Exhibition review - Riverbed Rotherhithe, Oxford House Gallery, Friday 5th April 2013

Contining the theme of personal objects discarded or lost by individuals, Riverbed Rotherhithe is a collection of photographs of everyday things that have somehow made their way into the Thames and been washed up on its shores.  Like the artefacts from the Pompeii exhibition reviewed recently, each one of these objects is, in itself, apparently trivial.  And yet there is a story waiting to be written about each of them if you think slightly deeper.  What was on the cassette tape?  Why did Miss S. Jamieson cut her credit card in two and throw it in the river?  Did a modern-day Cinderella lose her black patent leather shoe while running from her handsome prince, and did he ever catch her?   What is the story behind the handle and mechanism from the safe? What did it contain and how did it end up in the river? Who threw their mobile phone into the river and why? And, most importantly, what dark and dastardly deed lurks behind the discarded rubber chicken?  Murder most fowl?

This is Mary Fitton's first exhibition, and I long to see more of her work (I hear that one of her favourite subjects for holiday snaps is doorways).  Over the last 20 years, Mary - librarian, ukelele player and photographer - has been visiting the reaches of the Thames at Rotherhithe to seek out the seemingly everyday bits and pieces that are discarded or lost and end up as flotsam on the shingle.  Around 50 images, along with the items themselves, are on display at the Oxford House Gallery in Bethnal Green, and each asks more questions than they give answers, if you are feeling in a philosophical mood.  If you're not, then WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - beautifully shot images of unconsidered trifles, discarded items of no further use, framed by the river-washed pebbles in which they were found. You can almost hear the slow lap of the muddy waves, the wash from a passing boat, the indignant squawk of a solitary seagull. 

Prints can be bought framed or unframed, and there is also a range of good quality postcards for sending or displaying. The only major disappointment is that the rubber chicken isn't one of them.  Riverbed Rotherhithe runs until 30th April.  Admission free. 

Images are (c) Mary Fitton and reproduced with the artist's permission

Exhibition review - Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, British Museum, Monday 1st April 2013

Ah, late summer. The fruit is ripening in the orchard, the vines are heavy with grapes, the goats are bleating lazily on the hillside, and down on the beach the fishing boats are landing with that morning’s catch of lobsters, shrimps and more types of fish than you can shake a stick at. All’s right with the world. And then the local mountain goes off bang and before you know it you’re being prodded by Mary Beard and all your personal bits and bobs are being stared at by thousands of people at the British Museum.

The fascination with Pompeii and Herculaneum endures because they give us a unique snapshot of a vibrant, bustling society caught at a moment in time. Millions make the journey to Pompeii every year and return home hot, knackered, dusty, footsore, sunburned and more than slightly bewildered about what all the fuss is for. Because lets face it, Pompeii is dead. There is little there to give you the feeling that people – real people – once trod those cobbled streets and lived in those ruined houses, eating, cooking, arguing with the neighbours, laughing, dealing with the laundry, buying a new bit of furniture, planning a party or taking a bath. Its only when all your everyday bits and bobs are collected together again that it really becomes possible for other people to relate to your everyday life and realise that yes, you were once like us. That is what Pompeii lacks – a sense of real life. If your home was suddenly buried under 30 feet of volcanic ash and miraculously preserved for 2000 years, what would bring it to life for people poking round it would be the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the open book face down on the table to mark your place, the stray sock that had eluded the washing machine, the picture that you never got around to hanging propped up against the wall - the stupid, pointless, everyday, banal details of daily life. The life you once lived in Pompeii is here in London at the moment, and we are all staring at your pile of dirty dishes and thinking “you were just like us”. And that’s what makes this exhibition so moving.

The exhibition is cleverly arranged to represent the rooms in your house that hot August (or was it October?) afternoon. Outside in the public street are displayed the tools of the tradesmen you passed every day – the brewer, the fishmonger, the carpenter, your wife’s hairdresser - along with the stone tablet that hung like an tiny inn sign from the wall, marking the edge of your property and forever bearing witness to that time you argued with your neighbour about who exactly had responsibility for sweeping that bit of path. Invite us in – we want to poke around. Yes, we will be careful of the dog. Who’s a good boy den? Who’s a woofles den? No, its fine, its only bleeding a little bit.

Here in the atrium – the “display” area of your home, its quite dark, with the only direct light coming through the hole in the roof and reflecting off the rectangular pool of water – I think you called it an impluvium? There is a tasteful mosaic floor – the bit directly inside the door shows a picture of the dog tied up outside it. You liked your silly jokes just like us, didn’t you? That’s a portrait of you and your wife, isn’t it? Very nice. Lovely. Very lifelike. A very handsome couple you make. I bet you must have had to stand still for hours while the mosaic-maker chappie did that.

That’s a very impressive herm standing in front of the pool – Lucius Caeciluis Iucundus, isn’t it? I recognised him immediately by that enormous wart on his cheek. Its very realistic – but I don’t ever remember Lucius walking around with his knackers hanging out on display. Oh, I remember you telling me – that’s apparently an invocation of good luck for the household. There’s a bit of window glass – a rare and valuable thing in your day and one we take so much for granted now. Perhaps this is why nobody seems to be giving it much attention, even though it is made out of a single sheet of transparent mica. And a little chest, with a drawer and two doors that open to show a single shelf. No doubt you kept important bits of paper and things in it once – or maybe just odd bits of string, a spare door key and some dried rose petals wrapped in a scrap of cloth. What a shame that the heat of the blast carbonised it completely; I expect it was quite pretty once, if a bit utilitarian by your standards. Why does the sight of it bring a slight lump to my throat? I suppose its because we’ve got one almost exactly the same (OK, its not burnt, but otherwise its exactly the same). You had the carpenter make it for you, we bought it flatpacked from IKEA, but its exactly the same design. Your furniture looked like ours. We were the same. I don’t like the fact that all your labels are in such small type and stuck well below eye level, as usual. Nor that they are written in such Lowest Common Denominator terminology that the curtainhook in the shape of the prow of a boat is labelled “in the shape of the prow (the front) of a ship”. I suppose I’m lucky that its not described as “the pointy bit” If it’s OK with you, I’ll take the mosaic of Fido home with me. Put it to one side for a bit while I wander round your bedroom. Glad you’ve hidden all the dirty laundry away.
 

That’s a lovely lampstand you have there. Wonderful bit of craftsmanship, and exactly what I would have expected a Roman lampstand to look like. Oh look, the bits screw apart so you can store it away when you don’t need it. Clever. Do you find bronze difficult to keep clean? I’ll take it with me – stand it in the atrium next to the mosaic. It’s very dark in here now, isn’t it? Oh shit, I’ve kicked something. Oh. Shit. Literally. Well, fancy keeping your chamber pots there. My fault for making you move the lamp. And now we’ve woken the baby.

