingham is captured when his army is thrown into disarray by floods, and Richard has him executed immediately. Richmond, who has undergone his own troubles crossing the English Channel, finally lands his army and marches for London. The armies of Richard and Richmond encamp near Bosworth Field; the night before the battle, Richard is visited by the sundry ghosts of the people he has slain, all of whom foretell his doom.

At Bosworth, Richard is unhorsed in the combat. Richmond finds him, and the two of them clash with swords. Richmond prevails and slays Richard, to be crowned as King Henry VII there on the field of battle. This is the founding of the Tudor line of kings and the end of the War of the Roses.

Cast:
Richard, Duke of Gloucester - Kevin Spacey

George, Duke of Clarence - Chandler Williams
Hastings - Jack Ellis
Anne - Annabel Scholey
Elizabeth - Hadyn Gwynne
Buckingham - Chuk Ijuwi

Margarget - Gemma Jones

Creative Team:
Director - Sam Mendes

Set - Tom Piper

Costumes - Catherine Zuber

Lighting- Paul Pyant

Jesus Mary Mother of God, does the world need another black and white, modern dress production of Shakespeare? No, my friends, it does not. Does it need Kevin Spacey to dress up as Colonel Gadaffi to hammer home the point that Richard III was a crazed tyrant and that crazed tyrants are still with us? Does it need an Yank to play the (ultimately) victorious Henry VII to remind us of the American habit of riding in with the cavalry as each conflict draws to a close to “save the world from itself” and restore order? Are the modern references hammered home with that little bit too much force? Yes, my friends, they are. Did I enjoy this? No, my friends, I did not. In fact, I booed very loudly at the end, the first time I’ve ever done so and god did it feel good.

This is the final offering by Spacey’s Bridge Project, a series of UK/US collaborations which have ultimately and across the board failed to deliver the goods on any kind of level, proving nothing other than that Americans don’t understand Shakespeare’s speech patterns. This particular play also highlights the fact that big-screen actors can rarely adapt downwards to appearing on stage – its only at the end of the tediously long first half (two and a quarter hours, take a bucket to put under your seat) when the action puts Spacey in front of an offstage camera that he comes alive as an actor. It also highlights the fact that theatres really, really need to go back to putting a synopsis in their programmes – not once throughout the entire evening did I fully understand who was married to who, what the line of succession was or why the Bishop of Ely was eating strawberries (placing the action firmly in June) on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field (which took place in late August).

You really have to be a serious history buff to get the best out of this play – unfortunately, most of the audience seemed to be there merely because they were Kevin Spacey buffs; a fact that led to at least two people walking out before the interval (‘Psst” “What?” “Is it me or is this a really boring play?” “Yeah, really boring” “You wanna go?” “We can’t, I paid sixty quid for these tickets ‘cos you like Kevin Spacey films”. “Yeah, but I didn’t know it was gonna be like all this shoutin’ and stampin’ about and wotnot. C’mon, lets go, and we’ll get a KFC on the way home”. “Alright then”) and at least 6 more failing to return after the interval (presumably their bladders had been battered into complete submission and they couldn’t face any more). There were the requisite shouts of “whoooooo!” by the Sharon’s and Tracey’s when Spacey made his first entrance and plenty of ovating at the end (presumably by people relieved that the whole thing was over). But Mendes’ sparse direction really failed to catch fire for me. Add to that some really dreadful acting by Chuk Iwuji as the Duke of Buckingham (perhaps he should be called Chuk Himoffstage) in a role which should be that of eminence grise but was more like one of the Wicked Queen’s henchmen in Snow White and a visually dreary production made me go off this big-time. Of course, its critic-proof – practically sold out for the remainder of the run so neither this review nor any other is going to stop the tills at the Old Vic ringing loudly.

The only cast members to really come alive on stage were exclusively female – Haydn Gwynne took a while to warm up into the role of Elizabeth but fired on all cylinders once she got going, and Gemma Jones walked away with the very few scenes she was in as a dreadlocked voodoo Queen Margaret. This character is only onstage for a tiny proportion of the running time, but Jones managed to show everyone else around her up completely by giving her Margaret true Shakespearean stature. Of course, she is a classical trained actress while the majority of the younger cast have merely driven the van for a Legs Akimbo Summer Tour (most of them seem to have been cast for their skills in drumming rather than for any actual talent in acting) and by golly it showed in her last scene when every word was audible, every consonant properly place, every line thoughtfully and carefully inflected. I applauded – people sitting nearby looked at me as if I was some kind of loony but then they probably wouldn’t recognise good acting if it came and sat on their face. And as for casting Katherine Manners and Hannah Stokely as the Princes Richard and Edward (the “Princes in the Tower”) – well that was just daft. Two full grown women with breasts and hips, dolled up in school uniforms and affecting piping trebles – who ever came up with that daft idea? What really got my goat was the lack of blood on stage – to sit someone in a chair, stand behind them and put your hands over their eyes, then dim the stage lights to represent a gory murder – that’s just pretentious. As Agatha Christie said in her autobiography (and excuse me if I paraphrase a little here because I can’t locate my copy at the moment to get the exact quote ) “The symbolism of tapping someone gently on the cheek with a tin of Birds Custard Powder is all very well, but I do prefer to see someone getting a proper custard pie in the face sometimes”.

And what of Spacey? Well, he’s OK. I found him just that bit too mannered to be truly believable. Part of the problem is the accent – for the first ten minutes, I was impressed by his perfect RP, but then it started to slip away on certain words until we were getting Standard American all the way through. By the end I had started to find his performance crashingly arrogant – I felt as if he was playing to the gallery rather than really inhabiting the role.

At the end, I actually booed – the first time I recall having done so at the theatre. It was all a bit too much of the Emperor’s New Clothes for me to be convinced I was watching a great production. The one thing I dislike about what Him Indoors calls “Communist Bowing” (i.e. when all the cast take their bows together rather than individually) is that one doesn’t get the chance to applaud (or indeed boo) particular performers. I’d have stood for Gemma Jones, cheered for Hadyn Gwynne and roundly raspberried Chuk Iwuji. Bring back individual bows, synopses in the programme, some decent scenery to look at and buckets of blood on the stage and I’ll be a happy man. Oh, and some actors who don’t drawl like John Wayne when they are playing English noblemen.

It is, of course, traditional in this household to see at least one Panto during the Christmas season. However, Him Indoors recently let slip that there are tickets booked for Richard II in very late December. Unless I can wing it otherwise, he’ll be going on his own because frankly, this Richard III was just one dreary production of Shakespeare too many for me. There have been too many of late, and I’m done with The Bard for a good long time on the back of them. Call me a philistine, but I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really want at the moment is a decent musical!

What the critics thought:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/262da862-a31c-11e0-a9a4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QtTe7J6p

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8606884/Richard-III-Old-Vic-review.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23965974-richard-iii-old-vic---review.do

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4015:richard-iii-old-vic-theatre-review&Itemid=27

The Government Inspector - Young Vic, Monday 6th June 2011

2011-06-15T11:10:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

A corrupt Mayor and his officials are alarmed to hear rumours of the impending arrival of a government inspector. Evidently this fellow will be travelling "incognito". Thrown into a panic, the Mayor and his officials desperately struggle to stifle public dissatisfaction whilst deflecting the blame for their many and various misdemeanours onto each other. But who is the government inspector and where is he hiding? He could of course be anyone. It is brought to their notice that an apparently penniless rake and his servant happen to be staying at the local inn. Despite the fact that they are unable to pay their bill, this unlikely couple suddenly find themselves being treated like royalty by the sycophantic mayor and his cronies. "The Government Inspector" eventually rides away a good deal richer, having sampled for free the best hospitality the small town could muster, including not just the finest food and drink, but also the feverishly competitive adoration of both the Mayor’s forceful wife, and his seemingly impressionable daughter. The truth of their dreadful mistake is finally revealed to the town, and just as the humiliated Mayor strives to apportion blame in order to restore some semblance of credibility, the arrival of the real inspector is announced...

Mayor- Julian Barratt
Dr Gibner/waiter - Steven Beard
Maria. - Louise Brealey
Dobchinsky - Jack Brough
Bobchinsky - Fergus Craig
Osip - Callum Dixon
Postmaster/Sergeants widow - Amanda Lawrence
Mayor’s wife - Doon Mackichan
Judge - Bruce Mackinnon
Head of hospitals - Eric Maclennan
Schools superintendent - Simon Muller
Mishcka - Graham O'mara
Khlestakov - Kyle Soller
Police superintendent - David Webber

Here we go again. Another bloody “comedian” from the TV who thinks he can act. At least James Cordon has been in a couple of plays. But this fool's theatre experience? Nothing, rien, nada, zilch. Not even a touring production of The Hollow. Listen, chutney. Acting isn’t just about learning the lines, getting up on stage and regurgitating them while being vaguely zany, you know.

[Deep breath]

Right, I needed to get that off my chest. The mystery bug that has set up home inside me continued to make me feel rotten and scratchy, so I really wasn’t in a terribly receptive mood for this, particularly as I’d had a lousy meal served by completely charmless staff in the thai restaurant next door. Also, I usually only find the Evening Standard good for a quick flick through before it becomes lining material for the food recycling bin, but there were several really interesting pieces in this evening’s copy, and for tuppence I’d have gone home for a cup of tea, a plate of cheese on toast and a good read of it, before wandering towards bed. My heart sank even lower when Him Indoors warned me about the Director’s particular style – “He’s obsessed with the 1950s and wallpaper, so expect both”. Its true; both Annie Get Your Gun and The Good Soul of Szechuan had been 50s, and there had indeed been plenty of wallpaper. So lets be frank; I wasn’t expecting to be greatly entertained and I was anticipating doing some good work on my “Doesn’t Russell’s Theatre Reviews” like anything?” reputation. I’d found the plot summary vaguely intriguing though, having looked it up on the internet that afternoon (again, no synopsis in the bloody programme!), finding it bearing more than a passing resemblance to the plot of several classic plays and, indeed, a particular episode of Fawlty Towers. (Did you know there are supposed to be only seven basic plots in fiction? 1) The Quest, 2) Virtue Unrecognised, 3) The Fatal Character Flaw, 4) The Star-Crossed Lovers, 5) The Mistaken Identity and so on and so forth, which is RTRspeak for “I can’t remember the other two”). I chatted about this with Him Indoors while finishing my after-dinner cigarette – which actually tasted better, cost considerably less than and was more filling than my dumplings-in-dishwater – and, to my delight, he admitted that he had never seen the play before and didn’t know anything about it. Hurrah, thought I, no pompous pronouncements about how he had seen dear Larry Olivier or dear Cicely Courtnidge or dear (insert name here) perform in it and they were much better, dharling. But then I struck true gold – “Its so exciting coming into the consciousness of an undiscovered classic”. I laughed so much I had trouble scribbling it down on my napkin to use later.

Once again, the layout of the Young Vic has been changed so the audience enters across the stage and “out through the front door of the house” into the auditorium (nitpicking point here: the front cloth shows a two-storey house but according to the text of the play it should have three storeys. I would like to point out in my own defence that this particular nit was picked by Him Indoors and not me for a change. I responded by arguing that there’s nothing to prove that the frontcloth shows the Mayors House and nothing to say that the third storey doesn’t consist of attic space under the roof. If its nits you want picked, I can pick with the best). There’s a bit of scene-setting interaction while you are wandering around on the stage, which is always a nice idea, but there should have been a bit more of it.

Anyway, I found myself warming to the play after about 10 minutes – although there is indeed quite a lot of 50s wallpaper. I warmed to it considerably more after Kyle Soller’s first entrance because he took total control of the entire play and basically just walked away with it, turning in an extremely commanding and assured performance despite his relative youth. I did, however, wish that the director hadn’t made his costume and makeup so obviously based on Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or indeed Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland. It meant that I struggled for quite some time to separate the character of Khlestakov from Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter, both of which characters seemed somehow to be feeding directly into Soller's portrayal. Still, even though I was feeling lousy, he entertained me and made me laugh, which I suppose is what good theatre is all about. It took me longer to warm toDoon Mackichan in the role of the Mayor’s wife but she got there in the end – she has a fine talent for comedy which is what the role demands, although takes a while to get into her stride, I thought. Its when her character starts trying to impress Khlestakov (who she thinks is the eponymous Government Inspector) by dropping odd French phrases into the conversation that she starts to sparkle in the role.

There is some odd casting elsewhere. Many of those playing the townspeople were obviously cast for what they look like rather than how competent they are as actors. Amanda Lawrence although a woman, is apparently well-known for her portrayal of Charles Hawtrey – the Casting Director obviously thought “This role would probably be played by Charles Hawtrey if we were making Carry On Government Inspector so get Amanda on the phone and see if she’s free”. Conversely Jack Brough and Fergus Craig, playing identically dressed (apart from the shoes, I noticed) identical twins, look nothing like each other.

Direction seemed a little hit and miss to my uneducated eye. There seemed to be quite a lot of unfocussed shambling around, particularly by Barratt; he seemed unable to keep still at any point, flailed his hands constantly and has such poor stage presence that he seemed to be constantly apologising for his performance. I longed to grab him by the shoulders and shout “Stand UP, man! And stand STILL!” For all that The Mighty Boosh may have an Alternative Comedy Following, acting isn’t just about learning the lines and trying not to fall over the furniture.

One thing I really don’t like on stage is surrealism. There are a few whimsical touches here and there in this production, in a kind of Vision On way (crikey, that’s dating me), that are funny and quite clever, particularly the use of the word “ingognito” projected onto the scenery and moved around; your eyes naturally follow it and so you don’t notice scene changes happening on the opposite side of the stage, and that I could cope with. I could just about cope with the cash-offering scene with hands coming up out of the floor, bookcases and vases holding banknotes. But there is one scene of such heavy surrealism late in the play that it knocks the action completely off-kilter and brings the play almost to a complete halt, from which it struggles to regain momentum before the end. Ditch it and the second half would sit more easily.

One thing that seemed slightly pretentious about an otherwise unexpectedly entertaining evening was the lack of the definite article in this production’s title. Gogol wrote a play and called it The Government Inspector. To call this particular version merely Government Inspector is odd, to say the least. I’m not a betting man but I will put money on the pro reviewers picking up on this. I’ll also put money on extremely mixed reviews. I suspect some will love it, others hate it. I liked it, which is neither one nor t’other, but a more positive outcome than I expected.

What the critics thought:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/government-inspector-young-vic-london-2296703.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03bd40f0-95dc-11e0-ba20-00144feab49a.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8568405/Government-Inspector-Young-Vic-review.html

http://everything-theatre.blogspot.com/2011/06/government-inspector-young-vic.html

Save Wilton's Music Hall

2011-06-02T12:51:00.000+01:00

Dear RTR readers

Wilton's Music Hall, the only surviving example of a 19th century music hall in the entire country, is under threat. For many years, the Trustees have been struggling to keep this unique building from collapse. A recent application for Heritage Lottery funding has recently been rejected and, unless the public can raise £2m, Wilton's will disappear for ever.

What would you prefer - a wonderful piece of theatrical, social and architectural history, or yet another faceless apartment block, office building or car park?

I'm asking you to support Wilton's while you can. Go along and see a performance, buy a drink in the bar, take a guided tour or make a donation, however small, via the "JustGiving" widget to the right of this message, or visit http://www.wiltons.org.uk/.

Keep our theatrical heritage alive!

Cause Celebre - Old Vic, Thursday 26th May 2011

2011-05-27T20:59:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Cause Célèbre is based on the true story of Alma Rattenbury who went on trial with her 18-year-old lover for the murder of her husband. Condemned by the public more for her seduction of a young boy than for any involvement she may have had in her husband's death, Alma's fate is left in the hands of the socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman, Edith.

Cast:
Alma Rattenbury: Anne-Marie Duff
Edith Davenport - Niamh Cusack
Stella Morrison - Lucy Robinson
John Davenport - Simon Chandler
George Wood - Tommy McDowell
Irene Riggs - Jenny Galloway
Francis Rattenbury - Timothy Carlton
O'Connor - Nicholas Jones

Creative Team
Written by Terence Rattigan
Director - Thea Sharrock
Designer -Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting- Bruno Poet
Music -Adrian Johnston
Sound - Ian Dickinson

This, I think, is going to be one of those occasions when I find it difficult to separate my feelings about a play from my feelings about a production of it. Cause Celebre was never going to be a great play, adapted as it was (with considerable difficulty, apparently) by Rattigan from his own radio play of the same name. This has left the play with a terribly static format, a feeling which must have been even more pronounced during the 1970s when it was first produced. It was the time of Angry Young Kitchen Sinks Looking Back In Anger (towards the refrigerator perhaps). Set in the mid-30s, it must have seemed very old-fashioned even then, but nearly 40 years on, it seems even more so – “period”, even. It seems to have acquired a patina of dust, which you can almost smell in this slightly cheap-looking production. There’s a feeling of sub-Agatha-Christie-Witness-For-The-Prosecution-offseason-Repertory-Company about the whole thing, both play and production. Some plays really don’t age well, and Cause Celebre is starting to lose its hair and develop liver spots. So we are faced with a play originally written for radio but adapted for the stage, first produced in the 1970s but set in the 30’s – the prognosis isn’t great. The fact that this has obviously been hauled out of the cupboard on the back of the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of After the Dance in an attempt to cash in on the Rattigan Centenary isn’t going to invite favourable comparisons, although both are directed by the same Director. You’d never know – this is not Thea Sharrock’s finest hour. The dialogue itself also seems strangely at odds with the 30s setting, almost as if Rattigan was trying to prove that he could be “contemporary” but failing miserably, and ending up with a chimera – neither fish nor fowl.

The production is also hampered by being, I think, the wrong play in the wrong venue. The Old Vic’s is way too large for a drama that seems to call out for an intimate “in your face” setting – perhaps somewhere like the Almeida or the Donmar, so that the audience feel that they are eavesdropping on private conversations or sitting in the public gallery of Court No. 1. It is, after all, about a secret affair which leads to domestic murder, and several scenes take place in the claustrophobic setting of a courtroom at the Old Bailey. The few bits and pieces of furniture seem completely adrift on the cavernous stage, and the fact that the proscenium is surrounded by gingerbread gilding makes the play itself seem like a relic from a bygone age. In a tighter, more modern setting it would have considerably more impact. The Old Vic’s enormous auditorium is a double whammy; in their efforts to project to the back row of the upper circle, most of the cast fall into the trap of projecting to The Cut, Westminster Bridge Road, the Thames Path and all points north. What is essentially domestic dialogue gains nothing by being shouted. The difficulties in reaching the audience don’t stop with dialogue but continue into physical gestures – at least two characters seemed to be portraying manic windmills last night. Sure, when you’re having histrionics its ok to flail your arms about, but talking to your son about when and where he caught something nasty from a cheap prossie doesn’t need to be delivered at concert pitch – what would the neighbours think? Pas devant les enfants et les domestices, sil vous plait!

All the shouting, mugging and arm waving tip some characters over the fine line into caricature, of which Nicholas Jones as Rattenbury's legal counsel, O'Connor, is particularly guilty, m'lud. This is a role which requires gravitas, that almost indefinable quality of knowing seriousness which finer actors like Leo McKern or, back in this mists of time, Charles Laughton would have delivered in spades. Jones plays the role as an avuncular, red-faced type (and is particularly guilty of windmill impressions), when the role would benefit immensely from being stiller and more dangerously focussed, throwing his jolly out-of-court persona into shaper relief. Lucy Robinson as Stella is hampered by her sterotypical character and dialogue, and makes it all a bit too fruity-Tunbridge-Wells. Tristram Wymark, understuding the role of the Judge, lacked the stage experience to position himself fully in the spotlight during the court scenes, so we were faced with an apparently headless Judge ironically poised to deliver the death sentence. Anne-Marie Duff rather overdoes the Vamp in her earlier scenes in an attempt to project the character over the footlights, but does the histrionics and court scenes brilliantly, while Niamh Cusack seems to be channelling Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. Absolutely everyone is upstaged by Jenny Galloway who turns a tiny, practically invisble part into Mrs Danvers. Galloway seems to be cornering the market in tiny, practically invisible parts - she played a very similar role in After The Dance - and deserves more exposure.

I can't get away from the feeling that a slightly less cheap-looking production, in a more appropriate venue, would have done Cause Celebre rather more favours than it is currently getting at the Old Vic.

What the critics thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8415529/Cause-Celebre-Old-Vic-London-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/mar/30/cause-celebre-michael-billington

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/cause-clbre-old-vic-london-br-rocket-to-the-moon-nt-lyttelton-london-br-oneonone-festival-bac-london-2260489.html

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2011/03/review-cause-celebre-old-vic.html

One Man, Two Guvnors - National Theatre, Wednesday 18th May 2011

2011-05-23T23:45:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancee’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers.

Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple.

Cast:

Gareth David - Benson

Stanley Stubbers - Oliver Chris

Francis Henshall- James Corden

Alfie- Tom Edden

Doctor- Martyn Ellis

Lloyd Boateng- Trevor Laird

Pauline Clench- Claire Lams

Charlie Clench- Fred Ridgeway

Alan - Daniel Rigby

Rachel Crabbe- Jemima Rooper

Dolly - Suzie Toase

Creative Team:

based on The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni

Director - Nicholas Hytner

Associate Director - Cal McCrystal

Designer- Mark Thompson

Lighting Designer - Mark Henderson

Music - Grant Olding

Sound Designer - Paul Arditti

Fight Director- Kate Waters

Anyone who cares to drop by RTR on a semi-regular basis will know that I don’t “do” opera and I certainly don’t “do” farce. I certainly don’t “do” farce when a) I’m feeling horrendously poorly, b) when its hot and clammy and windy and smearing with rain outside and c) the “star” is some over-rated fat bloke from a TV “comedy” that I don’t find remotely funny. So, Dear Readers, if you are a fan of farce or James Corden or farces with James Corden in I suggest you leave by that door over there (points) and come back next week when I’ll be reviewing a proper play by Terence Rattigan.

This play is a rewrite of a 17th century Commedia dell’arte play called A Servant for Two Masters and I therefore can’t really see how Richard Bean can be credited with being the “writer”; all he has had to do is update it and change the names, keeping the original plot and characters. I could just as easily do a complete re-write of Pride and Prejudice and update it to 1980s Croydon to give it that retro feel – “Everyone knows that a single geezer with a big wad of cash is looking for a shag” – and call myself “the writer”. The characters and plot of Prada and Pre-Juice, having already been laboured over and fleshed out for me by Ms. Austen I simply need to turn into Liz Bennett and Fizz Willy Darcy and commissions to stage it at the National will come rolling in. So One Man Two Guvnors isn’t a new play in any sense of the word; merely a very old play with a veneer of modernity slapped onto it and pasted over with a Pritt Stick. It was, however, clever to have set the rewrite in Brighton – so many of these late 17th and early 18th century “comedies” seem to be set there that I’m constantly surprised the streets weren’t full of little men in silly wigs carrying quill pens and notebooks scribbling away about artful maidservants, caddish roués and cuckolded husbands. Not that your average member of the audience at this performance would have known that – such is the apparent pull of Mr. Corden to those deprived of their weekly helping of Gavin and Stacey that the place was packed out. It got less packed out during the course of the first half – I counted 8 people leaving before the interval – and it was considerably less packed after the interval bell went. Presumably people couldn’t stand the braying or “whoooooo”ing which occurred every time Mr. Corden came on. The girl sitting in the seat behind me not only had her feet up on the back of my seat but felt compelled to shout out advice to the characters at every opportunity (poor girl obviously didn’t realise that she wasn’t at home watching TV) but practically had an orgasm when Mr. Corden gave us those immortal lines “What’s occurring?” – which I gather is a catchphrase in his vastly overrated “comedy series” – together with his trademark “mug” to the audience. I found his performance completely one-note and without any particular subtlety; his complete lack of stage technique meant that even the standard lamp gave a more measured performance. Part of this is admittedly the fault of the play – I found the dining room scene more than reminiscent of the worst excesses of Fawlty Towers or the wallpapering scene in many a panto (that cost me a lot – I am a big fan of both FT and panto, although I will draw the line at Brian Blessed playing Captain Hook, Abanazer or, indeed, anything else).

Overall, I thought the comedy elements, both visual and verbal, were badly over-egged. It was too broad, too much and too often – once is funny, twice is mildly amusing, thrice is dull and four times is just tedious. I could have done with a lot less of Corden’s incessant mugging, and certainly something other than his “Little Fat Man of the People” schtick over and over and over again. Can the man not play any character other than James Corden?

There were a couple of stand-out performances. Oliver Chris was excellent (I’ve seen his Bottom, you know), as was recent BAFTA recipient Daniel Rigby as the posturing actor Alan, all black leather jacket and “method acting”. Suzie Toaze was very good in a small, somewhat thankless role and her speech foretelling a female occupant of 10 Downing Street gave me practically the only laugh of the entire evening. Loved the scenery, which was very evocative of shabby-genteel Brighton (although not as much as the two women to my right who cooed “Innit Luvley?” all the way through the pier scene). I also enjoyed the performance by the on-stage band, although wished they hadn’t been lumbered with the name “The Craze” (geddit??) which is about as subtle as a knuckleduster in the ribs.

Anyway, if you do decide to go and see this, don’t be fooled into thinking Mr. Corden can play the xylophone because he’s actually miming. The rest of the cast, with one other notable exception, are actually playing instruments or demonstrating their singing talents. Mug up on the plot before you go because, once again, there is no synopsis in the programme. Take earplugs in case you are sitting anywhere in the vicinity of a gaggle of late teenage girls who like Gavin and Stacey and who have come to get their fix. Don’t ask yourself why a 1960’s front parlour has a portrait of the Queen which was painted in 1926 on the wall. Leave at the interval if you can or beforehand if possible.

What the critics thought:

I saw a preview performance, pro crits will be linked as and when they appear.

Mr. Corden gets it in the neck from someone who can actually act and who has a Knighthood to prove it.

Bette and Joan - Arts Theatre, Tuesday 17th May 2011

2011-05-19T12:40:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Both at low points in their previously stellar careers, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford accept parts in a low-budget "schlock-horror" film called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? In their backstage dressing room between takes, Davis and Crawford trade insults and memories of their days as Hollywood A-list stars. Of course, what they don't yet know is that the film will propel them both back into the limelight......

Cast:

Bette Davis: Greta Scacchi

Joan Crawford: Anita Dobson

Creative Team:
Writer: Anton Burge
Director: Bill Alexander

“Blaaa-anche! I didn't bring your breakfast, because you didn't eat your din-din!”

It’s a rite of passage. Watching Joan Crawford and Bette Davies slinging insults at each other in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and then slinging quotes from it around in the pub with your mates. What never fails to surprise me about WHTBJ is that both Crawford and Davies were really on their uppers, financially and professionally, when the film was made in 1962. Neither expected it to be an enormous, camp gothic hit which would propel both of them back into the limelight and restore their professional status and their bank balances. One wonders whether the irony of this has occurred to Anita Dobson and Greta Scacchi – what we have here are two – lets be frank – slightly faded actresses playing two slightly faded actresses. Bette and Joan, however, isn’t really going to set their professional worlds alight again, for all that this is an enjoyable, high-camp evening at the Arts Theatre, who seem to specialise in faded stars doing high-camp evenings.

It’s an interesting piece, full of flaws. There are far too many “asides to the audience” moments for the evening to feel completely comfortable; my Him Indoors For The Evening said that it was, at times, like listening to someone reading all the good bits aloud from the book “The Divine Feud”, at the expense of the two actresses actually engaging with each other in dialogue. When there is dialogue, its patchy and uneven, and the play fails to catch fire until after the interval. Its only then that the true pain of Davis’ situation and the major flaws in Crawford’s character are revealed (OK, lets face it, the woman was an out and out lunatic). But because the second act also contains the most physical action and the most laughs, it feels as if rather too much has been crammed into too short a length of time. Act one, by contrast, feels slow and static; the play is distinctly off-balance.

The small stage of the Arts Theatre makes the direction cramped and slightly clunky; Dobson has to contend with a wheelchair, a canvas backed “director’s chair” and a make up stool cluttering up her half of the stage; I’m sure that the wheelchair, at least, could have been off-stage for most of the evening and simply wheeled on when necessary. The rather literal set, with a dressing room occupying each half of the stage, could have been somewhat more inventive – perhaps designed on the diagonal.

Both actresses try their darndest to capture the accents and speech rhythms of their character, but neither is truly successful, both slipping and sliding away from vocal accuracy. What is scary, however, is the physical resemblance that both acheive; when Scacchi finally pulls on her pale blond wig, she IS Baby Jane Hudson.

Bette and Joan is never going to set the world alight. It is what it is – and that’s all it is. There’s little psychological depth and far too much deadpan reminiscing dressed up as dialogue. But it’s a fun show for all its flaws and missed opportunities; great for a camp evening out with your buddies and just the thing to send you back to the original film with a shiver of gothic delight.
What the critics thought:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/8506724/Bette-and-Joan-Arts-Theatre-review.html

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2011/05/review-bette-and-joan-arts-theatre.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ba71f6be-7cb5-11e0-994d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1MnFzygc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/may/12/bette-and-joan-review

Cowardy Custard - Greenwich Theatre, Saturday 30th April 2011

2011-05-02T20:34:00.001+01:00

Synopsis:

Review with song and scenes from Coward's plays, presented in a vaguely autobiographical manner.

Cast:

Dillie Keane

Kit Hesketh-Harvey

Richard Sisson (aka The Widow)

Stuart Neal

Savannah Stevenson

Review can be a horribly self-indulgent art form. Noel Coward can also be horribly self-indulgent in the wrong hands. However, when its presented simply by performers who know exactly what they are doing, it can be joyous. I admit that I approached the evening with slight trepidation, and that it took about 3/4 of the first half before I thawed completely towards this show. Partly that was the fault of the show itself - Cowardy Custard is (very) loosely based on Coward's life and all the songs and excerpts from his plays are presented without any frame of reference - you're supposed to roll up at the theatre and be a devotee of The Master, knowing exactly where the quotes come from and what context they are made in. This makes the first hour or so quite heavy going as all the Coward Buffs sit there chortling at the arch cleverness leaving you feeling uneducated. You're not helped by the fact that the first "scene" is a lift from Coward's Shadow Play, which has some very arch dialogue and which is, as far as I could tell, a far-from-realistic piece. The fact that you don't recognise any of the dialogue (Shadow Play is no Hay Fever or Private Lives) or indeed any of the tunes, leaves you sitting there wondering what exactly you are listening to - is it a scene from a play or just rather over-one's-head dialogue inserted into the beginning of the review?

Its not until Mad About The Boy that things start to settle down for the non-Coward buff - at last a recognisable tune! and OMG, its funny. What's more, apparently it was originally written to be funny; its sung by four performers and it gets progressively funnier and off-beat. Its followed by The Stately Homes of England - and suddenly the evening catches fire and you find you're enjoying yourself after all. Cue I've Been to a Marvellous Party and Mrs. Worthington and you're suddenly hitting all the big Coward choonz and laughing fit to bust.

What makes this all the more enjoyable is that you're in the company of Kit and The Widow, sublime raconteurs both, and the inestimable, glorious Dillie Kean (of Fascinating Aida). They're accompanied by two relatively little-known performers who seem to be coming up hot on the rails and give the more established names no quarter - Savannah Stevenson is a pretty, willowy soprano with a very polished style and Stuart Neal dances like a dream but can also act up a storm, has great comedy timing, sings extremely well and (dammit) even has gorgeous dancer's thighs. There's no Director given a credit in the programme, so its possible that this is self-directed by the cast, in which case they're so talented it makes me want to be sick. [news received on 3rd May - the Director is Paul Foster and very good at his job he is too]

Because you've had such a good second half to the first half (if you follow me), you can forgive the fact that once again, the second half takes a while to throw a familiar tune at you. It opens with London Pride (which I knew) and which was given a very contemporary, slightly chilling feel as its intercut with news voiceovers reporting the London 7/7 tube and bus bombings. Another 40 minutes perhaps go by before we're treated to Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?, cleverly followed by a haunting version of Matelot. Despite the fact that I'd never heard Nina before, it doesn't stop it being a complete showstopper, and then its time for Mad Dogs and Englishman and a short medley before the end.

The entire evening belonged to Dillie Kean. If you've never seen her as part of Fascinating Aida then you really have missed out on one of life's big treats. Of slightly uncertain middle years (and, it must be said, wearing frocks with slightly uncertain hemlines and of more-than-slightly unflattering cut), Ms Keane has the type of talent that cannot be taught. She's a natural. She only has to totter onto the stage, pull an expression on a face which can only honestly be described as "comfortable" and the vast majority of people fall about. Combine that with the deadpan delivery of razor-sharp observational humour and, as happened with I've Been to a Marvellous Party, you can bring to the show to a complete halt and have the audience braying for an encore. I would describe her talent as similar to that of the late, great Joyce Grenfell, who could stand alone on a stage delivering a monologue and make it seem filled with people at a party or in a supermarket queue or at an airport. I did wish that her head-mike hadnt been plonked right in the middle of her forehead and covered up with a piece of flesh-coloured tape as it did rather look like she'd had one too many glasses of sherry and had a bit of an accident on the steps. Keane also reminds me of Sandi Toksvig - they both have that same throwaway delivery which leaves you crying with laughter; at one point, The Widow mopped Keane's forehead and she adlibbed "Don't do that to my microphone, dear" just like a favourite, slightly dotty aunt. Fabulous. And when the horn fell off the gramophone - well, she nearly stopped the show again. I don't think anyone corpses quite so hysterically as Dillie Keane.

I did rather wish that costumes had been just that little bit smarter; Dillie's dresses could have been rather better chosen, Ms. Stevenson's second half dress was very raggy around the hem and Mr. Neal looked rather like he had been pulled from a hedge about 10 minutes before curtain up - shirt not pressed, shoes very down at heel and unpolished, jacket just awful, unshaven and bleary-looking. Widow was resplendent in a very smart suit and you could have used his shoes as a mirror, and Mr. Hesketh-Harvey has a very soignee style, making the others look ever so slightly shabby in comparison. I know that touring can be tough on clothes, and that there wasn't a costume assistant credited in the programme but when the subject of your show is Coward, you do really have to look the part, and sadly the majority of the cast didn't.

Having said that, I left the theatre in a far, far better mood than I was when I went in, which is what theatre is for - or should be. We caught this on the last night of the Greenwich run, but its touring until the first week in June so there's still time for you to catch this little gem of a review. In different hands I suspect, however, that it might not be nearly so much good fun.

What the reviewers said:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/southeast/E8831303480050/Cowardy+Custard+(tour+%96+Radlett).html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8446335/Cowardy-Custard-touring-review.html

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/31861/cowardy-custard -

Alice in Wonderland - Royal Ballet @ ROH - Wednesday 2nd March 2011

2011-04-01T21:00:00.000+01:00

Cast:
Alice: Lauren Cuthbertson
Jack/Knave of Hearts: Segei Polunin
Lewis Carroll/White Rabbit: Edward Watson
Queen of Hearts: Zenaida Yanowsky
King of Hearts: Christopher Saunders
Magican/Mad Hatter: Steven Mcrae
Caterpillar: Eric Underwood
Duchess: Simon Russell Beale
March Hare: Ricardo Cervera
Dormouse: James Wilkie
Cook: Kristen McNally
Frog Footman: Kenta Kura
Fish Footman: Ludovic Ondiviela

Creative Team:
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon
Music: Joby Talbot
Designs: Bob Crowley
Lighting: Natasha Kutz

Yes, I know that this is a very, very late review! Blame my constant disorganisedness (is that a legitimate word?); its been sitting patiently on my WP for a couple of weeks while I’ve been trying to locate the programme in the enormous piles of paper that constitute my life at the mome in order to complete the cast list and creative team sections. I haven't put in a synopsis because I'm sure that being a cultured and literary crowd, my readers are all familiar with the story!

On the face of it, Alice is a strange book to want to turn into a ballet (or indeed a film). Its extremely wordy, has very little plot to speak of, and apart from the opening and until the final chapters, lacks a real narrative thread, consisting almost entirely of brief, unconnected scenes which really wouldn’t suffer much if you shuffled them like a pack of cards and dealt them out in a different order. There is a multiplicity of characters who make brief appearances, not usually to return, and a lot of the book’s Edwardian charm lies in its wordplay – puns, anagrams, cultural references etc. Its not really until Alice finally reaches the Queen of Heart’s garden that things start falling into their proper places. It also requires a lot of “effects” – falling down rabbit holes, growing and shrinking etc., which are necessary to the story. So it’s quite a challenge to put on stage effectively – particularly when you are denied the medium of speech.

Mostly, it was handled very well – although often at the expense of dance. The Japanese lady I was sitting next too agreed with me in the interval that she would like to see more actual ballet content (although as it turned out there was to be plenty of this in the second act). Most of the first act was really rather like an expensively-staged “straight” show rather than ballet; the ROH technical crew were probably running round backstage like Mad March Hares. Fortunately, they seemed to be coping very well, although I am not sure that the Royal Ballet purists would really approve of so many back projections. I found myself thinking at a couple of points “look, lets get the “wow” stuff over and can we have some dancing, please?”. Some sections seemed overlong – the caucas race is dreary even in the book and would have benefited from being cut by about ½ (no dodo, I notice), but I noticed only one major omission in terms of scene and that was the Mock Turtle and Gryphon scene (I think this was a shame – it would have been lovely to have seen “The Lobster Quadrille” on stage!).

Another problem is the lack of a love interest for Alice – in the book she’s meant to be 8 or 9 or so. I felt that having Jack (the Gardener’s Boy in the prologue) turn into the Knave of Hearts really rather forced this issue into the story against its grain. It seemed a logical progression eventually, but did take rather a lot of getting used to. What I felt was completely unnecessary was the “resolution” – Edwardian Jack and Alice both appeared to have been dreaming (so that the story was effectively a dream within a dream) – they were really modern teenagers dozing on a bench outside the house which had been Alice’s in the story and which was now obviously some kind of National Trust-esque property with a “Mad Hatter’s Tea Shoppe” attached. This added an extra layer to the story and, very possibly, an extra layer of confusion.