In 2000 years time this will be the only known example in the world of a Roman baby’s cradle, probably because once you had no further use for it, you gave it away to someone who needed one, just like we do. Or chucked it away. Or took it apart and used the wood for something else. Well, its only a cradle, right? And I’m sure that the first thing you did when the ash started to fall was take the baby out of it………Oh. Oh Christ. I’m really sorry. Truly I am. Look, don’t cry.

Come out into the hortus for a breath of fresh air. There’s much more light out here and the air isn’t so full of lamp fumes What a lovely hortus – so many lovely flowers and statues. I’m not sure I like those ones ranged up against the wall – “The Dancers” you call them? Well, they would have looked much more effective stood in a ring around the fountain. . Pretty that. I expect the piping cost an awful lot of money. We’ll be able to see the bits of bronze piping and the stopcock in 2000 years time in a glass case but for now I’ll just admire the fine carving of the marble bowl and be satisfied. The fluting is very, very fine. Lovely. And the sound of the water splashing is so pleasant and cooling in this heat.

Its clever that the shape of the bowl is echoed so well by that second one. That one. The one with the pigeon sitting on it. Oh, that’s clever. It’s a garden fresco – and there was me thinking it was a big window cut into the wall showing another garden area behind it. It looks so lifelike, it had me fooled completely. We still grow all these flowers and plants today, you know. Let me see – rose, daisy, ivy, poppy, laurel, oleander, screw pine, arbutus, viburnum.

And on that one, that thrush – very possibly the most famous thrush in all history – seems to be perching on the bamboo support that the rose is climbing up. Hang on – bamboo? That’s an oriental plant, surely? Which means that your people must have known about China? And that someone had been there and brought back a bamboo plant? Can we sit down for a second while I think about this?

 

On that seat by that statue of a goat……. Oh. Its not a goat. Well – it is a goat, but not only a goat. There’s Pan. With the goat. Er….. with the goat. Er…..yes. Um. No, I don’t know why I’m blushing, I’m sure its perfectly natural that Pan is such good friends with the goat and I’m sure that its very commonplace for you to have such things in your garden because after all Pan is the god of - erm,. goats and stuff and its only my modern sensibilities that are making it seem in any way unusual or at all embarrassing to some people. It caused a terrible fuss in The Telegraph. Still, its beautifully carved. And Pan is quite a big chap, isn’t he? In the bedroom equipment department – or should that be the stable equipment?

You know, now I look at it properly, it does look very sensual – almost as if Pan is about to kiss the goat. And the goat doesn’t exactly seem to be struggling, does he? Sorry, she. I suppose its not every goat that gets to be ravished by a God. Yes. Very - unusual. Um. Shall we go in?
 

This is what we’ll call the living room, or the lounge, or the front room in 2000 years time. Yes, it is a bit dull really – a bit formal-looking with all those examples of frescoes on the walls. Seen one fresco, seen them all, really. Mind you, I like the fact that there are examples of several completely different styles hanging next to each other to explain evolving fashions in wall covering. You were just like us – forever changing your home, forever updating, forever looking at wallpaper samples. Wallpaper. Its – well – paper that you hang on the wall, in the future. Yes, I suppose it is quite difficult to look at samples of fresco. You can hardly sit there leafing through a pattern book while drinking your tea, can you? The bits would fall off.  Tea. It’s a drink, made from the dried leaves of a plant in the future. You pour hot water on it and add sugar and milk. Sugar. It’s a plant – oh never mind. Do you mind if we don’t look at any more frescoes? I’m sure that everyone in the future finds them just as dull as I do, like looking at historic bits of wallpaper. That marble carving is interesting. Why are the buildings in it leaning over? Oh, it shows an earthquake. Do you get many of them around here? No, I wouldn’t say that it was pretty, exactly. Interesting. Prescient.

 

I love that mosaic with all the sea creatures on it. I see you’ve got it where it should be, as part of the floor, whereas in the future it will be hanging on a wall in a frame. Yes, I agree, pretty pointless, but easier to stand in front of and look at. It really proves just how rich your diet was in seafood. All those different species. I like the lobsters particularly. So lifelike. Can I take it with me? Put it in the atrium next to the lampstand and the dog mosaic. Oh, I forgot to choose something from the hortus.I can’t really make up my mind between the fresco with the thrush on it or the naughty goat statue, but the rules of the game don’t allow me to take more than one thing from each room. Oh, ok, the naughty goat statue, just for the sake of a bit of shock value and to upset the Telegraph readers.

 

Kitchen this way? Why is the toilet in here? Isn’t that a bit dangerous? We would throw up our hands in horror in the future if we found a toilet in the kitchen. Well, because you can’t take a dump in the room that food is prepared in, it will make you ill. You didn’t know that back then? Is that why so many of your kitchens have good luck charms all over the place? Perhaps you should spread the word round about washing your hands properly. Because of germs. Germs. Little tiny animals that spread illness. So small you can’t see them. Really.
 

Well, I recognise most of your food. A loaf of bread, somewhat burned, but still very recognisably and obviously bread. I suppose your baker didn’t have time to stop and take the loaves from the oven when the sky began to fall. And so they stayed in the oven for 2000 years. Its round, marked into sections. Tear and share.

And dishes of figs and dates and nuts and pomegranates and poppy seeds – all ripe. So it couldn’t have been August, more like mid to late September or even October. And a big glass jar with a cork stopper, still with the dregs of olive oil clinging to the inside. But you were like us – you enjoyed your food, and you didn’t mind shelling out for good ingredients now and again. How amazing that, after all this time we could (if we were allowed) uncork the bottle, put it to our lips and taste the oil made from the olives all those many centuries ago.

 

What a beautiful, beautiful colander. Just like the ones we have in 2000 years time, even if ours are not nearly so decorative. Nor made of bronze. But why shouldn’t something utilitarian still be beautiful to look at? Something like that was obviously a real pleasure to use.
 

And this is the drain that runs under your kitchen floor into the common sewer under the street? And here’s a display of things that you threw into the drain. Plates and dishes that someone made, someone else bought, used for a while, dropped and broke, scooped up and dropped them down the drain in order to be rid of them. And other things too, that you dropped in the street and that rolled away from your grasping fingers and disappeared from sight into the sewer while you stood there and cursed, or which fell from your pocket unnoticed and were kicked by an sandaled, unheeding foot, never to be seen again – or so you thought. A small oil lamp in the shape of an eagle, a tiny votive statue of a mother cradling a baby and which we now call “The Lady of the Drain”. Perhaps the owner was pregnant and on her way to the temple to offer the statue on the altar in exchange for the safe delivery of the child. a silent, desperate plea for clemency. Or perhaps the child had already been born and was sick, and this was a gift to the god of healing –, a trade for all those weary, frightened hours of gently rocking a cradle by the light of a flickering oil lamp and the prayers which lacked the power to heal. We’ll never know.