I do wonder whether the Royal Ballet are going to get sucked into the “celebrity” vortex – I couldn’t see why Simon Russell Beale had been drafted in to play the Duchess other than the RB capitalising on his current “national treasure” status. Granted, its not really a major dancing role – SRB looked to be having to hoof with all of his puff at several points - but I’m sure that the RB could have brought in one of their “back catalogue” to play the role – possibly Monica Mason herself (Mason was a member of the company who never really rose above playing tiny roles such as various Fairies and “Friends-of-The-Heroine”; she went into administration (badly phrased - she didn't cease trading, just turned her hand to sorting out paperwork!)and is now the RB’s Director. She’s retiring soon and maybe this would have been a “farewell” role for her?).

Anyway, Act II was dominated by Zenaida Yanowsky as the Queen of Hearts, complete with a total piss-take of classical ballet in a cod “Rose Adagio” solo with four suitors (aping Sleeping Beauty) which even began with an identical musical phrase as the original. To those “in the know” this was a clever side-swipe. I did, however, think that making the QoH funny was a major mistake – OK, it opened up the ballet for younger members of the audience but, in the book, she is a terrifying (mostly unseen) presence and a real figure of horror when she does eventually appear. To make her a figure or fun dilutes the character considerably – even the Disney film (which I loathe) retains her status as someone to be avoided at all costs, and someone to be constantly beware of when you can’t.

Anyway, full credit must go to Bob Crowley for the clever costume designs (even though there were unexplained inconsistencies. Alice and her two sisters were wearing fancy dress costumes at curtain up, then changed into Edwardian half-crinolines quickly afterwards for no obvious reason, and the Playing Card Gardeners were dressed in costumes which suggested medieval jesters, again for no obvious reasons). I loved the flamingo and hedgehog costumes, and thought it very clever that all the playing cards were wearing white body stockings with what appeared to be foam rubber “tutus” cut into hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. Particular mention must go to the poor sods dressed as topiary cones all evening – surely the most thankless roles in the entire ballet. “I’ve got a part in Alice, mum” “Really dear? How wonderful! Your first big break! What are you playing?” “Err…. A topiary tree”. “Oh. Well, never mind. Perhaps you’ll get to be a Friend-of-the-Heroine next season”. They did, however, get a well deserved solo bow right at the end - cue much hilarity from the audience.

Judging by the audience’s reaction, this looks like its going to be a big success for the Royal Ballet – it only ran for about 5 performances initially in order to “test the water” but I gather there are more performances scheduled for the autumn. It will probably seriously challenge The Nutcracker as something to take the grandchildren to over Christmas. It was a fun, jolly evening with lots of technical wizardry, but ultimately very low on actual ballet.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturereviews/8353808/Alices-Adventures-in-Wonderland-Royal-Opera-House-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-royal-opera-house-london-2228531.html

http://www.londondance.com/reviews_details.asp?C=Royal+Ballet&P=Alice's+Adventures+in+Wonderland&V=Royal+Opera+House

http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/view/231970/Theatre-review-Alice-s-Adventure-s-In-Wonderland-The-Royal-Ballet-The-Royal-Opera-House

Iolanthe - Wiltons Music Hall, Wednesday 30th March 2011

2011-04-01T16:52:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Twenty-five years previous to the action of the opera, Iolanthe, a fairy, had committed the capital crime of marrying a mortal. The Queen of the Fairies had commuted the death sentence to banishment for life, on condition that Iolanthe leave her husband without explanation and never see him again. Her son, Strephon, a shepherd, has grown up as half fairy, half mortal. Strephon loves Phyllis, a shepherdess who is also a Ward in Chancery. She returns his love, and knows nothing of his mixed origin.

The Queen is prevailed upon by other Fairies to recall Iolanthe from her exile. Strephon joins the glad reunion and announces his intention of marrying Phyllis in spite of the Lord Chancellor, her guardian, who refuses permission.

Meanwhile the entire House of Lords is enamoured of Phyllis. They appeal to the Lord Chancellor to give her to whichever Peer she may select. The Lord Chancellor is also suffering the pangs of love, but feels he has no legal right to assign Phyllis to himself. Phyllis declines to marry a Peer; Strephon pleads his cause in person to the Lord Chancellor, but in vain. Iolanthe enters and tries to console her son. Since she, like all Fairies, looks like a girl of seventeen, Phyllis and the Peers misinterpret the situation; they ridicule Strephon's claim that Iolanthe is his mother. Phyllis declares that she will now marry either Lord Mountararat or Lord Tolloller. Strephon summons the Fairies to his aid, who take their revenge on the Peers by sending Strephon to Parliament and influencing both Houses to pass any bills he may introduce. His innovations culminate in a bill to throw the Peerage open to competitive examination. The Peers appeal to the Fairies to desist. The Fairies have fallen in love with the Peers and would like to oblige, but it is too late to undo the spell. The Queen reproaches her subjects for their feminine weakness. She acknowledges her own weakness for a sentry on guard outside the Houses of Parliament, Private Willis, but asserts that she has it under control.

Lords Mountararat and Tolloller discover that if either loses Phyllis to the other, family tradition requires that they fight unto death; both therefore renounce Phyllis in the name of friendship. The Lord Chancellor, after considerable struggle, pleads his own cause before himself and convinces himself that the law will allow him to marry Phyllis.

Meanwhile Strephon makes Phyllis understand that his mother is a fairy, and they are reconciled. They persuade Iolanthe to appeal to the Lord Chancellor. When he resists her appeal, she reveals that she is his wife and thus again incurs the death penalty. The other Fairies, however, have married their respective Peers, and announce to the Queen that they all have incurred the same sentence. The Lord Chancellor suggests an amendment to Fairy Law which saves the situation – it becomes law that a Fairy must die if she doesn’t marry a mortal. In order to save her life, the Queen marries Private Willis. All is resolved happily, and everyone flies off to Fairyland.

Cast:
Iolanthe, a Fairy, Strephon’s mother – Christopher Finn
Lord Chancellor – Shaun McCourt
Fairy Queen – Alex Weatherhill
Strephon, an Arcadian Shepherd – Louis Maskell
Phyllis, an Arcadian Shepherdess and Ward of Chancery – Alan Richardson
Lord Tolloler – Matthew Willis
Lord Mountarrarat – Luke Fredericks
Celia, a Fairy– Reuben Kaye
Leila, another Fairy – Adam Lewis Ford
Private Willis, of the Grenadier Guards – Raymond Tate

Creative Team:
Director – Sasha Regan
Choreographer – Mark Smith
Musical Director – Christopher Mundy
Design – Stewart Charlesworth
Lighting – Steve Miller

Once again, hurry along to Wilton’s Music Hall to catch another all-male version of a G&S favourite. I waxed very lyrical about their production of The Pirates of Penzance back in April last year, and now I’m going to wax very lyrical about Iolanthe, which is presented very much in the same vein. Of course, any operetta that deals with the problem of having two political parties ruled over by one leader is going to be topical at the moment, so this show is as topical today as it was back in 1881, bringing an extra level of freshness to the satire, and the jokes seem as new and funny as the day they were written. It would, of course, be just that bit too easy to go over the top and camp up a show about fairies (particularly when the entire cast are male) but that’s the genius of these productions – they are played totally (for want of a better word) straight and, frankly, are much the better for it. Gone is the archness of many G&S productions I’ve sat through (and suffered through) and in its place you find a sparkling, paint-fresh show that’s full of wit and humour, and a goodly dollop of affection for tradition. The direction and choreography are, once again, bang on, and so full of wonderful little details that you would really have to see this at least twice in order to pick up on everything. Nobody’s attention flags for a moment, everyone on stage is alert, involved and picking up and reacting to cues verbal and visual. It looks effortless (which is a clear sign that everyone is working bloody hard), sounds great and is a joy from start to finish. In fact, just like before, I started to screen out the fact that I was watching men play women’s roles. If not as revelatory as the relationship between Frederick and Ruth in Pirates, I saw several things with fresh eyes and, probably for the very first time, felt a lump well up in my throat during the final scene between Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor.

The company still lacks voices in the bass range in both chorus and principal roles – I found myself searching for some of the harmonies in the vocal lines and missing them. There are times when a bass-baritone role cannot be sung by someone with a much lighter voice and be musically convincing (or accurate). Charm and enthusiasm will get you a long way, but it won’t get you everywhere. I’m not sure whether it would be fair of me to say that there were too many “musical” voices on the stage at the expense of some trained “operetta” ones – although G&S can be technically demanding vocally, perhaps the “operetta sound” contributes to that feeling of slightly knowing archness which it was a relief not to have to deal with. The lack of archness in the dialogue, however, was a great pleasure and much to be applauded. It was delivered naturally, with simplicity and charm, which contributed greatly to my enjoyment of it (refer back to my Pirates review and the Henry Lytton quote within it); it takes considerable skill to make dialogue sound natural. The direction was extremely well done – simple and very touching where this was needed (in some of the dialogue between Strephon and Phyllis, for example, and during the Fairy Queen’s big number in Act 2), and appropriately complex and dense elsewhere.

If I have one minor criticism of the production (other than there being too few – if any – true basses in the company) then it was that the costuming of Iolanthe and Phyllis needs to be looked at. The chaps playing these roles are very, very similar physically and in terms of hair and eye colour, and as their costumes looked broadly similar, even I found myself getting slightly confused at some points over which was which. Yes, I know that this is a very minor point, but I think its justified.

Casting was (almost) perfect; Louis Maskell was the butchest, most credible Strephon I’ve seen, with great delivery, total belief in the dialogue and a wonderfully dark-chocolate voice to go with his beautiful dark-chocolate hair (the kind that you just ache to run your fingers (and possibly other body parts) through in order to muss it up. Whoever put him in that white shirt, fawn trousers and braces knows a great deal about how well-cut clothes show off the body underneath them. Lucky sheep! He made an excellent counterpoint to the smaller and slightly wispier Alan Richardson and their scenes together were very credible in an Arcadian kinda way. Alex Weatherhill was a warm yet dignified Fairy Queen, believably maternal yet remaining necessarily slightly detached from “her” troupe of dainty fairies. His vocal sound was firm and convincingly mezzo. Christopher Finn was a charming, beautiful and empathetic Iolanthe and Stuart McCourt a wonderfully “born middle-aged” Lord Chancellor. Raymond Tait was perhaps vocally miscast as Private Willis (the bass/bass-baritone role) but was funny and engaging and obviously possessed of great comic timing.

I can say without exaggeration that every single person in the audience last night went home feeling that they had been brilliantly entertained. I won’t say more – just go by yourself a ticket and see for yourself.

The company's production of "HMS Pinafore" from 2007, which I desperately wish I had seen.

What the critics thought (these reviews are from the orignal Union Theatre run - the Wiltons run has a slightly different cast)

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2010/11/review-iolanthe-union-theatre.html

http://webcowgirl.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/review-iolanthe-union-theatre/

http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/lon_iolanthe_1110.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/24/iolanthe-review

Frankenstein - National Theatre, Monday 14th February 2011

2011-02-15T21:03:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Dr. Victor Frankenstein spends years creating a creature out of human body parts, finally managing to bring his creation to life. Appalled by its ugliness, the creature is thrown out into the darkness of the night. After experiencing the joys of living, the creature is taunted and attacked by frightened villagers. It finds its way to the cabin of an old blind man, who takes pity on it and, unable to see its ugliness, teaches it to speak and read. It is attacked by his frightened family who drive it away – it returns and burns down the cabin in revenge, killing them.

After a year of wandering, the creature finds its way back to Geneva, home of Frankenstein, where the doctor is preparing to marry Elizabeth. The creature abducts and kills William, Frankenstein’s much younger brother. Frankenstein tracks the creature to the mountains, where the creature begs him for a mate. Appalled, Frankenstein however manages to find the idea stimulating and agrees, journeying to Scotland, where he creates a female creature from dead bodies. The creature is entranced, but Frankenstein is struck by doubts concerning the morality of what he has done and destroys his second creation. The creature vows revenge.

Frankenstein returns to Geneva and marries Elizabeth, who is cornered in her room by the creature and raped before being brutally killed. Frankenstein swears to devote the rest of his life to destroying his creation and begins his quest to track the creature down, eventually locating it among the polar ice. The creature tells him that it will end its existence only if Frankenstein dies first. They disappear into a snowstorm, never to return.

Cast:
Victor Frankenstein - Benedict Cumberbatch
William Frankenstein - Haydon Downing
Klaus - Steven Elliott
M. Frankenstein - George Harris
Elizabeth Lavenza - Naomie Harris
De Lacey- Karl Johnson
Felix - Daniel Millar
The Creature - Jonny Lee Miller
Female Creature - Andreea Padurariu
Gretel/Clarice - Ella Smith
Ewan - John Stahl
Agatha - Lizzie Winkler

Creative Team:
Original Story – Mary Shelley
Adaptation – Nick Dear
Director - Danny Boyle
Designer - Mark Tildesley
Costume DesignerSuttirat - Anne Larlarb
Lighting Designer - Bruno Poet
Director of Movement - Toby Sedgwick
Fight Directorn - Kate Waters
Music and Soundscore – Underworld

Ah, Valentine’s Day. A time for roses, chocolates, intimate dinners a deux – apparently. Or indeed more gothic horror. I’ve recently reviewed Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde, there’s been a noteworthy production of The Invisible Man at the Chocolate Factory, Being Human is back on TV (mmmm, sexy werewolves……) and now its time for the big flat-headed creature with the bolts through its neck (Run, children! Its George Osborne!). Next week will probably see a trip to see Carry On Screaming at this rate. Mary Shelley’s little gothic number is obviously an A Level set text this year, because the place was teeming with the spawn of the devil – sorry, students. Fortunately most of them were quite well behaved for a change.

I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect from this, but sure as hell didn’t get it. I did have visions of mad scientists cackling away in laboratories during thunderstorms while hordes of villagers waved pitchforks at the castle gates but this production is very well mannered, extremely visual, more or less true to the original Shelley novel and just that bit too humorous to be properly scary. In fact, I foresee that some of the unintentionally funny lines may well be cut before opening night in a couple of weeks time; the production would be better for it. What really needs to be cut is the actor who plays Frankenstein’s father; George Harris has absolutely no visible acting talent whatsoever and who is a disgrace to his profession. Should there ever be a play in which one of the characters is a wooden plank, then this guy will be up for a BAFTA.

There are holes in the plot that you could drive a truck through, unfortunately – having spent years creating his “creature”, Dr. Frankenstein throws it out into the night (a dark and stormy one, obviously) for no better reason than because it is “ugly”. Obviously Frankenstein has a very under-developed sense of aesthetics as Jonny Lee Miller makes a very pretty creature indeed – all biceps, jawline and truly calipygean buttocks. What is the point of the enormous train, other than to make a lot of noise and a bit of theatrical spectacle? Where are the blind man’s daughter and her husband during the year it takes the creature to learn to speak? Having abducted the Doctor’s younger brother, the “creature” then kills the child for no apparent reason (or maybe the child simply dies; this point is never really explained) and then sends the body back in a boat which somehow manages to sail in the opposite direction to the current. Does Frankenstein later manage to reanimate this particular corpse, or is he merely having a conversation with the child’s ghost? Having agreed to provide the creature with a female companion, Frankenstein then suddenly develops a sense of morals and destroys her, much to the creature’s consternation as it plans to run off with its bride and live in the forests of South America of all places. Say wa? How does it intend to get there from Geneva, we ask? And how does the creature manage to live in the frozen wastes of the Arctic? Has it got antifreeze instead of blood? What does it eat? Fortunately these points go unnoticed while you are actually watching the play, which certainly pulls out all the theatrical stops in terms of visuals – but I’m sure many of the audience will need to be taking a cork along with them because, once again, there is no interval. What is it at the moment with no-interval plays?

Many of the early scenes are played with wonderful simplicity – in the wrong hands, these could have been mawkish, but they are handled with a great lightness of touch. Later scenes get more portentous and overdo the “Hammer Horror” touch a bit, particularly those set in the Scottish Highlands, where there is a touch too much lightning and gothic gloom, leavened with an over-heavy hand with forelock-tugging “comedy villagers” with Brigadoon accents and an unexplained abundance of useful cadavers for the Doctor to use as spares. Probably the best thing in purely visual terms is the device used to simulate lightning – hundreds of lightbulbs of different sizes glittering in waves. Late in the play, these are spotlight from the sides with blue light, and the whole thing becomes an enormous, coldly glittering iceberg which I could have sat and watched all night.

The true challenge of this play is that the lead roles of Dr. Frankenstein and his “creature” are being alternated by Cumberbatch and Miller – it would be very interesting to see how the play changes when the roles are swapped. Is this truly an experiment in theatre or just a cynical marketing ploy devised by the National to get the audience to come back twice? Whatever the reason, I imagine that it’s quite a frightening experience for both to hear “their” words being spoken back at them by someone wearing “their” costume. I think, on reflection, that we saw the right performance – Cumberbatch makes a very refined and credible Frankenstein but I can’t really imagine him stripped down and parading his todger to the audience as the “creature”. Miller made a sympathetic “creature” and really rather lumbers away with the show, but needs to tone down his “Yesh, marshter” vocals a bit as I kept getting mental imagesh of Louish Spensch from the Pineapple Dansh Schudiosch.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It managed to both overcome my expectations and at the same time exceed them. Some of the comedy needs to be cut, and the schlock-horror Gothicism needs lightening (as opposed to lightning). Cumberbatch sports a truly frightening wig, but what is truly frightening about this play is how badly the human race comes off in terms of morality. We lie, cheat, steal and hate, and it takes a so-called “creature” to show us our faults. For most of the evening, the production refuses to pander to the Frankenstein stereotypes and there’s not a bolt through the neck in sight. There are, however, some very muscular buttocks. I left the theatre musing gently as to where one might procure such a pair for oneself.

What the critics said:

(this was a preview performance, pro reviews will be posted after opening night. Tickets are like hot cakes, however, and have recently been spotted selling on Ebay for upwards of £150 a pair. Get in quick!)

Twelfth Night - National Theatre, Saturday 29th January 2011

2011-02-03T20:47:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Viola has been shipwrecked in a violent storm off the coast of Illyria; in the process she has lost her twin brother, Sebastian. She disguises herself as a boy and assumes the name Cesario for protection. Thus disguised, Viola becomes a page in the service of Orsino, the Duke. It seems that Orsino is having little luck courting Olivia, who is in mourning for the death of her brother. As Orsino's proxy, Viola is sent to Olivia with love letters. Viola refuses to budge until she is let in to see Olivia; Olivia, intrigued by the impudent young "boy," contrives to get "Cesario" to return by sending her steward, Malvolio, after her with one of Olivia's rings. Viola realizes to her dismay that Olivia has fallen for her Cesario rather than Duke Orsino—further complicated by the fact that Viola has had stirrings herself for Orsino.

Sebastian (Viola's twin, presumed dead) comes ashore in Illyria thinking that Viola has drowned in the shipwreck. A man named Antonio rescued him from the surf, and continues to aid him—at some risk to himself, as Antonio fought against the Duke at one time. Meanwhile, in Olivia's house, Sir Toby Belch (her uncle) has hoodwinked a foppish Sir Andrew Aguecheek into supporting him by convincing him that he could be a suitor to Olivia. There is a running feud between Malvolio , the House Steward, and Belch; with the help of Maria, Olivia's maid, and Feste, a clown, Belch plots to make a buffoon of the steward. Maria writes a love letter to Malvolio that will make him think Olivia has fallen for him. Malvolio falls entirely for the sport, which eventually leads to his confinement as a madman.

All the while, Belch is egging Sir Andrew into a duel with Viola's "Cesario" character as she departs from Olivia; Olivia is now entirely smitten with Cesario, even though Viola continues to press Orsino's cause. As Viola and Sir Andrew prepare for a duel that neither one wants, Antonio happens upon the scene. Believing Viola to be Sebastian, he intervenes and is arrested. Viola, of course, does not recognize Antonio. Later, Belch and Sir Andrew encounter Sebastian, who doesn't back down from Aguecheek when challenged and resoundingly beats him. Olivia intervenes in the matter, and - mistaking Sebastian for Viola/Cesario - presses her suit for him. A bemused Sebastian agrees to marry her. Antonio is brought before the Duke for questioning, and Viola relates the events of the duel. Antonio tells everyone how hedragged "this man" from the surf, saving his life. Then Olivia enters, searching for her new husband—who she thinks is Viola (as Cesario).

Adding to this confusion, Belch and Aguecheek enter claiming that Viola/Cesario has violently assaulted them. In the midst of Viola's denials, Sebastian appears. The brother and sister recognize one another and are reunited; Sebastian helps to clear the confusion as to who fought who and who married who. At the end, Orsino and Viola pledge their love, Olivia and Sebastian will remain satisfactorily wed, and Olivia rebukes Belch and Maria for their abuse of Malvolio, who vows his revenge upon the whole lot. Belch agrees to wed Maria to make up for getting her in trouble, and all—except the disgruntled Malvolio—will apparently live happily ever after.

Cast:
Orsino – Marton Gsokas
Curio – Joseph Timms
Valentine – Richard Keightley
Viola – Rebecca Hall
Sir Toby – Simon Callow
Maria – Finty Williams
Sir Andrew – Charles Edwards
Feste – David Ryall
Olivia – Amanda Drew
Malvolio – Simon Paisley Day
Sebastian – Ben Mansfield

Creative Team
Director – Peter Hall
Designer – Anthony Ward
Lighting – Peter Mumford
Music – Mick Sands

Dear Sir Peter Hall
As it is nearly your 80th birthday, would you like to come and direct a production of Twelfth Night for us here at the National? Unfortunately, only the Cottesloe Theatre is available. However, because the Cottesloe is very small indeed, this will at least guarantee that not many tickets will need to be sold before we can put the “House Full” signs up outside.

Yours sincerely

Nicholas Hytner

Artistic Director

National Theatre

Dear Mr. Hytner
Yes, I would love to. My daughter, who has appeared in many of my productions at the Theatre Royal Bath, would like to play the lead role of Viola, as this is a part she hasn’t played before and would like to add to her CV. I would also like her photograph to appear on the front cover of the programme. Please let me know if this will be possible.

There is no such thing as a small theatre, only small directors. The fact that the production has my name plastered all over it will guarantee that it will be a complete sell-out for the entirety of its run.

Yours sincerely
Sir Peter Hall

Dear Sir Peter
Yes, we are prepared to let your daughter take the lead in this production. We will “ringfence” the auditions and, regardless of the quality of the other actresses attending the audition, will cast her. We are assuming that, because she is your daughter and has appeared in many of your previous productions (albeit a long way outside London), she can actually act? We only ask as the role of Viola is very difficult and is usually played by very experienced actresses such as Vivien Leigh, Zoe Wannamaker and Judi Dench. We presume you know (having done quite a bit of directing before) that Viola spends most of the play “disguised” as a man. Will this be a problem?

Yours sincerely

Nicholas Hytner

Artistic Director

Dear Nicholas
Thank you for your kind letter. I telephoned my daughter today to let her know that you will be calling her for an audition. In order to save time, she will bring the signed contract offering her the role (which arrived yesterday in the post) with her.

As you mention my good friend Judi Dench (whom I directed recently in A Midsummer Night’s Dream down in the suburbs somewhere), I wonder if you might be able to find a part in Twelfth Night for her daughter Finty? Finty is not a terribly talented actress and has received quite a lot of bad press for having inherited neither her mother’s nor her father’s acting ability. This should not be a major problem as we will put her in the “comedy role” of Maria. Between ourselves, my daughter is not terribly talented either; despite many years of coaching and appearing in many of my productions, she cannot seem to do very much with her arms or hands and, in fact, tends to leave her arms hanging down by her sides for much of the time. This has caused some problems in the past in productions (which I directed) where she has had to pick things up from tables or shake other people by the hand. I have repeatedly advised her to try and use her arms and hands a bit, even if it is only raising them slightly and waving them about in time to the lines, but she seems unable to move them at all unless she flings her entire body around from side to side, at which point her arms flap about a bit. I will try and get round this problem in my direction by not giving her very much to do (or indeed giving anyone very much to do). We will be able to get round this problem by saying that the direction is “minimalistic”.

Unfortunately, my darling daughter has problems with acting, let alone acting the part of a woman acting as a man, so I won’t bother her with this additional problem. I’ll just ask her to do it all in her normal voice. She is very good at gurning, I remember, so when any emotion is called for, I can get her to do that.

There are a couple of other people my daughter and I know very well and I wondered if you could find parts in the play for them? The chap who played Oberon for me opposite dear darling Judi in Dream has done a lot of work for me and perhaps we could cast him as Sir Andrew? He is very good and very funny and could possibly be the best Sir Andrew people have seen in a long time. He is very tall, which helps, as this is mentioned in the script.

I am very fond of the TV series Outnumbered, and wondered if we could cast the guy who plays the grandfather as something? He is, alas, a bit of a gloomy old cove, has a face like a melted trifle, has no feeling for comedy and cannot sing for toffee. Perhaps I could cast him as Feste? You know, the clown? The one who tells jokes and sings a lot?

I also like Brian Blessed and find him very funny, particularly when he roars all his words and shakes his jowls about. Is he available?

Kind regards,
Peter Hall

Dear Peter
Of course you may cast the children of your very good friends in our production, regardless of how talented they are. We contacted Brian Blessed but he was not available – perhaps if we cast Simon Callow and ask him to do an impression of Mr. Blessed? That would be very funny – although possibly a little wearing for the audience. Let us know what you think. The guy who plays the grandfather in Outnumbered is really excited about being able to work with you and slaughter both the comedy and the songs. We will hire a 5 piece orchestra of obscure period instruments such as the mandola and the nykelharpa, spend lots of money dressing the musicians in lovely period costumes and then hide them away in a bit of the auditorium where very few people can see them, and then ask them to play really really loudly so that the old guy from Outnumbered is drowned out a bit.

Unfortunately, we are a bit short of money for the set. Have you ever directed Twelfth Night on an empty stage? You are welcome to come and have a rummage around in our stockroom for odds and ends to use (we have some lovely screens with trees on which you could use for the garden scene. They are completely wrong for the Shakespearian period, being kind of 1880s aesthetic-type things, but they were very expensive and have only been used a couple of times before. Would you be able to use these?). We do have a couple of seats which you could use, but we cannot afford a trapdoor in the floor to use in the prison scene. Please let us know what you think.

Best regards,
Nick

Hi Nick
I like the idea of asking my very good chum Simon to do an impression of Brian Blessed. Clever!

There should be no problem having nothing on the stage; in fact my daughter’s hands do tend to keep catching on bits of furniture if she is not careful so this would be a very good solution to the problem. My cleaning lady has a large collection of those awful Lilliput Lane china cottages which she has collected from adverts in Woman’s Own, and she will let me borrow them as long as we keep them safe. We can put all these up in a line on a long shelf on the back wall of the theatre and they will look like a little village in the distance. My daughter made a guy for Bonfire Night last year and we could drag that onto the stage and pretend that it is a shipwrecked sailor in my daughter’s first big scene – she can point at it and look doleful. I’ve got a lovely tablecloth with a leaf design printed on it, which we can hang over the stage and raise and lower at various points.

It’s a nuisance that you haven’t a proper dungeon, but in the shed I think there is an enormous birdcage left over from when our parrot, Humphrey, died of Bird Flu. We’ll put Malvolio in that for the dungeon scene [note to self: remove Tidi-San from the bottom and clean out the food trays]. We miss Humphrey very much; he was very good at helping my daughter learn her lines. In fact, sometimes we could barely tell the difference! How we would laugh!

All the best,
Pete

p.s

Have you anyone in mind for the thankless role of Sebastian? You know, the “twin brother” of Viola? I rather like that sexy young guy who’s played a couple of very similar parts to this one at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. Of course, he doesn’t look anything like my daughter, but we can get round this by getting him to shave his beard off and wear a lank and silly wig. That’ll fool the plebs in the audience completely.

p.p.s

What about costumes?

Dear Pete
Costumes shouldn’t be a worry – we have some lovely ones in clashing colours. Simon Callow’s is purple, your daughter and the sexy guy from Regent’s park will be in cerise and we have a lovely acid orange frock going spare; maybe you could cast someone as Olivia who would fit into it? There are various other costumes in pale blue, and of course lots of servant’s costumes in dung brown with little caps and aprons. We’ll get both the girls playing maids to wear dung brown with little aprons so that, when your daughter has to pick out the woman playing Olivia, nobody will be able to guess which is which! (btw, we’ve got the woman playing Olivia in a really lovely black silk gown with an Elizabethan collar at this point, so she will look totally different to the two women in dung brown with little aprons. But we will give all three of them little black lacy veils to hide their faces with. Nobody will notice).

We do worry that your daughter and Judi Dench’s daughter might look a bit upstaged by the guy we’ve got to play Malvolio. He is very thin and sneery looking, and also acts extremely well. In fact, he might actually turn out to be one of the best members of the cast. Never fear – we have a really odd guy from New Zealand to play Orsino. He speaks just like Jilly Goolden did when she was going a bit over the top describing a bottle of vino collapse – you know, all fruity and pompous. In fact, he’s so OTT he will draw all the attention away from anyone on stage who is really good.

Tickets are selling really, really well and your daughter looks lovely in the photograph on the front cover of the programme. We look forward to seeing her at the auditions next week.

Break a leg!
Love and kisses
Your good chum Nick

Dear Pete,
The reviews are in.
Sorry.
Nick

http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/event/203300/twelfth-night

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/twelfth-night-national-theatre-cottesloe-london-2189046.html

http://www.islingtontribune.com/reviews/theatre/2011/jan/theatre-review-twelfth-night-cottesloe-theatre

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/jan/19/twelfth-night-review-michael-billington

Jekyll & Hyde - Churchill Theatre Bromley, Monday 24th January 2010

2011-01-25T23:08:00.000Z

Synopsis:

A short introduction sees Henry Jekyll tending to his father in an asylum for the insane. It is Jekyll's belief that the evil in his father's soul has caused his illness, and he swears to investigate a way of separating good from evil.
Jekyll presents a research proposal to the Board of Governors of St. Jude's Hospital. All, with the exception of Sir Danvers, the Chair, are pompous, rich semi-hypocrites. When Jekyll proposes to test his theory and his formula on a human subject, they reject the proposal. Utterson urges his friend, if he feels he is right about his theory, that he should continue with his research.

Sir Danvers throws an engagement party for his daughter Emma's engagement to Dr. Jekyll. Stride, who has feelings for Emma, tries to reason her out of her engagement, but she quickly turns him down, saying she feels she can be who she wants to be with Jekyll.

Jekyll and Utterson go to a dingy pub. Prostitute Lucy Harris arrives late and is in for some trouble with the boss, known as "the Spider"; Lucy begins to circulate among the clientèle. Jekyll and Lucy are drawn to each other Before he goes, he gives Lucy his visiting card and asks her to see him should she ever need anything.

Jekyll proceeds to his laboratory, excited that the moment has come to do his experiment Keeping tabs on the experiment in his journal, he mixes his chemicals to create his formula, and injects it into the subject: himself. After a minute of the potion's side effects, he writhes in pain, transforming into an evil form of himself. He gives himself a name: Edward Hyde.

Lucy arrives at Jekyll's residence with a nasty bruise on her back. As Jekyll treats it, she tells him a man named Hyde did it. Later, the Bishop of Basingstoke is attacked by Hyde after the Bishop is seen by him to engage prostitutes.

The citizens of London gossip about the Bishop's murder. After the funeral, General Glossop and Lord Savage leave St. Paul's, mourning over their deceased colleague. Hyde corners Glossop and stabs him through the mouth with the swordstick while Teddy watches, petrified in horror. Stride quickly enters the scene, just in time to see Hyde escape. As Londoners discuss the second murder, Later one night, Teddy is seen leaving the Mayfair Club with Sir Proops and Lady Beaconsfield. Hyde emerges from the shadows, pulls out a dagger and stabs Archie in the side before snapping Bessie's neck with her own diamonds. Teddy,seizes the opportunity to escape but is cornered by Hyde at Victoria Station as he tries to flee London. Hyde breaks Teddy’s neck and kicks his corpse onto the tracks. By now, all five Governors who rejected Jekyll's proposal are dead.

Emma lets herself into Jekyll's laboratory. She finds his journal open and reads one of his entries. Jekyll begins to face the fact that Hyde is a part of him. At the same time, both Lucy and Emma wonder about their love for the same.

Lucy is then visited by Hyde, who tells her that he is going away for a while. He then warns her to never leave him Lucy is terrified, but seems to be held under a sexual, animalistic control by Hyde. Utterson comes to Jekyll's lab and discovers Hyde, who injects the formula into himself, roaring with laughter as he transforms back into Jekyll in front of an appalled Utterson. Jekyll tells Utterson that Hyde must be destroyed, whatever the cost. He then begs Utterson to deliver money for Lucy so she can escape to safety. Utterson visits Lucy with the money, along with a letter from Jekyll that entreats her to leave town and start a new life elsewhere. After Utterson leaves, Lucy wonders of the possibilities ahead. Hyde returns; he slowly and savagely kills her. Covered in blood from stabbing Lucy, Jekyll returns to his laboratory and faces off with Hyde in a final battle for control.

Several weeks later, Jekyll seems to have won as he and Emma stand before the priest at their wedding.. As the Minister begins the ceremony, Jekyll doubles over in pain and transforms into Hyde. Hyde then kills Stride before taking Emma hostage. At the sound of Emma's pleading voice, Jekyll is able to regain momentary control. He begs Utterson to kill him, but Utterson cannot bring himself to harm his friend. Desperate, Jekyll impales himself on Utterson's swordstick. Emma weeps softly as Jekyll dies.

Cast:

Dr Henry Jekyll/Mr Hyde – Marti Pellow

Lucy – Sabrina Carter

Emma – Sarah Earnshaw

Sir Danvers – David Delve

Utterson – Mark McGee

Lady Beconsfield/Nellie – Amira Matthews

Simon Stride – Michael Taibi

Glossop – Martin Dickinson

Proops – Matt Stevens

Lord Savage/Spider – Jacob Chapman

Bishop of Basingstoke – Jon de Ville

Poole – James Gant

Bissett – Daniel Robinson

Creative Team:

Book/Lyrics: Leslie Bricusse

Music: Frank Wildhorn

Director: Martin Connor

Choreography: Bill Deamer

Set: Mark Bailey

Costumes: Jonathan Lipman

Ah, the cult of celebrity. When people “famous” for one thing try their hand at something else and believe they are good at it. Just because you’re a singer, it must therefore follow that you will be a whizz at musical theatre, right? WRONG. Its only going to expose your shortcomings, particularly when surrounded on stage by people who aren’t famous but are actually good at what they’re doing. Mr. Pellow, having gained a reasonable amount of success in the late 80s in Wet Wet Wet, tries gamely to convince us all that because he can hold a tune we’ll be duped into believing that he can act, but fails miserably. Oh, the boy can sing, but his shortcomings are cruelly highlighted in this show by those who make a living out of being in musicals. Basically, the professionals mop the floor with him. Not only can they hold a tune, they can also enunciate while holding it. Mr. Pellow does a fairly good impression of a Blue Whale for a lot of the evening; all you can hear are vowel sounds. Oooo eeee aaaaahhhh owww eeiiiiii ooooouwwww. There are very few consonants, and certainly no T’s, no D’s, no B’s or K’s to be heard. While they are using him as a mop, the professionals also manage to act convincingly, making a credible attempt to perform what on closer inspection is fairly risible dialogue. Mr. Pellow flails about trying to convince us of his acting credentials, but only manages to look self conscious and faintly ridiculous in their company. Basically, the professionals work their cotton socks off, walk away with the entire evening and leave Pellow treading water in their wake. However, Mr. Pellow is a “name”, so gets the star treatment – a “big star walk down” at the end of the bows, with his two leading ladies (who have sung their tits off all evening) forced to do a “here comes the star” gesture by turning halfway upstage and holding their upstage arm out to him. Cue whooping, ovating and probably ovulating from the mums in the audience who bought Wet Wet Wet’s CDs in the late 1980s and who have dragged their unwilling husbands along this evening (a wonderful press release from the Churchill received the day after this performance was headed “Standing Ovations Greet Bromley Premiere!” – I think I counted about 8 people in the entire theatre who thought it necessary to stand up and clap, which is hardly a “standing ovation”. In fact, Him Indoors also got up, and I hissed “Sit down! People will think you liked it!” He was actually getting up to make a quick getaway from the strange couple from Upminster sitting next to us, but I didn’t realise that at this point.

Admittedly, a lot of the problem is the material. Jekyll (correctly pronounced as to rhyme with “treacle” and not “heckle”) and Hyde suffers from a mismatch between libretto and score. The former was written by the guy who wrote the music for Victor/Victoria, songs such as “If I Ruled the World” (for the musical Pickwick), “If I could Talk to the Animals” (for Dr. Doolittle), “You Only Live Twice” for the James Bond film and “Ooompa Loompa Doompity Doo” for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Basically, the man has a track record. The latter was written by the composer of such hit shows as The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Count of Monte Cristo, Camille Claudel, Svengali and Harlem Song. No, me neither. What doesn’t help is that the score feels extremely dated already, as its written in the same “sung through” style (ie with very little actual dialogue but lots of very dull recitative) as Les Mis, Phantom and Notre Dame de Paris. This plonks it very firmly in the mid to late 1980s or early 1990s, when the genre had been done to death and the public were getting tired with it. In overall style and feel, it bears a remarkable family resemblance to Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White, which basically killed off not only the “sung through” style but also the “gothic musical”, of which so many of the “sung through” genre are examples. You only have to look at the hoohaa that Love Never Dies caused when it opened to realise that this style is one particular theatrical corpse that should have been left to sink to the bottom of the river rather than being dragged out and resuscitation attempts made on the shore. Jekyll and Hyde lumbers along like a reanimated cadaver, zombie-like, with squelchy bits dropping off it occasionally.