How you must have panicked when you got to the temple and found the statue was no longer in its wrapping, how you must have desperately retraced your steps through the crowded streets, scanning the road, worrying that the gods had truly turned their faces away from you. The child would have died anyway, that autumn afternoon, but you didn’t know that. We know, and it’s the broken plates and the tiny lamp and the little statue that bring home the fact that you were once like us, you had your little culinary accidents while your mind was occupied with bigger things, you threw things away and thought no more of them, you lost them and thought of them constantly and missed them and shared the news of their loss through your tears. It’s the broken plates and the tiny lamp and the little statue that make me pause and swallow the lump that rises to my throat and shout at you down the years that you should pack up your things and run, before its too late and the sky turns dark.
 

I've stopped choosing things to take home.  Put them back - they don't belong to me. They belonged to you.

And now, around this corner, are the things you tried to take with you at the last moment. Things that were found in the boathouse, down by the shore as you crouched in the darkness with your family, your friends, your slaves, the people from the house across the street. Things that we will find among your bones. A display of things marked “Choices – objects useful, valuable or simply cherished, carefully gathered or quickly grabbed; things that represent choices made in those few terrifying, uncertain hours”. A large oil lamp with shades made from transparent horn, which you grabbed to light your way through the dark streets leading down to the bay. A fistful of small change – the day’s takings from someone’s business. A wooden tablet, the writing on it long gone. What did it say? Why was it so important to you that you sought it out, took it from its hiding place and ran with it down to the shore? Did it prove you were no longer a slave? Was it the deed to your home, your business? Proof of your marriage? A good luck charm, which brought you no luck. A valuable pair of earrings – maybe a wedding gift. The key to your front door, slammed and locked behind you in the panic to keep your things safe until your return, a key that would never be used again, a key for a door that no longer exists, a door that you used a dozen times a day, a door that squeaked on its hinges and that you kept meaning to get fixed. A door that slammed shut as the ashes fell.

And finally, here are you.

Buried in solidified ash, your body rotted, leaving an empty shape. The shape of you. Sitting there – crying, coughing, weeping, praying, regretting the things said and the things unsaid, who knows? Only you. And there the rich woman, with the golden hair clasp, the bangle, the rings, the bag of coins. And here a family, perhaps your neighbours, perhaps strangers. Husband, wife, children. Thinking, hoping, praying that in the tiny cupboard underneath the stairs they were safe from the terror that fell from the sky.

Whoever they were, whoever you were, I looked around your home, shared your food, drank your wine, stroked your dog, woke your child, admired your wife’s jewellery and enjoyed spending time in your company.

Pax, Romana.

Peter and Alice - Noel Coward Theatre, Wednesday 20th March 2013

Synopsis

Peter Llewleyn Davis (J. M. Barrie’s inspiration for the character of Peter Pan) and Alice Liddell Hargreaves (Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for the character of Alice in Wonderland) meet before appearing at a public event organised by Davis’s publishing house. They ruminate on what being a muse has meant to them and their lives and the trouble it has caused them

 

Cast

Peter Llewleyn Davies – Ben Wishaw

Alice Liddell Hargreaves – Judi Dench 

Lewis Carroll – Nicholas Farrell

James Barrie – Derek Riddell

Peter Pan – Olly Alexander

Alice in Wonderland – Ruby Bentall

Arthur/Reggie/Michael – Stefano Bratch

 

Creative Team:

Script – John Logan

Director – Michael Grandage

Set and costumes – Christopher Oram

Lighting – Paule Constable

 

Review by Tumnus the Faun, our Narnia Arts Correspondent

Dateline: Eternal Winter, but never Christmas

 

Mr. Tumnus was beginning to get very tired of sitting next to Him Indoors in the Upper Circle, and of having nothing to do; once or twice he had peeped into the programme Him Indoors was reading but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a programme,” thought Tumnus, “without pictures or conversations?” So he was considering, in his own mind (as well as he could, for the heating in the theatre made him feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of going to the toilet would be worth the trouble of getting up and fighting his way back through the row of seats, when suddenly Judi Dench appeared on the stage.

 

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Tumnus think it so very much out of the way to see that Judi Dench actually took a watch out of her pocket and looked at it, remarked “We won’t be late because we’re only on for 90 minutes, and as there is no interval at all, we’ll all be home nicely by 10pm”. Burning with curiosity, he ran across the stage after it, and was just in time to see her appear in a new play at the Noel Coward Theatre. In another moment, Tumnus followed Ms. Dench, never once considering how in the world he was to get out again.

 

The play went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then took a strange turn and dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Tumnus had not a moment to think about stopping himself before he found himself falling down a very deep hole indeed. Either the play was very deep, or it was very slow, so Tumnus had plenty of time as he went down to wonder what, if anything, was going to happen next. He looked at the sides of the hole, and noticed they were filled with cupboards and bookshelves; he took a jar from one of the shelves as he passed, it was labelled “Wonderful new play by John Logan starring Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw”, but to his great disappointment it was empty; far emptier than the Noel Coward Theatre which was packed out for the entirety of the play’s run already. Down, down, down. Would the play never come to an end? “I wonder how many minutes its been so far?” he said aloud. “We must be getting somewhere near the centre of it by now. Let me see: that would be about 45 minutes I think--” Down, down, down.

 

There was nothing else to do, so Tumnus soon began talking again. “ThinButWordy will miss me very much tonight, I should think!” (ThinButWordy was the plot). He felt that he was dozing off, and had just began to dream that he was watching something interesting, when suddenly, thump! Thump! Down he came on a heap of psychoanalytical babble, and the play was over. Suddenly he came upon a little three-legged table; on it was a script of the play addressed to Judi Dench and bearing the words READ ME. “Rubbish,” thought Mr. Tumnus, “everyone knows that Judi Dench never reads any of her scripts before taking a job”. It was all very well to say READ ME, but Tumnus was not going to do that in a hurry – he had never forgotten that, if you don’t read your script beforehand, it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. However, this script was not marked “box office poison” so Tumnus ventured to taste it, and finding that it was dark, and bitter, and bleak, and full of angst, he very soon finished it off.