Another problem is what I would inelegantly call “over-wroughtness” Its all so earnest, but schlock-horror (you know – dark alleyways, rolling fog with mysterious caped figures flitting about it in, Whitechapel prostitutes and laboratory shelves covered in glass bottles) has to be handled very carefully lest it descend into parody. Jekyll and Hyde tries very hard to be taken seriously – too hard in fact; it ends up crossing that very fine line – and becomes risible. In fact, it began to remind me of “The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Olde London Town” by the Two Ronnies (YouTube clip below – hysterical!).

Probably the major obstacle to this particular production's success is Pellow himself. Seemingly unable to make any discernable difference between the morally upright Dr. Jekyll and his brutal alter ego save stooping his shoulders, donning a cape with an enormous fur collar and jamming a top hat over his ears, Pellow gibbers around the stage trying to be evil, somehow managing to avoid being recognised by intelligent people who have known him as Jekyll for 20 years or more. Hyde is supposed to be brutal, animalistic and sexually dangerous, but Him Indoors summed it up by saying “Marti Pellow is about as sexually dangerous as a bowl of raspberry jelly”. Pellow’s lack of acting skill is cruelly exposed during the denouement, in which he plays Jekyll to a projected film of him as Hyde. The two are supposed to be in conversation, but Pellow isn’t an experienced enough actor to “hit his marks” and Jekyll never seems to be in the place where Hyde’s eyes are looking.

Thankfully, the rest of the cast act and sing and dance round Mr. Pellow in an attempt to cover up most of his faults, but leave him stranded and looking, as I’ve already said, faintly ridiculous. Sabrina Carter invests her “tart with a heart” with a great deal of heart, lots of cleavage and a hideous wig, and belts out her numbers with style, volume and an impressive technique. In fact, it really is rather a shame that her character gets brutally raped and murdered (for which read “fumbled with inexpertly and unconvincingly”) by Hyde just as she is about to flee London in search of a better life (a plot “twist” which is about as hackneyed as a horse-drawn cab). She is all but matched by Sarah Earnshaw as Emma, but Carter has just that bit more lung capacity and manages to outsing Earnshaw by 3½ bars in their duet (which bears more than a passing resemblance in style, construction, content and placement within the show to “I Know Him So Well” from Chess). Everyone else changes costumes every 12 seconds in order to try and populate the entire stage, doubling and tripling and quadrupling up to be named characters, aristocrats, cockerneys, prostitutes and general ensemble (although one particular costume should never have been sanctioned – the Bishop of Basingstoke appears in Cardinal’s robes during the engagement scene. Not only did England not have any Catholic Bishops during the 19th century, appearing in such a costume would have been unthinkable and unheard of for a Church of England Bishop. Costume Designer fouled up big time on that one). In the main, they do a reasonable job of propping up the body, but in the light of the musical shortcomings, over-wrought plot and dated overall style of the piece, it will probably spend the rest of its shelf life touring the provinces until it sinks mercifully to its end in the Elephant’s Graveyard of Musical Theatre. If you’ve got all of Wet Wet Wet’s CDs you might enjoy it, but otherwise it’s a mis-shapen monster that should have been put out of its misery long ago.

Beasts and Beauties - Hampstead Theatre, Thursday 30th December 2010

2011-01-04T22:31:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Classic tales from Grimm, Andersen, Aesop and Perrault, mixed in with less well-known children’s stories from around the world.

Cast:
Justin Avoth

Elaine Claxton

Rhiannon Harper-Rafferty

Emily Mytton

Al Nedjari

Jack Tarlton

Jason Thorpe

Kelly Williams

Creative Team:

Writer : Carol Ann Duffy

Director: Melly Still

Design: Melly Still, Anna Fleischle

Lighting;Chris Davey

Music: Dave Price

Costumes: Ilona Karas

Anyone who has ever been a child will remember how exciting it was to be read stories at bedtime, and this evening’s outing served to confirm that the magic of storytelling is alive and well. This was a deceptively simple evening, during which various fairy stories from different countries were presented on stage by a small, extremely talented cast backed up by an even more talented musician, a (very) large box of what were essentially dressing up costumes and lots and lots of props and found objects. Designed by the same person who did the Young Vic production of Grimm Tales which I saw more years ago than I care to remember, this was a production in essentially the same vein –“we provide the stage, a few costumes and a few props, and you bring your imagination”. Its success proves that, with imagination, anything is possible. It’s a pity, therefore, that the adults in the audience far outnumbered the children, as this production would have been guaranteed to weave its spell over the young and make them theatregoers for life.

From the technical point of view it was an extremely challenging show, with dozens of large items like stepladders dropping down from the ceiling or popping up from under the stage (in fact, during the interval, there were as many backstage staff hanging new props from the ceiling as there had been actors on stage during the performance), merely proving that “simple” can be really, really complicated. Costuming must have been an absolute nightmare, as the majority of stories needed the full cast and each story was presented in a different style, necessitating hundreds of costume items. Particularly inventive were the animal costumes, showing that strict adherence to reality – or indeed anything approaching realism - is not necessary when you have a talented costume designer. My favourite (and, judging by the audience reaction, many other peoples’ too) was the cow costume, which was essentially a long flared tweed skirt, a baggy white shirt, a pair of large false eyelashes, a cowbell and a pink rubber glove. Judging by the near-hysterical laughter of a little girl at the other end of our row, her vote probably went for the costume worn by Jack Tarlton as the Emperor in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” which consisted of a crown, grey shoes, yellow socks and a strategically placed clipboard, flag or bunch of flowers.

What particularly liked was that each story was presented in a different way – Bluebeard was set in the 1820s, Beauty and the Beast in Renaissance Italy, The Emperor’s New Clothes in modern dress, with others in more-or-less “traditional fairy story costumes” or in improvised costumes, or even in a blend of different styles. One of the stories (which I wasn’t familiar with and which dealt with an unlikely alliance between an old dog and a cunning wolf and which, on reflection, was probably an obscure Aesop’s Fable) was presented “junkyard style” – the guy playing the dog wore odd carpet slippers, baggy brown cords and a threadbare Fair-Isle pullover and scenery such as the windmill, the forest and a broken window were drawn on transparent film and projected onto the walls using OHPs. Another story, that of a man dissatisfied with his work who swaps places with his wife for a day, used “Grimm-style” costumes for the “humans” but slightly surreal costumes for the “animals” – such as the cow costume I’ve referred to earlier. A stepladder became the gable of the house on which the cow ultimately gets stuck – and that was that. As I said before, just add imagination. Also very good was the fact that these weren’t the saccharine, Disney-fied versions of the stories; the Beast in Beauty and the Beast was truly beastly, Bluebeard was smoothly charming but plausibly evil, the “chopping up the child” scene in The Juniper Tree (done in silhouette) was really, really frightening and the Troll Hag in the story about the North Wind (Scandinavian in origin, by the looks of) was so gruesome that at least one child was carried screaming from the auditorium. And a bloody good job too – half the appeal of this kind of story is that children love being scared witless as long as good is seen to triumph eventually and evil seen to be punished. Did you know that Beauty’s horrible sisters were turned to statues outside her castle gates so that they had to spend all eternity watching their sister coming and going in happiness? No, nor did I – but it makes a very satisfying ending to see on the stage.

The sheer amount of energy on stage was amazing - and exhausting. One of the adapters is apparently in the process of creating a similar production based on The Thousand and One Nights, and if its anything near as inventive and entertaining as Beasts and Beauties, then believe me I’m first in the queue for tickets.

What the critics thought:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23907607-power-of-the-fairytale-in-beasts-and-beauties.do

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/16/beasts-and-beauties-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8208769/Beasts-and-Beauties-Hampstead-theatrePotted-Panto-Vaudeville-theatre-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/beasts-and-beauties-hampstead-theatre-london-2165456.html

And the Winner is........

2011-01-02T23:12:00.000Z

(Drum roll please........)

Category: Best Play (non-shakespeare)

Nominations:

After the Dance

London Assurance

A Christmas Carol

AND THE WINNER IS....

AFTER THE DANCE

Category: Worst Play (non-Shakespeare)

Nominations;
Dracula

Danton’s Death

Love the Sinner

AND THE WINNER IS.....

LOVE THE SINNER

Category: Best Shakespeare Play

Nominations:

Macbeth (June)

Measure for Measure (March)

Henry V (February)

AND THE WINNER IS....

HENRY V

Category: Worst Shakespeare Play

Nominations:

Hamlet

Comedy of Errors

As You Like It

AND THE WINNER IS...

HAMLET

Category: Best Musical

Nominations:

Passion

Curtains

Pirates of Penzance

AND THE WINNER IS....

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE

Category: Worst Musical

Nominations:

Spamalot

Paradise Found

Shirley Jones in Concert

AND THE WINNER IS....

PARADISE FOUND

(no real surprise there!)

Category: Best Ballet/Dance Production

Nominations:

Cinderella (Royal Ballet)

Cinderella (Adventures in Motion Pictures)

The Snow Queen

AND THE WINNER IS....

CINDERELLA (AMP)

Category: Worst Ballet/Dance Production

Nominations:

Le Corsaire

Royal Ballet Triple Bill

The Nutcracker (ENB January)

AND THE WINNER IS....

THE NUTCRACKER

Category: Best Individual Performance

Nominations:

Elena Roger – Passion

Fred Lancaster – Curtains

Simon Russell Beale – London Assurance

AND THE WINNER IS:

FRED LANCASTER

Highly commended:

David Fielder – Scrooge

Tom Greaves – Henry V

Nick Sampson – London Assurance

Category: Worst Individual Performance

Nominations:

Laura Blackmore – Dracula

Mandy Patinkin – Paradise Found

Shirley Jones – Shirley Jones in Concert

AND THE WINNER IS.....

ALL THREE!

(seriously folks, three of the worst performances I have ever had to sit through)

Category: Worst People to Sit Next To

Nominations:

The West End Whingers - Passion

Drunk and Obnoxious Couple - Cinderella

Practically everyone – Carmen

AND THE WINNER IS.....

DRUNK AND OBNOXIOUS COUPLE - CINDERELLA

RTR Awards 2010 - And the Nominations Are.....

2010-12-30T13:28:00.000Z

Category: Best Play (non-Shakespeare)

Nominations:
After the Dance (June)
London Assurance (March)
A Christmas Carol (January)

Category: Worst Play (non-Shakespeare)

Nominations:
Dracula (November)
Danton’s Death (August)
Love the Sinner (May)

Category: Best Shakespeare

Nominations:

Macbeth (June)

Measure for Measure (March)

Henry V (February)

Cateogry: Worst Shakespeare

Nominations:

Hamlet (October)

Comedy of Errors (July)

As You Like It (June)

Category: Best Musical

Nominations:
Passion (September)
Curtains (July)
Pirates of Penzance (April)

Category: Worst Muscial

Nominations:
Spamalot (June)
Paradise Found (May
)Shirley Jones (March)

Category: Best Ballet/Dance Production:

Nominations:
Cinderella (December)
Cinderella (April)
The Snow Queen (January)

Category: Worst Ballet/Dance Production

Nominations:
Le Corsaire (August)
Royal Ballet Triple Bill (April)
The Nutcracker (January)

Category: Best Individual Performance

Nominations:
Elena Roger – Passion (September)
Fred Lancaster – Curtains (July)
Simon Russell Beale – London Assurance (March

Category: Worst Individual Performance

Nominations:
Laura Blackmore – Dracula (November)
Mandy Patinkin – Paradise Found (May
Shirley Jones – Shirley Jones in Concert (March)

Category: Worst People to Sit Next To

Nominations:

The West End Whingers - Passion (September)
Drunk and Oboxious Couple - Cinderella (December)
Practically everyone – Carmen (May)

Category: RTR Reader's Awards:
Nobody bothered to nominate. Thanks guys.

Awards Envelopes will be opened early in the New Year.

Romeo and Juliet - RSC @ The Roundhouse - Monday 20th December 2010

2010-12-22T21:58:00.000Z

Synopsis:

A Chorus introduces two feuding families of Verona, the Capulets and the Montagues. On a hot summer's day, fighting by the young men of each faction is stopped by the Prince who threatens the law. Capulet plans a feast to introduce his daughter, Juliet, who is almost fourteen, to the Count Paris who seeks to marry her. By a mistake of the illiterate servant Peter, Montague's son Romeo, and his friends Benvolio and Mercutio hear of the party and resolve to go in carnival disguise. Romeo hopes he will see his adored Rosaline; instead he meets and falls instantly in love with Juliet.

The Montagues are recognised by Juliet's cousin Tybalt and are forced to leave the party just as Romeo and Juliet have each discovered the others identity. Romeo lingers near the Capulet's house and talks with Juliet when she appears on her balcony. With the help of Juliet's Nurse, the lovers arrange to meet next day at the cell of Friar Lawrence when Juliet goes for confession, and there they are married.

Tybalt picks a quarrel with Mercutio and his friends and Mercutio is accidentally killed as Romeo intervenes. In anger Romeo pursues Tybalt, kills him and is banished by the Prince for the deed. Juliet is anxious that Romeo is late meeting her and learns of the fighting from her Nurse. With Friar Lawrence's help it is arranged that Romeo will spend the night with Juliet before taking refuge at Mantua. To calm the family's sorrow at Tybalt's death the day for Juliet’s marriage to Paris is brought forward.

Capulet and his wife are angry that Juliet does not wish to be Paris's bride, not knowing of her secret contract with Romeo. Friar Lawrence helps Juliet by providing a sleeping draught, and when the wedding party arrives to greet Juliet the next day they believe she is dead. The Friar sends a colleague to warn Romeo to come to the Capulet's family monument to rescue his sleeping wife.

The message is fatally delayed and Romeo, hearing instead that Juliet is dead, buys poison in Mantua. He returns to Verona and goes to the tomb where he surprises and kills the mourning Paris. Romeo takes his poison and dies just as Juliet awakes from her drugged sleep. She learns what has happened from Friar Lawrence but she refuses to leave the tomb and stabs herself as the Friar returns. The deaths of their children lead the families to make peace, promising to erect a monument in their memory.

Cast:

Escalus, Prince of Verona – David Carr

Mercutio – Jonjo O’Neill

Paris – James Howard

Montague – David Rubin

Lady Montague – Simone Saunders

Romeo – Sam Troughton

Balthasar – Gruffud Glyn

Capulet – Richard Katz

Lady Capulet – Christine Entwhistle

Juliet – Mariah Gale

Tybalt – Joseph Arkley

Nurse – Noma Dumezweni

Friar Laurence – Forbes Masson

Creative Team:

Dierctor – Rupert Goold

Designer – Tom Scott

Lighting – Howard Harrison

Costumes – Rachel Dickson

Its very easy to write a review when you really enjoy a production, and its even easier when you loathe it (in fact, in these cases, the reviews more or less write themselves). What I find really difficult is writing a review when a production has been more or less OK. Its very difficult to express “meh” in words. In terms of both production ideas and performances, there werew some very good ones here, a couple of completely acceptable ones and a couple of really naff ones. It took me a long time to warm to both lead roles, and I think only Juliet really convinced me in the end that she was worth the effort, eventually winning me over. It takes a skilled actress to convey the impetuosity of a hormonal teenager if not in real love, then in love with being in love itself, and I think Mariah Gale managed to convey this very well in a kind of bewildered, hair-chewing and moody way. I felt completely ambivalent about Sam Troughton’s Romeo for most of the evening, and that’s never a good sign. What was a really bad sign is that I thought Forbes Masson’s Friar Laurence completely lacking in any kind of authority - religious or academic - and found myself increasingly irritated by his bumptious jollity, his rather laissez-faire approach to religion and his forever bounding about the stage like a slightly podgy ginger Labrador anxious to please everyone. What this production needed was a still core about which the city of Verona whirled in turmoil, and not finding it in Friar Laurence, I found it in the unlikely form of Noma Dumezweni’s Nurse, who managed to convey a strong sense of “been there, seen it, done it”, which was a pleasure to watch.

I also enjoyed the central conceit of the production, in that Romeo and Juliet started out in modern dress, standing out nicely against everyone else who wore more or less “period-style” if not strictly period costume, This made them appear like ghosts from the future. At the end, both wore more or less period costume, with everyone else in modern clothes – to quote Tennyson’s The Princess “The present as we speak becomes the past. The past repeats itself and so is future”. What I would like to have seen done here was a more gradual slide from one period to the other in the costumes rather than an abrupt change. Practically all I remember of the first opera I ever saw (Verdi’s Falstaff, if you’re interested – bad choice of first opera to see, and which probably explains my ambivalence about opera to this day) was the way that all the characters started in 1930s dress, and on each successive appearance, their costumes became more and more Jacobean. I remember thinking at the time what a clever idea that was.

I was disappointed that, because of the “in the round” staging, much of the dialogue was lost through a combination of bad projection and bad acoustics. I was also rather disappointed that the opening idea wasn’t developed any further – Romeo listened to the opening “In fair Verona where we lay our scene” speech via a recorded narration on headphones, almost as if he were a modern day tourist seeing the sights of the city. Another clever production idea was to have a rose window lighting effect projected onto the floor, the design of which was exactly the same as the metal grating cover in the middle – love may raise us up to heaven but pull us downwards into hell. This Verona was not drenched in blazing sunlight but composed of torchlit alleyways and shadowy courtyards. It was particularly nice to see the “Balcony scene” done completely from Romeo’s point of view – the acting area was in total darkness lit only by the light streaming from the window above. When Romeo climbs the balcony and he and Juliet finally get some major snog-action going, the entire wall surrounding the window lights up with the kind of sunburst you get surrounding Christ in Renaissance paintings. This was the only time that daylight shone on Verona, which I think was meant to echo the line in the closing speech about “The sun, for sadness, will not show His head”. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realise how clever the lighting was. It’s a pity that I came away not feeling as impressed with some of the performances – I still maintain that Romeo and Juliet is an incredibly difficult play to pull off successfully, and I don’t think the RSC have quite managed it yet, at least as far as I’m concerned. But then we all know how difficult to please I am.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/romeo-and-juliet-roundhouse-london-2152000.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2703:romeo-and-juliet-rsc/roundhouse&Itemid=25

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/215402/Review-Romeo-and-Juliet-Roundhouse-London

http://www.tottenhamjournal.co.uk/what-s-on/theatre/romeo_and_juliet_theatre_review_1_750823

Romeo (of the Montagues of Beaulieu) and Juliet (of the Catapults) in under 15 minutes, performed by sock puppets!

The best - and worst - of 2010

2010-12-22T13:08:00.000Z

Here at RTR Towers, I'm busily writing my last review of the year (coming in a couple of days). I want YOU, dear reader, to nominate the best and worst theatrical production you've seen this year in the comments box at the bottom of this post. I'm making a list of my own nominations ('cos this is my blog!) and will announce the winners shortly. For the RTR Readers Awards (Best Show and Worst Show of 2010) I need you to nominate!

The Nutcracker - ENB at the London Coliseum - Wednesday 15th December 2010

2010-12-21T20:43:00.000Z

Synopsis:

Guests arrive at the Stahlbaum house for a Christmas Eve party. Clara's uncle, Herr Drosslemeyer, a magician, is among the guests. He introduces Clara to his nephew and gives her a nutcracker doll, which is broken by Freddie, Clara's brother. It is magically mended. Drosselmeyer presents a magical puppet show. The guests leave after the party and Clara is sent to bed.

Waking at midnight, Clara hears noises downstairs and goes to investigate. Magically, the Christmas tree grows larger and larger, and Clara is attacked by mice. She is rescued by the Nutcracker doll, commanding a regiment of Freddie's toy soldiers. The Nutcracker is injured and the soldiers are captured by the mice. Clara and the Nutcracker escape into the snow, followed by the King of the Mice, where they are hidden by a snowstorm. A hot-air balloon, containing Drosselmeyer, lands in the forest and flies them to safety in the Kingdom of the Sweets. Unfortunately they fail to realise that the King of the Mice is hanging from the bottom of the balloon's basket.

Landing in the Kingdom of the Sweets. Drosslemeyer and the Nutcracker finally manage to defeat the King of the Mice. Clara is entertained by dances given by the Sweets. She is transformed into the Sugar Plum Fairy, and dances with the Nutcracker, who takes on the appearance of Drosselmeyer's nephew.

Waking on Christmas Day, Clara wonders if it has all been a dream. Looking out of the door, she sees the hot air balloon flying past....

Cast:

Clara – Fernanda Oliveira

Nutcracker Prince – Fabian Reimar

Drosselmeyer – Juan Rodriguez

His Nephew – James Forbat

Mouse King – Yat-Sen Chang

Creative Team:

Music: Tchaikovsky

Choreography – Wayne Eagling

Design – Peter Farmer

Lighting – David Richardson

Its not Christmas without The Nutcracker. Fortunately, English National Ballet have finally jettisoned the pile of crap they have been foisting on the public for the last however-many years (I reviewed it last year and a complete load of crud it was too). Their new production is far more traditional and far better, making the company look much better. Unfortunately, the choreography is still way below par (the big pas de deux in Act II is a complete lift from the Birmingham Royal Ballet production that I witter on about ad nauseum to anyone who will listen and Act II is still as dreary and uninspiring as it always is - the story always grinds to a complete halt and becomes a series of interminable divertissments; its time someone had the courage to jettison these at least partially and do a re-write). Even so, there were several moments when principals couldn’t cope very well with what they were given and simply looked uncomfortable.

It was, for me, a game of two halves (with kick-off enlivened by a slight spat with a woman in the row in front who had draped her fur coat over the back of her seat and who was clearly concerned that I was going to steal it. I countered her fussings and re-organisings with “Don’t worry madam, I’m not going to spit on your furs” (a change from my usual anti-fur comment of “Excuse me, there seems to be blood dripping from your coat, Madam”). “Oh”, she replied, managing to put about 8 vowels in the monosyllable, “it’s railly nylon!” (as if someone in a £65 seat is going to be wearing a nylon coat over her Yves St. Laurent suit. Yes, and I’m Little Noddy, madam.) Anyway, I digress.

Visually, Act 1 is really, really lovely visually. There are people skating on the frozen pond in front of the Stalhbaum’s house, and the sets and costumes are in lovely muted and “antique” browns, creams, dull pinks and creams with the occasional mint green or pale blue dress or ribbon setting everything off nicely. The whole party scene is set behind a gauze, giving a misty and slightly hazy look, as if lit by candlelight (although the Christmas tree is bedecked with red, yellow and green fairy lights, which is completely wrong for the mid to late 19th century). Uncle Drosselmeyer’s magic tricks are somewhat laboured however, and there’s a completely irrelevant puppet-show taking the place of the traditional harlequin and clown automata. The confusion is heightened when people dressed as characters from the puppet show start a long, complicated and unexplained section of dance which adds nothing to the story so far (reading the pro reviews at a later date, I find that the people are Clara's elder sister and her three suitors). The rest of the party dancing, however, is lovely to watch, and I was relieved that the faintly embarrassing “Grandma and Grandpa” dance is here changed to a pas-de-quatre for the whole Stalhbaum family, which was a lot more dignified. The final sections of Act 1 were, in themselves, a game of two halves. The part in which the Christmas tree grows huge (or Clara shrinks) was a real disappointment – nothing in the room changed apart from the Grandfather clock (which I think grew bigger at the incorrect moment) and the tree itself was simply pulled up into the flies to make it look as if it had grown (at least one of the pro reviewers was as disappointed with this bit as I was). The anachronistic fairy lights didn’t extend the entire length of the bigger tree and it was pulled up too far so you could see it was simply a bit of painted cloth. The mice, however, were wonderful – really scary – with eyes blazing from skeletal heads and dressed in tattered Jacobean ruffs, doublet and hose. I loved the idea of using a huge mousetrap to fire bits of cheese at the toy soldiers, although they only did this once and it seemed a bit wasted not to make more use of the idea. This is also the first production I’ve seen where the mice actually win – the toy soldiers are taken off in a cage and Clara and the injured Nutcracker escape by running out of the house into the snow, which makes for a completely logical change to the woods of the next scene. The snowstorm scene is, for me, the defining scene of Nutcracker – fail here and you lose me entirely, regardless of how wonderful the rest of the production may be. In this production, this scene is really rather workaday – not awful, but then not really anything very special. At least, however, the snowflakes didn’t jump out of the freezer as in ENB’s old production! That production suffered mightily at this point by completely failing to include the traditional off-stage children’s chorus (I thought I had gone deaf) so it was a relief to have it back. However, regardless of the fact that the Coliseum is an opera house, it was sung by the children from the company, and was at times painfully out of tune – less “aaaah, ahhhh, aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh” than “aaah augggh #awwwwuggggggghhhh#”. Perhaps they were trying to scare the mice away? I said to Him Indoors afterwards that they should have had a chorus of opera students, but this was dismissed out of hand with “There are no opera students that young”. “Well then, St. Martin’s in the Fields is just round the corner and ENB should have rented their choristers to do the job properly rather than have that load of caterwauling” I replied. This useful, practical and entirely appropriate suggestion was ignored, sad to say.

All the good ideas of Act I were completely thrown away in Act 2. What looked like it might be an interesting continuation of the story (the Nutcracker and Clara were followed to the Kingdom of Sweets by the Mouse King) went completely for nothing and fizzled out within 5 minutes, the dark green set was incredibly dreary and desperately under-lit (although enlivened by part of the Stahlbaum’s parlour dropping in unexpectedly for about 18 bars and then disappearing just as rapidly as the stagehand responsible realised his mistake) and there was no Sugar Plum Fairy – simply Clara in a different costume. Boooooo! Cheeeeeap! The divertissments* were, as usual, uninspiring, boring or, occasionally, completely bewildering. There now follows a short intermission in order to explain the asterisk in the last sentence.

* Each dance in what is termed “The Nutcracker Suite” represents an expensive and festive foodstuff that Clara might be expected to find in her Christmas stocking. The Spanish Dance represents oranges, which in the 19th century and well into the early 20th century (i.e. before year-round-everything in supermarkets) were only seen in northern Europe as a Christmas treat, The Arabian Dance is coffee, the Chinese Dance is Tea. The Dance of the Myrlitons (commonly known to those of a certain age as “Everyone’s a fruit and nut-case”) is candy-cane flutes, the Russian Dance is “trepak” which is a kind of toffee-fudge, the Waltz of the Flowers is candied flower petals. The Kingdom of Sweets is, appropriately, ruled by the Sugar-Plum Fairy; remember the line from “The Night Before Christmas” when the children were sleeping “and visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads”? Well, plums were another traditional 19th century festive treat, which is why what we call Christmas Pudding is called Plum Pudding by Dickens and others. Who said that this blog wasn’t educational? And now back to your usual programme.

“Coffee” seemed to be a lecture on the evils of the slave trade as instead of generic Arabian Nights stuff, Clara rescued two slaves carrying sacks (possibly of coffee) from a bloke in baggy pants and his four harem girls. We had no candy canes but got the reappearance of the people who danced in front of the puppet show in Act 1, three of whom wore the same costumes as they had the first time round and one of whom who had changed her ballgown for something slightly skimpier. Their presence seemed completely unexplained until a huge net sprang out of the wings and flopped over the woman. This confirmed that she was, in fact, being a butterfly, but failed to explain why she was being a butterfly, why the three men from Act 1 were dancing with her or indeed exactly what the entire point of this bit was in any way. The Waltz of the Flowers looked rather under-rehearsed and thin – it should have been an “all hands on deck” moment but ENB’s very small corps looked completely marooned on the chilly expanses of the ENO house. Fernanda Oliviera did an OK job as Clara but when she took on the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy her shortcomings were cruelly exposed. But still, the evening is a darned sight better entertainment than the old production, for which I suppose I should be grateful

The journey home was enlivened by reading an incredibly pompous interview with the designer in the programme.

“When I first did Giselle, she was always in blue and I had great fights about it, but it was only the influence of Walt Disney. Now I notice that not all Giselle’s are in blue, so maybe I made some poor attempt to influence them”.

Well, Mr. Farmer, let me correct you there. Giselle traditionally wears a blue dress in the ballet of the same name, simply because the costume designer of the first ever production (1851)was madly in love with the dancer who created the role of Giselle; she apparently had stunning blue eyes and the costume was made to enhance these. The first Disney heroine to wear blue was Cinderella, which was made in 1950, so this film had no influence on the blue costume traditionally worn by Giselle in the ballet. Many modern Giselle’s still wear blue. Some don’t – and I doubt that you’ve had any influence on this at all.

What the critics thought:

(a distinctly mixed bag of reviews, most of which comment on the dreadful lighting design):

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-nutcracker-coliseum-londonbrfaeries-linbury-studio-london-2164130.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/8198500/The-Nutcracker-ENB-London-Coliseum-review.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2761:the-nutcracker-enb-london-coliseum&Itemid=27

An incredibly pompous interview with the designer!

Cinderella - Sadler's Wells Theatre, Saturday 4th December 2010

2010-12-05T23:12:00.000Z

Synopsis:

London, 1940. Cinderella’s home is over-run by her new step-mother and her loud, obnoxious family. There is never a moment’s peace for her and her invalid father. When invitations arrive to a New Year’s Eve party, to which neither Cinderella or her father are invited, the uproar is louder than ever. During an air-raid, an injured pilot seeks shelter in the house, but is thrown out by the stepmother when he takes an interest in Cinderella. With the family gone to the party, Cinderella dances with a tailor’s dummy, pretending it is her handsome airman. Seeing that he has left his cap behind, she braves the streets in search of him to return it, watched over by a Guardian Angel. A bomb drops nearby, and Cinderella is thrown to the ground, losing consciousness. In her dreams, the Angel provides her with an invitation and safe transport to the party, which she is told that she must leave before midnight, along with a beautiful dress to wear.

The bomb has devastated the ballroom, killing the revellers. In Cinderella’s dream, however, all is well, and she arrives at the ball to find her airman waiting for her. They dance, but he loses her in the crowd and is cornered by the stepmother. He escapes and takes Cinderella home to his lodgings. She returns to the party, but midnight strikes and reality floods back. The building collapses and Cinderella is taken away to hospital on a stretcher, leaving only a single shoe behind her.

The airman scours the streets of war-torn London looking for the girl at the party, becoming obsessed with finding her. He is sent to the hospital for electric shock therapy, where he is reunited with Cinderella. The stepmother and her children visit the hospital and the stepmother makes an attempt to smother Cinderella with a pillow. She is discovered and led away to be arrested. The airman proposes marriage to Cinderella, who accepts.

At Paddington Station, the airman boards a train to return to his unit. Cinderella fears for his safety and asks the Angel to watch over him. The Angel climbs aboard the train and promises to bring the airman back to her safely. There is a puff of steam and the train pulls away from the station.

Cast:
Cinderella: Kerry Biggin

The airman: Sam Archer

The Angel: Christopher Marney

The Stepmother: Michaela Meazza

Creative Team:

Music: Sergei Prokofiev

Director and Choreographer: Matthew Bourne

Sound: Paul Groothius

Set and Costume Design: Lez Brotherston

I saw this production some 14 years ago when it was first launched, and was so excited when I heard it was finally returning. It was interesting to see whether it matched up to my memories and on the whole, I was very pleased to find that it did. Bourne has made several minor changes to the story – gone is the Prologue which shows Cinderella’s family before the arrival of the stepmother and there is a slight tweak to the ending (in the old version, the airman leaves to rejoin his unit and the Angel goes with him, promising to keep him safe. In the new, the airman and Cinderella leave together on the train and the Angel remains behind, instigating the start of the romance from “Brief Encounter”). Neither of these changes is an improvement; the jettisoned prologue allowed you to contrast Cinderella’s life before and after her mother’s death, and the new ending makes no sense whatsoever, leaving a far less emotionally satisfying and complete story. Change it back, Bourne, change it back!

I have a couple of issues with Bourne’s choreography. First is that he crowds the stage with movement and incident, making it very easy to miss important bits of the story if your eye is caught by something else happening on stage. When there is so much going on, details and vignettes go unnoticed and therefore unappreciated. When your story is as clever as this, it would repay tighter focus on the important bits – and also on the humour, of which there is lots. The second is that this is by no means “ballet”; its “dance” and some of it is very ugly indeed. Bodylines and angles are generally sharp, unnatural and awkward, and consequently unpleasant to look at. I would have liked to have seen a lot more classical choreography. I’d also like to have seen a lot more of the principals – whoever was operating the follow spot last night kept it far too tight, meaning that for much of the show, you couldn’t seen the principals’ legs or feet. This is a bit of a bummer when watching dance! Him Indoors pointed out that the quality of Ms. Biggin’s dancing was far superior to that of her partner, who had obviously partly been cast for his looks rather than his ability.

The entire production, however, retains its wonderful filmic quality and there is much fun to be had from spotting incidental details. I loved the seamless break between Cinderella disappearing behind the curtain dancing with a tailor’s dummy and reappearing on the other side with a real man. When Cinderella runs out of the house into the night, she goes through the front door (did you notice her door number was 12?) and pulls it closed behind her. It then immediately swivels on a central axis and we find ourselves outside the house with Cinderella still in the process of coming through it, exactly like a film shot. Just before Cinderella’s arrival at the ball, mist flows down the staircase and the banisters light up, which is a lovely, magical touch. On her visit to the hospital - Ward 12, naturally - the stepmother’s hat is in the shape of an upturned shoe (there is a nice salute to the Ashton choreography here, with the stepmother and her family doing the same steps as Ashton’s Ugly Sisters) and the train leaves Paddington from Platform 12. A lovely touch is that, as it pulls out, the hands of the station clock point to 2 past 12). In a sublime reversal of film tradition, both Cinderella and her airman wear glasses, lose them, fail to recognise each other and only fall in love when both pairs of glasses are returned to their owners. Genius. Its also nice to see a stepmother you can really, really hate! Catch this production while you can (its running until 23rd January 2011) because its completely fresh, highly enjoyable and a wonderful reworking of the Cinderella story. It took me a while to “get back into it” - my “eye” was out for most of the first act and only started coming back “in” during act 2 – but I hope it remains a part of the repertoire.

So it was a real shame that the bars at Sadler’s Wells sell little pots of unshelled pistachio nuts and allow the audience to take these into the auditorium, as the constant cracking of these led to one of the most unpleasant incidents I have ever experienced in a theatre. The couple concerned were drunk, noisy and quite the most ill-mannered, rude and uncouth people it has ever been my misfortune to sit next to. I’m writing to Sadler’s Wells – its ultimately their fault for selling the nuts in the first place – asking them to take some kind of action against these louts (their seat numbers were Q6 and Q7). It’s the closest I’ve ever come to decking someone in public and I apologise to my companions that they had to witness such atrocious behaviour. To the couple concerned: If you bought your tickets through the theatre then they will be contacting you. If you bought them through TicketMaster, I have contacts within that company which I will not fail to exploit. I’m on your trail and you’d better be out of here by midnight because this pumpkin is loaded and I’m not afraid to use it.

Again, this was a preview performance. Pro reviews will be posted here when available.

Season's Greetings - National Theatre, Thursday 2nd December 2010

2010-12-03T20:21:00.000Z

Synopsis:

It is Christmas Eve and Belinda and Neville have invited their family and a couple of friends to stay. The guests include: Neville’s exhausted sister Phyllis; her husband Bernard, a doctor whose annual puppet shows are the stuff of legend and terror to both young and old alike; Neville’s friend Eddie and his pregnant wife Pattie; uncle Harvey, a slightly senile retired security guard and television-addict; Belinda’s unmarried sister, Rachel and her latest beau, Clive, a writer. Like every family Christmas, tensions are running high. Belinda and Neville’s marriage seems to be on the rocks, Phyllis is creating havoc in the kitchen by insisting on cooking the entire Christmas Eve dinner single-handed, Harvey is monopolizing the TV, Pattie is blaming Neville for not having promoted her husband and Rachel hasn’t had sex in months. The awful prospect of Bernard's puppet show hangs over everything.

Clive’s train is late, is missed at the station by Rachel, and he is instead welcomed by Belinda, who is immediately attracted to him. Harvey, as a result of a misunderstanding, takes an immediate dislike to Clive, believing him to be a homosexual and prospective thief. Clive falls for the frustrated Belinda after Rachel tells him she is looking for no more than friendship. He and Belinda attempt to fulfill their passions beneath the Christmas tree, but are discovered when they set off the various electronic toys and lights beneath the tree in, initially, their lust and then their desperate attempts to turn everything off.

On Boxing Day, Clive arranges to leave as soon as he can. Meanwhile, rehearsals are taking place for Bernard’s puppet show The Three Little Pigs, all his efforts being undermined by Harvey. Bernard eventually snaps and tirades against Harvey. Very early the following morning, Clive, in the process of leaving, is intercepted by Harvey who believes he is a thief taking all the presents. Harvey promptly shoots Clive, who is pronounced dead by the ineffectual Bernard. The ‘corpse’ promptly lets out a moan and calls for Belinda, rather than Rachel. He is taken to hospital and Belinda and Neville are left together, Neville choosing to ignore all that has happened. Merry Christmas!