 

“What a curious feeling!” said Tumnus. “My childhood memories of long, golden summers down by the river with the Revd. Dodgson must be being polluted by the current apparent fascination for retrospective paedophilia”. He waited for a few minutes to find out if his memories were going to be polluted any further; “for it might end, you know, in me finding out that J.M. Barrie was an appalling predatory homosexual with a nasty thing for young boys”. Soon his eye fell on a little box that was lying under the table; he opened it and found in it a very small excuse for an evening at the theatre, even if the scenery was lovely. He watched a little bit, and was quite surprised to find that he remained terribly unimpressed with Mr. Logan’s new play. To be sure, this is what generally happens when a playwright has a major hit with his first one and is asked to write another one, perhaps with Judi Dench in mind, and while he watched it, Tumnus got so much into the way of expecting something to happen but finding out that it was really just a series of flashbacks in which the late 19th century fashion for being very chummy with young children was turned on its head and made into an object of repellent fascination by vast sections of the public, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for it to be suggested that the world was a different place back then and it was quite commonplace for single, middle-aged men to strike up close relationships with pre-pubescent children and sublimate their desires by writing fairy stories about them.

 

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Tumnus, as the play got very dark indeed and it transpired that neither Alice nor Peter had had a very jolly time of it when they grew up. “Are we to sit here while Alice and Peter are joined on stage not only by Mr. Barrie and the Revd. Dodgson but also by their literary counterparts who are very probably only here to add a little bit of meta-dimension to the script because the author has already said what he wanted to say, which in all probability was not that much to begin with, and needs to pad the script out a bit?. I’ll try and say “How doth the little– ” and he crossed his hands on his lap and began to repeat it.

 

“How doth the little impresario

Improve his West End cred

To posit the grim scenario

That it’s all to do with BED!

How cheerfully he seems to grin

How neatly spreads his claws

And welcomes all the punters in

And glories in applause!”

 

  “I’m sure those are not the right words,” said poor Tumnus, with a sudden burst of tears. As he said these words, his foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! he was up to his chin in hot water. Contrariwise, it seemed to Mr. Tumnus that the play had shut up round him like a portmanteau, and although it was practically critic-proof because it had got Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw in and is practically sold out for the rest of the run (as had been mentioned previously), it was all much of a muchness and although it purports to hold a mirror up to the reality of childhood fame, the reflection doesn’t really show you very much of what anyone wants to see. Apart from Judi Dench.

Burn the Floor - Shaftesbury Theatre, Monday 11th March 2013

Cast:

Sorry – no cast list apart from Robin Windsor and Kristina Rihannof- I didn’t have time to get a programme before going in due to a mix up over getting the tickets. The Burn The Floor website is a bit of a mess and nowhere on it could I find a list of last night’s performers.

Oh, the glamour. Oh, the endless hobnobbing with celebrities. Oh, the champagne. Oh, the paparazzi. Love, the endless socialising I put myself through to bring you these reviews. It’s a bit like being one of the West End Whingers. Daaarling, we were all there last night (except, apparently, the West End Whingers. Z-listers, darling, Z-listers). Denise van Outen, wearing so much eye-liner she looked like she had been lent by the Chinese Government to take part in a breeding programme at Edinburgh Zoo. Lisa Riley, completely tanked up and bellowing like an elephant seal on ecstacy. Lewis Smith, muttering that so many people wanted his photograph that his interval ice-cream was going mushy. Arlene Phillips, who thought it was fancy dress and who had come as a Bag Lady. Russell Grant, who just popped in for the first half. Nancy Delolio, looking like an old leather handbag in drag and doing her best to rid the world of small furry animals by wearing several of them. Johnny Ball, looking bewildered. Suzanne Shaw – no, me neither. Russell’s Theatre Reviews. Mwah, mwah, mwah. The only people missing were Brucie’s life support machine and Claudia’s fringe.

Well, darlings, if you like relentlessly upbeat music, arse-stretchingly tight trousers, glistening torsos and the occasional glitter ball, this really is for you. Subtle it ain’t. Its camp, cheesy and just that bit too overwhelmingly high-octane for its own good, really. Now, I’m not going to say that the cast can’t dance, because just watching them made my feet hurt. These guys and gals can move. Its just that, given the instruction to “Burn The Floor”, this show seems to want to take it literally. There is so much energy pouring off the stage that it pins you back in your seat like the G-force of a really fast take off and leaves you feeling like you’ve just been through a particularly energetic spin cycle in your favourite washing machine. Mind you, if anyone had thought to literally burn the floor, it might have raised the temperature a couple of degrees in the chilly old barn that is the Shaftesbury Theatre. What is needed with this show is the occasional bit of restraint as a counterpoint. A passing attempt at this is made with a couple of all-too-brief classic tailcoat and floaty dress ballroom numbers, but these are really the only breathing spaces the audience gets in two hours. There is so much relentless choreography that after about 20 minutes you stop registering it and – more importantly – stop appreciating it. There’s also a bit too much raunch – granted, there are some beautiful bodies on stage, both male and female, but a bit of decorous restraint doesn’t go amiss sometimes. You wouldn’t get Anton Du Beke prancing around shirtless all evening. Mind you, if I had a torso like some of the ones on show last night, I’d be walking around half naked on a practically permanent basis. I wonder why male dancers always shave their armpits?

The show’s putative stars – Mr. Windsor and Ms Rhiannof - are strangely and noticeably underused most of the evening. On several occasions they start a dance routine off, and you sit back expecting a powerhouse, showcase routine – and then they disappear, to be replaced by an ensemble. In fact, as far as memory serves, they only do one complete routine all evening. Still, its good that they are not so up themselves that they refuse to join in with the big ensemble numbers, but it has to be said that they do look, erm, somewhat mature when surrounded by the rest of the cast. Rhiannof has got the most gorgeous pair of pins and can vamp with the best of them, but it does occasionally get slightly embarrassing when her quarry looks about 15. Mr. Windsor tries hard to be butch but you can tell he’d rather be getting his sweaty paws all over the boys. There must have been poor visibility over the Thames last night because every time Mr. Windsor made an appearance, Foghorn Riley rattled the eardrums of anyone sitting within a radius of 500 feet. It was the shout of “Cooom on Ooncle Robin!!!” that finally reduced me to hysteria.

Musically it’s a real rag-bag, seemingly slung together with little rhyme or reason. Along with a classic paso doble number (nice to hear, but sounding incredibly out of place among the grunge), there is a stunning jazz performance by – I think – Vonzell Solomon, which literally stops the show in its tracks for a couple of minutes. This lady is one ballsy singer, absolutely born to be headlining in a smoky 1930s speakeasy in downtown Chicago and I would gladly have heard more from her. Her male counterpart suffers by comparison, but I’m not going to be quite as disparaging about his as Him Indoors was. He’s got a decent enough voice but sounds a bit forced in the upper register.