Cast:
Neville Bunker – Neil Stuke
Belinda, his wife – Catherine Tate
Phyllis, his sister – Jenna Russell
Bernard, her husband – Mark Gatiss
Rachel, Belinda’s sister – Nicola Walker
Harvey, Neville’s uncle – David Troughton
Eddie – Marc Wooton
Pattie, his wife – Katherine Parkinson
Clive – Oliver Chris

Creative Team:
Written by – Alan Ayckbourn
Director – Marianne Elliott
Designer – Rae Smith
Lighting- Bruno Poet
Music – Stephen Warbeck

I actually wanted to go and see Cinderella, it being my birthday and all. You know, birthdays – the one time of the year when people actually ask you what you would like to see. But instead, Him Indoors calmly announced that he’d bought tickets for Season’s Greetings instead. So, feeling old and crotchety, I was dragged off through the snow and ice to see a play by a writer whose work I find unremittingly grim (not for nothing was the working title of this play In the Bleak Midwinter) and who, in my blinkered view, runs Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter a close third for the title of “Dirge master”. In fact, halfway down the stairs at the National afterwards, I turned to Him Indoors and said “Do you think people will come and see this just because Catherine Tate’s in it?” Him Indoors (Finalist, Left Side, World Ear Wax Championships) didn’t hear me and instead I got an answer from the bloke going down the stairs in front of me, who turned and said “Why else would you come and see it?” Pretty good question, actually. Several possible responses flashed through my mind, including “Oh, someone’s obviously a big fan”, “Some of us didn’t get given the choice” and “What do you think you look like in that jacket?” but the one that popped out of my mouth was “Certainly not to go home afterwards feeling jolly, that’s for sure”. Because by ‘eck (as they say in Scarborough), not far under the glittery surface of Season’s Greetings there is a dreadfully bleak story. To use a meteorological metaphor, its just like a patch of black ice lurking underneath the pretty dusting of snow onto which you are about to plant your boot. And it’s a story that we can all relate to – The Awful Christmas. Which I suppose is why on the surface, this play is very funny, because to a greater or lesser extent, we’ve all been there. We can all tell stories, hilarious in retrospect, about The Christmas From Hell (in fact, to get things going, I want everyone who reads this review to leave a comment on the subject of “The Worst Christmas Present I Ever Received” or, f you really want to examine your conscience,” The Worst Christmas Present I Ever Gave”).

Once again, the National’s “Build an Entire House On Stage” team had been hard at work, faithfully recreating the ground and first floors (as well as tiny attic) of an enormous “We’re loaded and we want you to know it” home, yet the first floor and attic went almost entirely unused. The action of the play takes place exclusively on the ground floor, but I’m sure that there were directorial possibilities for the rest of the house – I bet you, dear Reader, have had an “Awkward Encounter on the Landing” at one point in your life that you would like to tell us about, or even an “I’ve Tapped Quietly On the Wrong Bedroom Door” moment. (names will be changed to protect the guilty, if necessary). There were some excellent performances, and a few quite ropey ones. I thought that Catherine Tate was remarkably restrained in the role of Belinda compared to how she might possibly have played the part – there was a lot less flailing around and mugging than I expected, and I have to say that I was impressed by her obvious talent for physical comedy, even though you all know that I absolutely loathe and detest farce. What did impress me was that at one point her character gets the line “I’m not bothered” and she didn’t do what everyone in the audience was expecting her to do. I enjoyed Jenna Russell’s Phyllis and Mark Gatiss’s Bernard immensely, but thought very little of Katherine Parkinson’s Pattie, mainly because I couldn’t hear very much of what she said, but also because I thought the way she moved bore little resemblance to how a heavily pregnant woman would actually do so. Costumes were OK on the whole, but I thought that they didn’t show nearly enough of the 80’s fashion excess that we all now find so excruciating. We all laughed at the bits in the script that we could relate to, but most of the audience would have laughed so much harder if they’d been given the chance to cringe in shamed recognition of jogging tops with shoulder pads in or novelty legwarmers (you know who you are!). Yes, there was a Snowman Jumper that bore a remarkable resemblance to one in Bennetton that I pined for as a young fashion victim but (thankfully in retrospect) never got, but one item of comedy knitwear does not an 80’s farce make. More comedy knitwear please!

Of course, everyone practically piddled themselves when the line “Snow never comes at the right time, does it?” was delivered. It’s a crying shame that nobody piddled themselves over the Managing Director of Southeastern Trains. Because that really WOULD have been funny.

What the critics thought:

(This was a preview performance, pro reviews in a week or so)

"Season's Greetings" from 1986 - Geoffrey Palmer, Anna Massey, Barbara Flynn and a worryingly dishy-looking Michael Cashman (or so I thought at the time. The signs were already there).

Dracula - Sell A Door Theatre Company@ Greenwich Playhouse, Thursday 11th November 2010

2010-11-12T20:28:00.002Z

Synopsis:

Jonathan Harker is a solicitor’s clerk who travels to Castle Dracula in Transylvania in order to finalise the purchase of Carfax Abbey for the mysterious Count. Harker discovers that Dracula is, in fact, an ancient Vampire. He is imprisoned in the castle and, to his horror, Dracula sets off for England. Dracula’s entourage is a consignment of wooden boxes filled with earth from the family graveyard. Under cover of a torrential storm, the Count arrives in England. . During his journey, he has terrified and killed the entire crew of the ship. He inflicts his powers on the voluptuous and flirtatious Lucy Westerman whose sister is Harker’s fiancée Mina.
Lucy’s lover Dr Seward and Harker try desperately to protect her but she is turned into one of the undead., preying on local children. Their efforts to save her soul are masterminded by the eminent Professor Van Helsing. Her reign is finally thwarted when Seward drives a stake through her heart.

Dracula preys on Mina, who married Harker on his escape from Transylvania. Meanwhile, Renfield, an inmate of the lunatic asylum and a former victim of Count Dracula, is affected by the presence of Count Dracula, whom he refers to as ‘the master’. Dracula is aware that the vampire hunters are close on his tail and a dramatic chase commences as he flees back to his castle in Transylvania. Eventually, Jonathon has the opportunity to decapitate him and completes the execution by driving a stake through his heart. Jonathon and Mina are reunited and the curse is destroyed.

Cast:
Mina: Laura Blackmore
Lucy: Daisy Burns
Jonathan Harker: Matthew Grace
Renfield: Kieran Hennigan
Florrie: Sophie Holland
Nurse: Louise Ann Munro
Dracula: Louis Parker
Van Helsing: Alexander Pritchett
Dr. Seward: Ellis Wells

Creative Team:
Producers: David Hutchinson/Phillip Rowntree
Director: David Hutchinson
Movement: Carl Vorwerk
Lighting: Robert Gooch
Designer: Adrian Gee

Dear Sell A Door Theatre Company

Dracula is a difficult play to pull off successfully. It has multiple locations, both familiar and fantastic. It requires a healthy scepticism for literalism. It needs startling and creepy effects, atmosphere in bucket-loads and period-specific costumes. Basically, you need to be able to throw shedloads of money at it. If you can’t do this, you are left with two options – to completely reinvent it or to pick another play. Unfortunately you did neither. Admittedly Liz Lockhead’s plodding, wordy and anachronism-heavy adaptation of Stoker’s novel (Edwardians wouldn’t have been familiar with the phrase “annual leave”, measure medicines in milligrams or refer to photographs as “snaps”) does you no favours whatsoever. It gets bogged down in its attempt to follow the novel too closely, and makes for a very long performance. Where the text is very wordy, it should be trimmed to give a tighter story and a more acceptable running time, rather than gabble it at such high speed that it becomes unintelligible. Where the text includes period terms such as “antimacassar” and “sal volatile” you should learn how to pronounce them correctly.

When you cannot run to period costumes, it is better to do without them completely and re-invent the look of the production to fit your budget, (perhaps using the “New Romantic” look of the late 1980s which drew heavily on the ruffled, lacy and gothic styles of the late Edwardian period) than resort to a strange rag-bag of shockingly tatty odds and ends. Trousers had ragged hems which flapped above the ankles, jackets had split back seams and bustled skirts ended above the knees in front and dragged on the floor behind, showing bare legs. Even a pair of black tights underneath would have improved on this immeasurably. Hollywood can get away with putting Van Helsing in a Drizabone raincoat, but not Greenwich. A simple black dress with a white apron over it says “ladies’ maid” ” if topped with a small frilly cap placed over neatly parted hair, whereas a modern “pencil” skirt, high-heeled ankle boots and long uncombed hair do not. Period hairstyles are difficult to recreate, particularly for women, but can be approximated with the use of a set of heated tongs, a set of curlers and a bit of research. It is not acceptable for actors playing Edwardian vampire-hunters to have a quiff or for those playing doctors not to at least brush their hair into a parting and use some hairspray or gel on it.

Considerable thought must be given to special effects when presenting the supernatural. Where you have neither the budget nor the imagination to provide these, then it is best to choose a play which does not require them, although the use of showers of rose petals to represent blood does at least suggest that someone had at least one good ideas. Recordings of sound-effects such as the howling of wolves are easily obtainable on CD to prevent having people standing in the wings going “Ow oww owwwwww!” which is, frankly, only acceptable in nursery-school productions.

Where “period specific” props such as Edwardian typewriters or “watch the birdie” cameras are mentioned in the text, it is probably a good idea to adapt the text to make their use unnecessary, as they are expensive to obtain or difficult to mock-up convincingly. Where the text refers to a gas lamp, it is better to change the text and use a candlestick than have a lamp-base which looks right for the period but which has no shade as it will simply look like someone has dropped it half an hour before the start of the play and been unable to obtain a replacement shade.

Much depends on your casting. When casting a late Edwardian doctor, it is not appropriate to cast someone who appears through his demeanour and body language to be apologising for his very presence on the stage, seemingly wearing an invisible dufflecoat for the entire evening. Neither is it advisable to have someone portray a Psychiatric Nurse as Catherine Tate as your audience will not find this remotely amusing. The role of Lucy must be given to someone who can act, and who considers it more important to give priority in their programme biography to the roles they played in Romeo and Juliet and The Secret Garden than to that of “Buster” in something called Lesbian Bathhouse, as both Romeo and Juliet and The Secret Garden are better plays. The part of Renfield does not leave much space for character development as he is a lunatic who spends the entire evening gibbering incoherently and it therefore a waste of talent to give this part to an obviously talented actor who would be far better used in the important role of Jonathan Harker. It is, however, entirely acceptable to cast someone with a gorgeous, chocolatey speaking voice in the pivotal role of the sexually ambivalent Count Dracula, particularly when he has the kind of hair you would like to run your fingers through as he drains your lifeblood out through your jugular vein. Thought however should be given to the advisability of making him speak in a “Transylvanian accent” as, to many people, this now bears a remarkable resemblance to that which is used in the “Compare the Meerkat” ads for insurance, and which may cause some reviewers to cough loudly throughout the performance in order to stifle incipient giggling attacks. I fully agree that this tendency to giggle could be seen as disrespectful to the actor concerned but I just couldn't help myself.

It is unwise to splash out money on flash programmes when this money could have been spent on better and more imaginative staging and costumes. Likewise it is cute but possibly financially inadvisable to buy nibbles for your audience to consume during the interval, particularly when the latter consists of carrot sticks, M&S mini-doughnuts and what I think were scotch eggs because I don’t like them. When one is performing in a theatre attached to a pub which can reasonably be expected to sell alcohol in the interval, thus saving you money and earning it for your hosts, it is not necessary to provide freebie drinks.

Finally, when inviting people who write theatre blogs to see your production, be aware that you may be letting yourself in for a frank and direct review. You should note that the contents of this review may change considerably should your Vampire care to review my jugular vein.

Or You Could Kiss Me - National Theatre, Saturday 30th October 2010

2010-11-01T21:49:00.000Z

Synopsis:

In the winter of 2036, in a shabby apartment in Port Elizabeth, two old men search for a way to say goodbye after a lifetime spent together. In the perfect summer of 1971, in a very different South Africa, their handsome younger selves search for the courage to fall in love. And poised halfway between these two stories – one imagined, one remembered – their real-life counterparts bear witness to both the beginning and the ending of an incredible journey.

Cast: /puppeteers:

Adjon Andoh

Basil Jones

Finn Caldwell

Adrian Kohler

Craig Leo

Tommy Luther

Mervyn Miller

Marcus Tilt

Creative team:

Director : Neil Bartlett

Designer: Rae Smith

Lighting Designer: Chris Davey

Music: Marcus Tilt

Puppet design: Adrian Kohler

Lets face it – most of the audience were there to see the puppets. OK, all of the audience were there to see the puppets. . Most of them had probably seen War Horse. OK, all of them had seen War Horse. I think most of them were disappointed. OK, all of ….. well, I know I was. And after about an hour, I was thinking “Frankly, I’ve had enough of this”. And so, judging by the enormous amount of fidgeting going on, I think everyone else had as well. And so Handspring Puppet Company cynically played their ace card – a puppet dog. I say cynically because, up to this point, the dog has only been heard and imagined, not seen. The audience immediately perked up, stopped concentrating on the play and zeroed in on the dog. I’ve said it before (stop me if you’ve heard this one) that you can put on a fantastic, all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza and the audience will enjoy it. Put a live animal into it and the audience will go beserk. It appears to work with puppet shows as well. Put on an experimental and extremely gloomy play about a difficult subject but make the main human characters puppets. And then put a puppet dog on the stage and your audience will love you. And your play.

I think Handspring have seriously misjudged their audience here. Sure, they don’t want to get pigeonholed into doing cutesy plays about farmyard animals but this is what their audience are waiting for, so they should have gone with something like Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty or maybe Charlotte’s Web. I’d have gone been head of the ticket queue for all three – and cried buckets at the end of the last two. War Horse was such a roaring success because it gave the public something they couldn’t normally have seen on stage. But, apart from the puppet dog, you could have done Or You Could Kiss Me with a cast of humans and nobody would have batted an eyelid. In fact, I predict that if the author wrote out the puppets he could sell his script to every drama school in the land and have it performed by angst-ridden teenagers dressed entirely in black at the Edinburgh Festival on a more or less annual basis. It was all a bit too self-consciously clever-clever and experimental for my tastes – and certainly not what I wanted to see. I wanted a puppet horse winning the Derby for its blind owner whose parents were killed in a car crash when he was five (or so he thinks…..) and whose evil landlord is about to foreclose on the farm - “Gee, Blackie. I sure am gonna miss this place. Look at that sunset. Shame about not being able to see the ducklings hatch next week. Unless, of course, you overcome all the odds, a major personal romantic crisis and that gammy leg – which you injured rescuing me from the abandoned well on the old Tucker place - and win the Derby tomorrow in front of Sally who can’t afford to leave her job at the restaurant and marry me” (cue music from Chariots of Fire and cut to Sally in the crowd at the racecourse selling her last pillowcase and putting the money on Blackie to win at 300:1 just before the starting gun). Now THAT’S a puppet show. Not the problems of two old South African men coping with the hospitalisation of one of them while remembering the golden summer when they were teenagers and first met on the beach while the rain pours down and the cleaner fields telephone calls from angry solicitors.

Having the teenagers and old men represented by puppets and their middle-aged selves by live actors was a decent idea, but not when both actors were bland and essentially unsympathetically portrayed. And having everyone dressed in black and constantly delivering their dialogue into handheld microphones while reacting to messages crackling out of an old answering machine was just so Sixth Form DramaSoc that I lost both my patience and all feeling in my right buttock. Never have an hour and 35 minutes passed so slowly (and with no interval – what is it with directors that nothing has an interval these days?) It all felt so god-dammed worthy and right on and it irritated the hell out of me when I wanted an essentially daft but heart-warming story with a friggin’ puppet horse in it. Give me what I want and I will love you for it and sing your praises in my review. Or, of course, You Could Kiss Me and I’ll leave the theatre unfulfilled and grumpy.

What the reviews said:

http://webcowgirl.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/review-or-you-could-kiss-me-handspring-at-the-national-theatre/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8046437/Or-You-Could-Kiss-Me-National-Theatre-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/oct/10/or-you-could-kiss-me-review

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/29867/or-you-could-kiss-me

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/or-you-could-kiss-me-national-theatre-cottesloe-london-2104910.html

Hamlet - National Theatre - Saturday 2nd October 2010

2010-10-03T15:02:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Hamlet stands around for a long time worry-budgeting over what he should do and why. Practically everyone, including Hamlet, is dead by the end.

Cast:

Hamlet: Rory Kinear
Ghost of Hamlet’s Father: James Laurenson
Claudius, King of Denmark and Hamlet’s uncle: Patrick Malahide
Gertrude, Queen of Demark and Hamlet’s mother: Clare Higgins
Horatio, friend of Hamlet: Giles Tererra
Polonius, Chief Minister: David Calder
Laertes, his son: Alex Lanipekun
Ophelia, his daughter: Ruth Negga
Fortinbras: Prince of Norway: Jake Fairbrother
Rosencrantz: Ferdinand Kingsley
Guildernstern: Praswanna Puwanarajah

Creative Team:
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Lighting: Jon Clarke
Fight Director: Kate Walters

An open letter to Nicholas Hytner after a watching a preview performance

Dear Nick

Because it was pissing down in stair-rods last night, it was a pleasure to be safely ensconced in Seat 17B last night (we note that Seat 2B is on permanent reserve for the West End Whingers during the run of this show so that they can make witty remarks about it). However, this is the only reason it was a pleasure to be in your chilly, over-airconditioned auditorium for nearly 3 ¾ hours; I would rather go and stand out in the rain than sit through this production of Hamlet again. Thankfully, the seat’s arms had not been taken to fight against a sea of troubles or I would have fallen out of it as I dozed fitfully in the freezing darkness – perhaps you were trying to recreate the frozen wastes of Denmark? Sitting there I began to think that this production was a big, fat, frozen waste of my time, when I could have been at home with a bowl of soup and Strictly Come Dancing.

The question I would like to ask is “Do we really need another black and white, modern dress production of Hamlet? Perhaps you saw the David Tennant version last year and decided to recreate the experience for those of us who couldn’t get a ticket in the hysteria?” Honestly, Nick, the paying public are getting really, really fed up with modern dress productions of period plays – they’re so old hat. Oh, how we long for the occasional farthingale and elegantly pleated ruff. Even a rough old ruff would be a nice change. And if you are going to spend an outrageous fortune on suits, fatigues and cocktail frocks, how about a bit of colour for once? This black-and-white palate may have been avant garde for ENO’s Mikado 20 years or so ago, but its getting very dreary, particularly when your set is heavier on the pale than Procul Harum. In a word, sweetie – its sterile. About as visually interesting as Ed Milliband. Give the audience something to look at as they wait for the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech. Him Indoors got quite agitated in the interval – apparently even opera directors are realising that audiences have had enough and going back to traditional, period productions. And how about ditching the “we all live in a surveillance society” theme with stage-managed TV broadcasts and guards looking ominous in shades and ear-pieces for once? You can hear their agents now: “Dharling how are you? Listen love, the National want you for their Hamlet. No, not actually Hamlet, couldn’t swing that one. They want you to play “Guard”. You’ll get 3 short lines in Act 1 and then the next 3 ½ hours is just standing around in a dark grey suit wearing shades and an ear-piece and looking ominous. You said on your CV that you could do “ominous”, didn’t you? Yes, perhaps a little tedious, love, but you can at least hook the ear-piece up to your iPod and catch up on The Archers. Fabulous, dharling. Can you provide a dark grey suit? Fabulous. Must dash, New York’s holding on the other line. Ciao!”