The show occasionally spills out into the auditorium – there is a particularly excruciating “audience warm up” session before the first half which I could well have done without. I don’t know whether this is a permanent part of the act or whether this was just a filler thrown on to cover a backstage delay, but its supremely naff. Mind you, its lucky it happened; due to an administrative mix up we had been told the show started at 7.30 when, due to it being Press Night (oh, the glamour!) it actually started at 7pm. It was 7.20 when we got into the auditorium and found it bewilderingly packed out, with the “warm up” in full flow. During the second half finale, the audience were so hyped up by the dancing in the aisles that I’m surprised Lisa Riley didn’t start ripping the seats out with her teeth. So, the Burn the Floor juggernaut rolls on, propelled by sweat, testosterone and enough raw energy to power a small town. Its not for everyone – its bewilderingly full on. A little more restraint at times would make it considerably less exhausting for the audience. Undeniably there is some major dance talent on that stage but if you’re fans of Anton and Erin, you might have to go home and lie down for a couple of hours afterwards.

Tickets kindly provided by www.showsinlondon.co.uk/

Chess - Union Theatre, Sunday 17th February 2013

 Synopsis:

The World Chess Championship is about to take place in Merano, Italy. The American is defending his title against a new challenger, The Russian The American gives a press conference at his hotel at which he behaves petulantly and aggressively, denouncing his opponent, every other Soviet and the press with equal vigour. His performance is watched on television by the Russian and his KGB-employed second, Molokov, in their hotel. Molokov is inclined to dismiss the American as a nut. The Russian concedes that his opponent is eccentric but realises that every outrageous move made by the American is a calculated one. The Russian reflects upon his own rise to the top

The American stages an effective and insulting walkout during the Arbiter's lengthy recap of the match regulations immediately after the Opening Ceremony. None are more insulted than his own second, Florence Vassy, who is left to defend her player’s indefensible behaviour to a sneering and pompously protesting Molokov. During this exchange she meets the Russian player for the first time. The Russian shows some sympathy for her situation. Florence confronts the American back at their hotel, telling him that she can not tolerate his treatment of her for much longer. We learn that she was born in Hungary, left that country when only two with her mother in 1956 during the uprising and is now a naturalised British Citizen.. She has never discovered what happened to her father who 'disappeared' when the Hungarian uprising was crushed. She is determined to find out.

The first game of the contest begins with an atmosphere of mutual loathing hanging over the proceedings as the two players make their first moves. Tension builds as much offboard as on with both men resorting to underhand tactics to distract or enrage the other. Suddenly, high drama as the two players fling the board up in to the air. They walk out after nearly coming to blows. Florence and Molokov have an unofficial meeting to discuss the collapse of the match. Florence takes the initiative and tells Molokov where and when he is to deliver his player for a secret, off the record, meeting between the two contestants, in order that the match can resume without either party losing face. Molokov attempts to rattle Florence at one stage by implying that he knows some Hungarian history she might want to learn about.

Florence and the American arrive for the secret meeting. The Russian is late and the American leaves the restaurant in mock disgust. Almost at once the Russian and a junior member of his back up team arrive to find no opponent waiting for them, only his opponent's Second. During the conversation that follows, the Russian and Florence are quickly attracted to each other, the almost romantic mood rudely interrupted when the American returns. Some days later, the American and Florence are discussing the progress of the match. Things are going badly for the American who is unpleasantly agitated. He blames Florence for his failure and as they hurl abuse at each other, she tells him that she is going to leave him after the match, even if by some miracle he won it. The American is devastated and alternates between fury and pleading with her to stay. His paranoia about the Reds surfaces - he is convinced that the Soviets have something to do with both his loss of form and Florence's desertion, At an unidentified Western embassy some days later, the Russian, the newly crowned World chess champion, asks for political asylum.

The following year, The Russian is to defend his title against a new challenger from the Soviet Union in Bangkok. Florence and the Russian who have been lovers since his defection, are in Bangkok. They discuss his new opponent and wonder why the American is in town, as he has played no serious chess since his defeat in Merano. They also talk about the refusal of the Soviet authorities to let his wife out of the U.S.S.R.

Molokov and his team are confident that this time around they have a player who is totally trustworthy and can be relied upon (a) to win and (b) to stay in Russia. The Russian is interviewed on Thai TV. To his amazement he discovers that his interviewer is the American who proceeds to ask him about his personal life, about Florence and about his politics - never about chess. The American finally tells him (on the air) that arrangements have been made to fly his wife into Bangkok in time for the match. Enraged, the Russian storms out.

The Russian and Florence watch his wife (Svetlana) on television arriving in Bangkok. The event brings the tension between them to a climax. Florence is left alone with the TV still showing Svetlana's image. She recalls how well she knows the lover who has just left her. Svetlana recalls how well she knows her husband

The American forces his way into the Russian's quarters to offer him a deal. Despite the personal pressures already weighing heavily on the Russian, he has begun the match in great style, winning the first two games. The American now says that if his winning streak should suddenly come to an end then Florence will not be given information he claims to have received from the Soviets about her father. The American then approaches Florence, suggesting that if she would only return to him, not only would they be once again the best chess team ever witnessed, he also would be able to provide her with news (he does not say whether it is good or bad) she has always wanted to know about her past. She too rejects his offer. The deciding game in the match begins. Molokov and the American have a conversation which reveals them to have been in league against the Russian, albeit for very different reasons. Florence, watching the match, although not knowing that her lover been put under pressure to lose, sees his obsession with victory destroying his ability to care for her.

The Russian, defying everyone, plays like a dream and annihilates his opponent. He rejoices in his victory, but even as the crowds acclaim him and as his wife vainly attempts to make some kind of contact with him, he almost immediately feels a sense of hollow anti-climax. He despises himself for the narrow selfish ambitions and desires that satisfy him. So does Svetlana; any chance of reconciliation between them is gone. Florence and the Russian reflect simultaneously but separately, on their story that they thought was a very happy one; like the game of chess the game of love can be played in an almost limitless number of variations. Perhaps this was just one of many games that end in stalemate.

 

Cast

Florence – Sarah Galbraith
Anatoly – Nadim Naaman
Freddie – Tim Oxbrow
Svetlana – Natasha Barnes
Molokova – Gillian Kirkpatrick
Arbiter – Rhys Barlow

 

Creative Team

Directed by Christopher Howell and Steven Harris
Musical Direction by Simon Lambert
Musical Arrangements by Christopher Peak
Lighting by Ben Rogers

Bugger this production – I’ve spent the last couple of days humming One Night in Bangkok while I do the washing up (note: the song is not called One Night in Bangkok While I do The Washing Up) and trying to work out whether my vocal range would be better suited to the Elaine Page line or the Barbara Dickson line in I Know Him So Well. If you are of a certain age, this song will take you back immediately to the late 80s and hearing it on the radio on what seemed like a 15 minute loop; it was regularly on Simon Bates’ Our Tune on Radio 1, which they had on constantly at work and which used to do my head in even then. What does my head in even more is Him Indoors screeching Pity the Child around the place all the time.

I admit that I wasn’t really in the mood to go and see this; three times a week is more than enough for any man, and it being Sunday, I would rather have been curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee in that semi-somnolent state which descends on you after Sunday lunch. After a certain amount of hilarity caused by Him Indoors’ complete and total inability to read a map properly (I swear that if he had been born Scott of the Antarctic, he would have spent quite a few years crawling round in the mosquito-infested mangrove swamps of equatorial Guinea muttering “I could have sworn it was this way” and kicking the huskies) we arrived at the admittedly unprepossessing Union Theatre and proceeded to freeze our nipples off for ¾ of an hour waiting for the auditorium to open. Whatever you do, go to the toilet before leaving home; there is a poster in the foyer thanking people for making donations towards a new piano but I think the money would have been much better spent doing something about the loos because even the thought of them makes me walk around saying ick ick ick. There’s something about these loos that puts me in mind of that film Quatermass and the Pit – I don’t know exactly what that big, green, glistening patch on the wall is but I swear its bigger every time I see it.

This is a well-enough directed show – even though it does go on a bit; 2 ¾ hours is a long time, and even then there have been cuts. There are some clever bits of staging and direction – but you can’t see very much of it because the place is just too damned small for it. During dance numbers here I’m always terrified that a dancer’s foot is going to take my eye out or that someone being lifted up on the shoulders of another dancer is going to crack their head painfully and messily on the lighting grid. Often you get someone standing on the stage with their nose less than six inches from your own, desperately trying not to make eye contact with you while they sing, and Chess is no exception Its crying out to be performed in a bigger space with better sightlines. Too often your view of the performers is obscured by another cast member’s backside, people are cramped together and only the lucky people in the front row of the middle block of seats (they’re arranged in a double row around three sides of a square) can actually appreciate the direction and choreography of a lot of the show. (Note to punters: after the interval, you are supposed to return to the seat you occupied during the first half. Two old dears decided to swap sides after the interval; cue lots of quietly outraged honking from the people they displaced when they returned to find their seats already occupied)

The black and white colour scheme is really overdone, as well. I know its relevant to the show, and makes good design sense when you are costuming on a limited budget, but when the entire inside of the theatre is painted black, watching black and white clad people on a black floor surface for nearly three hours, all brightly lit from above, is really, really tiring on the eyes because you get starved of visual stimulation. One is likely (if one is me) to start looking at small things in too much detail in order to keep your eyes occupied – for some reason, there are some really odd shirt collars on display and I can’t tell you how much I ended up being irritated by them. Semicircular scoops seem to have been cut out of them – perhaps for another show – and they look really very strange indeed. I noticed that the wheeled light box used for one of the final numbers – nice touch, very inventive, perhaps could have been used for more than just that one scene – needed a damned good cleaning, and when the member of the cast using it began to gob liberally all over it while singing at the top of his voice it was as much as I could do not to lean over, proffer my handkerchief and suggest that a good wipe might not go amiss. Perhaps I should have offered it instead to the chap in the front row who, during one of the quiet bits, began to clean his friend’s glasses using the bottom bit of his jumper and showing 2/3 of the theatre six inches of hairy navel.

Star of the show is undoubtedly Sarah Galbraith as Florence, who can belt with the best, but I did wonder why, if she was playing an American, all her vowel sounds were quite so Julie Andrews (getting toooo noooooe you, getting toooo nooooeee awl abouuwht you). No trace of an American accent whatsoever. No, I know Elaine Paige didn’t do one either, but that’s no excuse. Nadim Naaman is suitably morose as the Russian, and Tim Oxbrow almost literally screeches his tits off getting some of the high notes (must be a hell of a role to sing six or seven times a week for three weeks. One wonders if he will ever be able to sing again after this show. Rhys Barlow is a bit weedy to play The Arbiter, and I wondered why in this version he doesn’t sing One Night in Bangkok. I also wondered what the reasoning was in turning the role of Molokov into a female part, as it does rather unbalance the power-play aspect of the show. There is a lot of very impressive choral work going on in the concerted numbers, a great deal of which is unfortunately drowned out by the sheer volume of the orchestra. Performing a very loud show in a very small space does rather leave the audience somewhat frazzled – I spent most of the journey home feeling like there was someone sitting on my left shoulder playing a pair of cymbals. The music is pleasurable enough in that 1980s sung-through fashion (you will undoubtedly be humming a lot of it in the days following the performance; those ABBA boys knew how to put a good tune together. But the whole thing needs a bigger home in order that the direction can be fully appreciated. And the entire Russian/American plot now feels subtly dated and a little tired.

 

What the critics thought:

http://www.westendframe.com/2013/02/Review-Musical-Chess.html

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/chess-union-theatre-london/

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/38222/chess-the-musical

http://www.backstagepass.biz/2013/02/theatre-review-chess-union-theatre.html

Now, get that hairspray ready:

 

 

Trelawny of the "Wells" - Friday 15th February 2013

Synopsis:

Trelawny of the 'Wells' tells the story of Rose Trelawny, a popular star of melodrama plays at the Barridge Wells Theatre (a thinly disguised Sadler's Wells Theatre). Rose gives up the stage when she decides to marry her sweetheart, Arthur Gower, in order to please his conservative family. She finds life with Arthur's grandfather and great-aunt, Sir William and Lady Tralfagar, unbearably dull and they detest her loud and unrestrained personality. Rose runs back to the theatre, abandoning Arthur. But her experience of the 'real world' has killed her talent for melodrama, and she cannot recapture the liveliness that had made her a star. Meanwhile, Arthur has secretly run away to become an actor at the Bristol Old Vic.

The problem is solved when Rose encounters Sir William again, and she reawakens his memory of admiring the great actor Edmund Kean as a young man. Sir William offers to help Rose's friend Tom Wrench, an aspiring playwright who dreams of staging plays in a more realist style than the melodramas that dominate the stage. Tom stages the play with Rose as the star, and her newfound seriousness fits his style perfectly. Tom secretly arranges for Arthur to play the leading male role, and the lovers are reunited on stage.