While we’re on the subject, how about getting some decent actors? Ones who can project. Failing that, ones who can actually speak coherently and don’t mutter or gabble. Projection and coherence would be nice, but we know we can’t have everything. One would have thought that an actress of the standing of Clare Higgins would have made a better go of Gertrude and played it with a little more panache. Ms. Higgins is strident and unfocussed, lacking only a trail of cigarette ash down her front to resemble a drunken fishwife from Eastenders. We had to strain to hear Giles Terera’s Horatio and we really think you should do something about your Ophelia. Yes, we know that you subscribe to the fashionable “colour-blind casting” theory but its embarrassing for all of us when another character refers to her “milky-white bosom” when the lady in question is…erm…. Definitely Not Milky White. Did you run out of money during casting? Is this why Polonius, having been stabbed behind an incredibly tatty curtain, turned up again at the end as the Gravedigger? Or was this a comment about reincarnation? Were you hoping to bring the audiences’ interest back from the dead? Thank goodness you could afford Rory Kinnear, because a lot of the time he was relatively OK.

Can we have a synopsis in the programme at some point? We notice that none of your productions have this any more, and some of us would like to know what is going to be happening during the next 3 ¾ hours so that we can schedule a nap during any potentially boring bits. You know, like the many bits where Hamlet maunders on about dreary, introspective stuff? Can we have the heating on instead of the air-conditioning? Its October and its pissing down outside. Can we have cough sweets given out free like they have at the Royal Opera House, because last night it was like sitting in a TB ward. A woman down in the stalls practically coughed up a lung at one point. She was the one sitting behind the large, blonde woman wearing the bright red jacket in the side section of the front row. The one who was so well lit up all the time. You must have seen her – everyone else in the auditorium did. Wasn’t it a shame that she fell very visibly asleep so early on in the evening? And for chrissakes can you find that idiot whose mobile went off just after Hamlet croaked “The rest is silence” before being drowned out by DiddleDeeeDeeDiddleDeeeDee Dummmm…… and ban him from the National? For Ever?

Your production is a not a hit. Its a miss. A palpable miss.

Best wishes,
Yours sincerely

Russell’s Theatre Reviews

Passion - Donmar Theatre, Monday 13th September 2010

2010-09-20T16:17:00.002+01:00

Synopsis:

Italy, 1863. Giorgio, a young soldier, is bidding farewell to his mistress, Clara. He is to join his new regiment in the outposts of northern Italy . She, already being married, cannot accompany him, but they agree to write to each other regularly. Giorgio is a man going places; he has the confidence of his commanding officer, Colonel Ricci and is well-liked by his fellow officers.

Doctor Tambourri, the regimental doctor, is caring for a special patient, Fosca, the cousin of the garrison commander. She is ugly, ungainly and a recluse, seeking seclusion in books, which are her only passion and which are in short supply in the garrison. Giorgio lends her some of his. He is somewhat a dreamer but Fosca craves intellectual stimulus, and though frail and with an illness that manifests itself in hysterical convulsions, she clings to him.

In letters, Clara warns Giorgio to keep Fosca at arm's length but she becomes increasingly dependent on him, passing him surreptitious notes. Giorgio, realising the deep involvement Fosca has with him, asks for leave which is reluctantly granted. As he departs, Fosca asks him to write to her. When she finds out that Clara is already married, she becomes even more of a recluse shunning all contact with anyone except the doctor, who believes that her condition will only improve if, and when, Giorgio returns. When he does, Fosca dictates a letter that turns out to be a love letter from her to him.

Colonel Ricci tells Giorgio about Fosca's marriage to a worthless count, whose profligate ways and harsh treatment made her ill and left her penniless. They visit an overgrown garden and are caught in a rainstorm which affects Fosca so much that she faints and has to be carried back to camp by Giorgio. He too falls ill and is granted sick leave to recuperate in Milan. Fosca follows him to the train which will take him away from her. He begs her to give him up and return to the camp where she can receive medical attention.

Clara, meanwhile, has made a decision; she will stay with her husband and bring up her family - the affair with Giorgio is over.

Back at the camp, a transfer notice organised by the doctor arrives for Giorgio. This devastates Fosca who once again repairs to her room in much distress. The colonel discovers the love-letter, written by Giorgio although dictated by Fosca, and challenges him to a duel. That night Giorgio visits Fosca's room and acknowledges his love for her. The following morning, both he and the colonel are injured in the duel.. Months later a letter from the doctor informs Giorgio of Fosca's death just three days after the duel - which she knew nothing about. Having lost both the women who loved him, he is alone.

Cast:
Clara: Scarlett Strallen
Giorgio: David Thaxton
Colonel Ricci: David Birrel
Lt. Torasso: Simon Bailey
Dr. Tambouri: Allun Corduner
Sgt. Lombardi: Hadyn Oakley
Lt. Barri: Ross Dawes
Major Rizzoli: Tim Morgan
Pvt. Augenti: Iwan Lewis
Signora Fosca: Elena Roger

Creative Team:
Music and Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Book: James Lapine
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Neil Austin
Choreography: Scott Ambler

Passion is not Sondheim’s most immediately accessible work, there are some (initially) unsympathetic characters, and there’s not a lot from the score that you can hum during the walk back to the station afterwards. Its all too easy to get it all wrong, particularly when its on a relatively small scale. But in this production, everything is very well judged and done with just the right amount of reserve, so that later in the show when stops need to be pulled out a bit, there’s room to spare for the full histrionics to come to the fore (things do get a bit – well – operatic towards the end). Indeed, the character who banged his chair down just that bit too emphatically in one of the opening scenes probably learned his lesson as the entire back came off and there followed a few sticky moments during which he struggled to regain his hold on both his composure and his furniture. As the chair had to remain on stage for several minutes afterwards, the audience – or possibly just me - then had a great deal of pleasure watching various people sit on said chair and wondering if they were going to fall off it. Alas no – a quick slop of wood glue and the application of a rubber hammer to the joints backstage and all seemed to be well.

Scarlett Strallen looked ravishing (both in and out of her crinolines), like a cross between Anna Leonowens and a Botticelli angel, but it was difficult to imagine her falling for David Thaxton’s rather anaemic Giorgio. Somehow, he seemed just that bit too dull and ordinary to inspire Clara’s passion. Elena Roger, however, proceeded to wipe not just the floor but the walls and the ceiling as well with both of them as the embittered and ugly Fosca. Although standing at least a head shorter than anyone else in the cast, she wrestled with the inherent absurdity of her role like a prize-fighter and quickly subdued any misgivings that the audience might have had about how this ugly duckling could possibly tempt her prize away from Strallen’s gorgeous swan. In the bar beforehand, I’d said to a fellow audience member who had never seen the show before that, if she wasn’t in tears by the end, it meant that she had no soul; fortunately for me, there were several points when my own eyes began to prickle as the story reached a climax – although personally I could have done without the thunderstorm at this point.. Having had my English Literature teacher drum into my head constantly that “thunderstorms are a device which indicate a breakdown in society or relationships” (Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy are full of them), and having endured many operas with Him Indoors in which dramatic moments are underscored by someone backstage rattling a metal sheet like buggery while rapidly flicking switches on the lighting desk, (Rossini never wrote anything that didn’t contain at least one Force 8 gale), I’m now on constant “Thunderstorm alert” at the theatre, rather like a taller and prettier version of Michael Fish, and I find them hackneyed and rather OTT.

This was a preview performance and I hope that the professional critics will give this revival all the plaudits and superlatives it well deserves.

Full marks to the set designer for clever use of the restricted space – a wall pierced with three arches and covered in crumbling frescoes of scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; I spotted Leda and the Swan, Daphne and Apollo and (possibly) Diana and Acteon, subtly and cleverly highlighting not only the gradual crumbling away of the three central characters’ happiness, but also the idea that love given or received is capable of transforming even the ugliest duckling into something beautiful. Clever also was the incorporation of the Donmar’s upper balcony into the set design. Not so clever were the two idiots sitting next to me who sat cackling like a pair of ugly and demented ducklings through all the dramatic bits near the end and ruining things for those sitting around them. I shot one of them with a pointed comment in the hope that they might transform into adults who know how to conduct themselves at the theatre. But I don’t hold out much hope. Some ugly ducklings merely become big, ugly, noisy ducks.

(24th September - pro reviews are just in - and I wrote my review before the one mentioning ugly ducklings was published online or in the paper)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1314694/PASSION-review-Stephen-Sondheims-steamy-tale-desire-rejection.html?ito=feeds-newsxml (four star rating)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8017873/Passion-Donmar-Warehouse-review.html (four star rating)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8017873/Passion-Donmar-Warehouse-review.html (four star rating)

The Times gives it 5 stars but, because of their naff "subscription only" policy, I'm unable to provide you with a link to this.

Into The Woods - Open Air Theatre@Regents Park, Thursday 2nd September 2010 (Matinee)

2010-09-05T21:40:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

When a Baker and his wife learn they've been cursed with childlessness by the Witch next door, they embark on a quest for the special objects required to break the spell - a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold- variously swindling, lying to and stealing from Cinderella (attending the Royal Ball wearing the slipper) Little Red Riding Hood (wearing a cape as red as blood), Rapunzel (who has hair as yellow as corn) and Jack (who has exchanged his white cow for a sack of magic beans). By the end of act 1, the spell has been lifted and everyone seems happy - the baker's wife is expecting a child, Cinderella has married her Prince, Little Red Riding Hood and Granny have been rescued from the wolf and Jack has killed the giant and solved his mother's financial problems with the aid of a stolen hen which lays golden eggs. Even the witch is now young and beautiful, having been cursed with age and ugliness in return for losing the magic beans from her garden and locking Rapunzel up in a doorless tower - but the consequences of everyone's actions return to haunt them later, with disastrous results.

The baker doesn't cope well with fatherhood, Cinderella discovers that her Prince is a serial womaniser, Rapunzel loses her sanity after being locked up for so long, the Witch has lost her magical powers, Red Riding Hood has lost her childish innocence and trust of strangers and the Giant's wife comes to take her revenge on Jack. The narrator of the story becomes embroiled in the plot itself as it shakes free from convention and starts to spiral wildly out of his control. Lives are lost before the survivors realize that they have to act together in order to overcome the problems they created by wishing. In fact, it becomes obvious that "Happy Ever After" isn't where the story ends, but only where the problems really start.

Cast:

Narrator: Ethan Beer/Eddie Manning/Joshua Swinney

Cinderella: Helen Dallimore
Jack: Ben Stott
Baker: Mark Hadfield
Baker’s wife: Jenna Russell
Stepmother: Gaye Brown
Stepsisters: Amy Richardson and Amy Griffiths
Jack’s mother: Marilyn Cutts
Little Red Riding Hood: Beverley Rudd
Witch: Hannah Waddington
Mysterious Man: Billy Boyle
Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince: Michael Xavier
Rapunzel: Alice Fearn
Rapunzel’s Prince: Simon Thomas
Voice of the Giantess: Judi Dench
Creative Team:
Book: Stephen Sondheim
Director: Timothy Sheader
Movement: Liam Steel
Designer: Soutra Gilmour
Puppet Designer: Rachael Canning

You can hide in the woods, certainly. But you can’t hide in Into the Woods – this is very much an ensemble piece and shortcomings can be brutally exposed. Just like the ingredients bubbling away in a cauldron, occasionally something appears which brings delight, sometimes its wiser not to look too closely. Some of the performances here are very bad, some others are merely badly served by the production. And overall, I would say that the darker aspects of the show are those which lose out – perhaps literally because this isn’t a show best seen by bright daylight. The bosky darkness of the Open Air Theatre by night may well bring added depth – but hey, we could only get tickets for a matinee.

The set is fantastic – a maze of walkways, stairs and ladders, punctuated by trees. Its used inventively to suggest the disorientation of being alone in the woods, yet by its very nature this makes it very hard to zoom in on individuals or small groups when there are other things happening elsewhere. And far too much takes place in the space underneath the structure, where only those in the really expensive seats at the front can see clearly. But when its good, its really really good – a group of characters standing on a spiral staircase and opening green umbrellas becomes a beanstalk both credible and incredible, a saddle on the seat of a swing makes a horse (just add imagination) and a huge birds nest perched on top does double duty as Rapunzel’s tower and the baker’s hideout for the finale. And elsewhere there are wonderful visual jokes to enjoy – never before have I seen the Three Little Pigs appear in Into the Woods, but their presence carrying straw, sticks and a hod full of bricks is funny and welcome and feels entirely natural, as does that of birds made of branches, a puppet cow a la War Horse and a chicken (one that lays golden eggs) made out of a push-along lawnmower. It’s a shame that the costumes didn’t match up – there was far too much of the “Swampy” eco-warrior look for my liking. Where Cinderella’s sisters should don silks and satins to go to the ball, here they just go in the tweed knickerbockers outfits they’ve worn all along. Rapunzel’s Prince was wearing a boring suit that looked like it had been donated by one of his peasants. Again, on the flip side, some costumes were wonderful – the Witch was decked out in shiny “mould green”, the skirt of which had been pleated at the back to fall into cobweb shapes.

One thing that was disappointing throughout was the lack of singing talent; everyone seemed to be a singing actor, rather than an acting singer – apart from Cinderella, who could neither sing nor act. She wowed everyone with her creation of the role of Glinda in the original production of Wicked, but there was nothing of her sparkle on show this afternoon The Mysterious Man’s “phoned-in” performance was mirrored by Beverley Rudd’s practically faultless Little Red Riding Hood, who lit up and practically walked away with every scene she was in. Congratulations to the casting director for picking up on the clues in the next about LRRH’s physical appearance and engaging Rudd for the part. Those in the “chorus” parts (people like the Wolf and Steward, who otherwise have very little to do) were kept busy and useful on stage and there was excellent group choreography, although generally the “chorus” were on the opposite side of the set from the principals and it was nearly impossible to pay attention to both at the same time.

What shocked me to my theatre-going core was the dreadful “performance” by Judi Dench, who voiced the Giant’s wife (fantastic enormous “puppet” – just hands, eyes and mouth made of bits of “junk” – which “peered over the trees”). I know that the role consists of less than 20 lines, but really Judi, I do think you could have put a lot more than your very bland reading of them. Even if you are a “Giantess” of the Stage. Tsk, its enough to put you completely off your Capri-Sun.

Danton's Death - National Theatre, Wednesday 11th August 2010

2010-08-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

Synopsis:

Three revolutionary groups are presented at the start of the play - Danton's supporters, Robespierre's supporters, and those who do not agree with how the Revolution has evolved. Danton and Robespierre have different views on how to pursue the revolution - Danton's supporters back the end of Robespierre's repressive measures, which have already caused great suffering among the people, and they dod not find in the Revolution the answer to the material and moral questions facing mankind. One citizen deplores the fact that his daughter has been forced into prostitution to support her family. Danton accepts his friends' proposal to meet Robespierre but this meeting proves to be fruitless and Robespierre resolves that Danton must be killed, though he still doubts that this decision is just.

Danton's friends press him to fight or flee Robespierre's supporters, but Danton does not see any need to do so and does not believe that the French National Convention will dare to act against him. Danton confides the guilt he feels for the September Massacres in his wife Julie. Danton is imprisoned and led before the National Assembly, which is divided - it feels it has no choice but to acquit him. However, Robespierre and Saint-Just reverse its opinion.

The prisoners discuss the existence of God and life, and an attempt to prove that God does not exist fails. Danton's supporters are transferred to the Conciergerie. During this time the revolutionary tribunal arranges for its jury to be made up of honest and faithful men. Danton appears confidently before the tribunal, impressing the public with his willingness for justice to be done. Seeing the hearers' sympathy for Danton, the court is adjourned. The tribunal's members invent a plot to change the public's mind. At the tribunal's second sitting, the people stop supporting Danton, due to his lifestyle. Danton's liberal programme is revealed as unacceptable to the masses.

Danton and his supporters are condemned to death. Danton and his friend Camille Desmoulins exchange thoughts on life and death. Danton's wife Julie, to whom he has pledged to be loyal beyond death, posions herself at their home. The people show themselves to be curious and ironic on Danton's way to the scaffold. When Lucile Desmoulins sees her husband Camille mount the scaffold, she goes mad and resolves to die too, crying "Long live the king!" and thus guaranteeing her own death sentence.

Cast:
Danton: Toby Stevens
Legendre: Ashley Zhangazha
Desmoulins: Barnaby Kay
Lacroix (sweetie!): Gwilym Lee
Julie: Kirsty Bushell
Lucille: Rebecca O'Mara
Marion: Eleanor Matsuura
Robespierre: Eliot Levey

Creative Team:
Adapted by Howard Brenton from Georg Buchner
Director: Michael Grandage
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Paule Constable.

Yes, yes, this is three weeks or so late, I know. Its been hell around Castle TheatreReviews of late, and all my spare time recently has been taken up playing Farmville on Facebook and writing outraged Emails to my local branch of Sainbury's about their new Self Service tills. Such is life.

Even if I hadn't had to go to the dentists and have two fillings on the morning of this show, I don't think I would have enjoyed this very much; in fact I can best describe it as "fucking dreary". To paraphrase Victoria Wood's sketch about Othello: "I don't think its got a plot; its just various people talking - and sometimes they do things in brackets". Fortunately, there was no interval so the agony was over within an hour and a half. The set was just as dreary as the play itself , evoking the interior of the Donmar Warehouse and circled with enormous shutters that required constant opening and closing by a couple of "Citizens" who had nothing else to do but walk round and open them, wait for a couple of minutes while a couple of lines got spouted by various people standing on tables declaiming to the downtrodden masses metaphorically waving their pitchforks and making outraged "rhubarbe rhubarbe" noises in French accents, and then go round and close them all again. One of the problems of this type of play, much like January's The White Guard, is that you have to have a very good grounding in all the historical comings and goings to fully understand what is going on and why, and who everybody is, and why everyone is getting in such a flap about things. If you don't, then you spend much of the time trying to sort out the good guys from the bad and trying to decide who's side you are on and why. Once you start to realise that you've set yourself an impossible task, you eventually start to tune out and stop caring, particularly when the lead character is played as an arrogant c*nt. And so it was here - I know some odds and ends about the French Revolution, but my interest rather peters out once Marie Antoinette's head has fallen in the bucket; my understanding about the political upheaval in the years which followed this event is - to put it bluntly - nil points. Until the bloke playing Robespierre was addressed as "Citizen Robespierre", I thought he was Talleyrand, ffs.

The only thing worthwhile in this production, which seemed to go on all night even though it was very short (there's only so much declaiming and rhubarbe that you can take in one go) was the final couple of minutes in which we were mercifully rid of Dreary Monsieur Danton and his equally Dreary Amis with the aid of Madame Guillotine's hairdressing device ("Just a little bit more off the top, I think") - even though the machine itself was woefully small, it was so spectacularly cleverly done that real heads appeared to be falling into the basket It even seems to have shut Les Madames Defarge up for five minutes or so (which is always a Very Good Thing). In fact, Danton's Death was the most interesting bit of his entire life.

What the critics thought:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/23/dantons-death-theatre-review-billington

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/7906168/Dantons-Death-National-Theatre-review.html

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2010/07/review-dantons-death-national-theatre.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/dantonrsquos-death-national-theatre-olivier-london-2035299.html