Cast
:Mrs Mossop/Sir William Gower - Ron Cook
Mr. Ablet - Jamie Beamish
Tom Wrench - Daniel Kaluuya
Imogen Parrot/Clara de Foenix - Susannah Fielding
James Telfer/Charles - Peter Wright
Ferdinand Gadd - Daniel Mays
Augustus Colpoys - Fergal McElherron
Mrs. Telfer/Trafalgar Gower - Maggie Steed
Avonia Bunn - Aimee Ffion
 EdwardsRose Trelawney - Amy Morgan
Arthur Gower - Joshua Silver

Creative Team:
Written by Arthur Wing Pinero
Director: Joe Wright
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting: Jon Clark

Disclaimer: review of Preview performance

I am sometimes criticised for reviewing preview performances, presumably on the basis that it is unfair to do so before the production has had a chance to warm up and settle in. To my critics I would respond that its Him Indoors who generally books the tickets, I have little say in when we will be going and that if you would care to donate a pair of opening night tickets to me I will be more than happy to go along at your expense and put in a First Night review along with the “legitimate” critics. So there.

Certainly it appeared that the cast do need a good settling in period for this. There seemed to be plenty of mishaps occurring relating to props refusing to do what they should, some of which I couldn’t really see due to poor sightlines from my seat (we were sitting in what I call the “Jury Box” seats right up near the roof). At one point a backcloth came crashing down from its moorings and I’m still not entirely sure whether this was supposed to happen; there was a kind of ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod hiatus on the stage for a good few seconds and then everyone carried on regardless. Certainly the cast seemed to be very slow in picking up on their lines, mostly during the first half, meaning that it felt very slow and not nearly snappy enough. There was a kind of feeling of tired acceptance by the audience for most of the evening, with laughs rather sparse and thin, even at some of the more obvious jokes until a good way into the second half when things seemed to pick up substantially and it all started to come together. I also missed a lot of the dialogue because nobody on stage seemed to be raising their eyes (or their voice) up towards the circle.

I think many of the longeurs were a result of the direction, which is rather self-consciously theatrical, and certainly I for one didn’t pick up on this for a good long while. Once I realised what was going on, of course, it all made a lot more sense, and I think this was a feeling shared by a lot of the audience. Some people may not have picked up on what was going on at all, hence the odd feeling in the auditorium. We are, of course, watching a play about actors; actors used to performing in the slightly over-the-top declamatory style that preceded the arrival of realistic acting on the stage. And hence everything they did was in said over-the top style, even when they were off-stage. For example, the actors assemble in the first scene for a celebratory dinner, and I was confused that there were bits of obviously prop food (a ham, a raised pie of the kind that would make Mary Berry envious, a dish of hard boiled eggs) being passed round enthusiastically but remaining completely untouched, and no liquid in the jugs or glasses, and I thought “That looks really, really silly”. But of course, this is how contemporary audiences would have seen a meal would being “eaten” on stage at the time. Its an “in joke” and of course if you don’t get the joke, you think that its just odd. Even the way the table is laid is a reference to theatrical tradition (the plates are all stuck to the tablecloth, so it can simply be shaken out and hey presto, the table is fully laid). Several roles are doubled and again, this is how a small cast of late 19th century actors would have taken on a play with a large number of characters. But to those audience members who don’t pick up on this, its mystifying. It can cause hilarity – as when “Mrs. Mossop” announces that “Sir William Gower”.is waiting outside, and is told to go and fetch him – because both roles are being played by the same person. I fully suspect that many people aren’t going to understand the director’s intentions.

There are some good performances going on. Much as I dislike Ron Cook generally, I have to admit he played the crusty Sir William admirably, with great delivery of lines such as “Save your tears for the bedroom, Madam. This is Whist!” And there is a touching sense of faded grandeur about Maggie Steed’s Mrs. Telfer, particularly in the second half when she and her husband, previously great stars, are reduced to the job of wardrobe mistress and bit-part player respectively. Her exit line “My child, if we are set to scrub a floor - and we may come to that yet - let us make up our minds to scrub it legitimately and with dignity” was almost unbearably touching in its delivery and resonated long after she had left the stage. In her doubled part as Trafalgar Gower, she gets probably the biggest laugh of the night with “William! Your ankles!”. Amy Morgan certainly looks the part of the quintessential romantic lead of the Victorian stage, even if her characterization is a little thin (but then its not a very well-written role), and Aimee Ffion Edwards is nicely goggle-eyed as Avonia Bunn. On the downside Daniel Mays is merely irritating, Joshua Silver fails to register above cardboard cutout as Arthur and Daniel Kaluuya seems uncomfortable in the role of Tom Wrench.

Costumes are wonderful, with the ladies spectacularly arrayed in full period get-up – Maggie Steed looks like a ship in full sail in her scarlet bodice and crinoline – and there is more than a hint of Scarlett O’Hara’s dress made out of curtains in Susannah Fielding’s costume, although the sleeves looked a little short and could have done with false white cuffs to cover her wrists, as would have been done in reality at the time. The panto costume worn by “Avonia Bunn” just has to be seen to be believed. And Rose Trelawny is soberly yet immaculately turned out throughout the entire production.

Its an amusing night out, which needs more work before opening night. It’s a difficult piece to get to grips with, and I suspect is not going to find huge favour with either critics or audiences. Which is a shame.

Great Expectations - Vaudeville Theatre, Thursday 14th February 2013

Synopsis:

Pip, an orphan who is about six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture the convict who is returned to the prison ship he escaped from.

Miss Havisham, who lives in the dilapidated Satis House, arranges for Pip to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love with Miss Havisham's encouragement. Pip visits Miss Havisham multiple times, and during one of these visits, he brings Joe along. During their absence, Mrs. Joe is attacked by a mysterious individual and lives out the rest of her life as a mute invalid.

Later, when Pip is a young apprentice at Joe's blacksmith shop, a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, approaches him and tells him he is to receive a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor and must immediately leave for London, where he is to become a gentleman.

Years later, Pip has reached adulthood and is now heavily in debt. Abel Magwitch, the convict he helped, who was transported to Australia where he eventually became wealthy, reveals himself to Pip as his benefactor. There is a warrant for Magwitch's arrest in England, and he will be hanged if he is caught. Pip hatches a plan for Magwitch to flee by boat, and discovers that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and Mr. Jaggers' housemaid, Molly, whom Jaggers defended in a murder charge and who gave up her daughter to be adopted by Miss Havisham.

Pip learns that Miss Havisham's fiancé jilted her, resulting in her strange behaviour and desire to avenge mankind by using Estella to break Pip's heart. He confronts Miss Havisham with Estella's history. Miss Havisham stands too close to the fire which ignites her dress. Pip is burned while saving her, but she eventually dies from her injuries, lamenting her manipulation of Estella and Pip.

Police capture Magwitch and jail him, although dies shortly before his execution. Pip is about to be arrested for unpaid debts when Joe pays off Pip's debts. Realising the error of his ways, Pip returns to the forge to propose to Biddy, Joe’s housemaid, only to find that she and Joe have married.

Eleven years later, Pip visits the ruins of Satis House and meets Estella, lately widowed after fleeing her abusive husband. She asks Pip to forgive her. Pip takes Estella's hand and together they leave the ruins of Satis House forever.

The Players:
Adult Pip – Mr Paul Nivison
Estella – Miss Grace Rowe
Miss Havisham – Miss Paula Wilcox
Young Pip – Mr. Taylor Jay-Davies
Joe Gargery – Mr. Josh Elwell
Mrs. Joe – Miss Isabelle Ross
Wopsle/Wemmick – Mr. Vaughn
Magwitch – Mr. Chris Ellison
Camilla Pocket – Miss Allen
Cousin Raymond/Bentley Drummle – Mr. Glen
Biddy – Miss Susan Robertson
Jaggers – Mr. Jack Ellis
Herbert Pocket – Mr. Warrington

Creative Team:
Adapted for the stage by Miss Clifford
Directed by Mr. McLaren
The dresses by Miss Gosney and Mr. McLaren,with couture elements provided by Signor Giovanni Bedin
The lighting effects by Mr. Kai Fisher
The musical accompaniments by Mr. Slater

“Marley was dead, to begin with” I had already used, most successfully. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” I had also pressed into service, and it would have been churlish to expect my readers to swallow it again. “To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I recall that I was born” did indeed have a certain noble ring about it, and yet it seemed to me that although it would be indeed a splendid beginning for a tale narrated in the first person, it would perhaps be better set aside for a time for a novel as yet unpenned. And so I chewed my pen some more that winter afternoon, as the coals settled ever more comfortably into their fiery bed and thought some more, eventually deciding that the opening phrase of the latest addition to the line of fine, leather-clad volumes marching their way across my bookshelf like a regiment of soldiers in the service of Literature would be

'My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip'

And so it began, my latest novel, each page the progenitor of a brood of followers eventually numbering over 600. And this blotted and scribbled bundle of papers was wrapped in cloths and smuggled from the house during the quiet, owl-haunted hours of the night as if it were the misshapen bastard of the under-housemaid, delivered into the kind, patient and trusted hands of the surgeon-editor, by whom my child would be cossetted, primped and snipped and finally dressed in fine, new clothes, and brought forth into the world in a presentable fashion to be admired by its loving, literary papa. And then, having no other use for it, for it had served its purpose of confirming me in the admiring minds of the British novel-reading public as their household god of the written word, I turned it into a play, whereupon it became sickly and weak, and I finally cast it from my bosom and thought of it no longer, for I was almost at once occupied with with the tribulations of producing yet another ink-blotted and scribbled child.

And then, many years later, a lady writer of the name Jo Clifford looked full and pensively at my child and wondered if it might be suited for a career upon the boards of the stage once more, enduring the wretched, unending sleepless nights of any parent as the pale moonlight streamed thought the latticed casement, cutting and shaping and reforming and discarding, until my little child was set down upon once more amongst the mummers and the greasepaint and the baskets and backcloths of a theatre in the city wherein it took its first faltering steps. And as I sat there in the warm and comforting darkness of the auditorium, surrounded by the rowdy restlessness of the cloth-capped ruffians, doxies, confidence tricksters and latecomers who had paid their pennies for the gallery, a variety of thoughts pursued their paths across my mind. For this child of mine, in it first and original raiment, was a long and complicated fiction, peopled in the main by a throng of finely yet briefly sketched puppets alongside their more important, fully-fleshed fellows, whose complicated lives twisted and turned and and struggled through many pages and chapters. And,with the ferocity of the surgeon’s scapel, Miss Clifford had excised them all, rending them bodily from the page, lopping their limbs and heads and arms until, if they remained at all, they briefly flitted across the stage like so many ghostly wraiths issuing from their graves yet disappearing the very instant they had appeared, their small parts in this complex and many-layered history reduced to a gasp of breath, if breath they kept at all. Indeed, any person there present who had not familiarised themselves with my narrative in advance of seeing it portrayed thus upon the stage may well have become somewhat obfuscated as to many of the scenes being played out before them. And yet, it seemed to me, denuded of much of its corpulent flesh, the very bones of the story stood strong and firm and white, as if saved from the charnel house and set upon the living stage. For indeed, I saw that I had brought forth into this world a story capable of surviving such harsh and unforgiving treatment at the hands of others writers less magnficient than I.

And indeed, their brief home upon the stage was decked in such lordly raiment as would befit a far greater child, for eschewing the difficulties encountered by changing the scenery as often as the moon changes her ghostly visage across the span of the hours, the lady writer saw fit to cleverly set the entirety of my tale within the picture most often brought to mind by those who have read my child; the ghostly and spider-whiskered dining room of perhaps its most memorable character; the poor, jilted, heartsick chatelaine of Satis House, doomed forever to stare at the rotting bride-cake among the timeworn ruins of her ill-fated wedding feast. For indeed this is a wonderous thing in all its decaying beauty, its mouldering mint and granulating gold, with great gaps in the rotten walls for my puppets to appear from and use as doorways into their brief world, lit by the guttering candles festooned with webs placed around the room like so many cadaverous footmen around the rotting feast. And wonderous and enchanting use was made of the table upon which the ghastly banquet was set (notably of the fateful journey down the dark and treacherous waters of the Thames), and of the fine mirror set above the fireplace from which my Miss Havisham made her first entrance, a knowing and cunning reference to the way in which she would make her untimely exit from this world. And the music which played upon the scenes sparkled like the freshest dew upon the mornng leaves, and the design of the lighting was as wonderous as the the daily rising from the east of the chariot of Apollo. The clothes in which my characters were arrayed were fine and trim, bedecked with the webs of the spiders that scuttled through the mouldering wainscotting, giving the impression that they had been called forth from the dark recesses of their literary graves by the recollections of Master Pip and Mistress Estella who had returned to the dining room of Satis House to call forth their memories of the adventures that had befallen them there so many years before. Indeed, there was a ghostly, almost gothic atmosphere about the entire proceedings, giving the work a fine flavour of doom, and dust, and decay, which I confess seemed to be somewhat missing from my original manuscript. 

The clever actress Miss Wilcox, portraying my Miss Havisham, gives a remarkable and affecting performance, although it did seem to me that she was in possession of rather more of her wits than in my novel; for here she is somewhat lucid and calculating an oh! how it does irk me not to see her clothed in the appropriate wedding attire – for my poor Miss H, having intended to sail forth upon the sea of matrimony bedecked in the finery appropriate during the time of the old Regency, is once again clothed in the “modern” style of the mid 1870s. Her ward, Miss Estella, is played competently enough by Miss Rowe although indeed does try much too hard to make her one onto whom we might bestow our sympathies; my original is colder, brittle and hard like a sheet of ice that stealthily creeps across the silent millpond during a dead of winter’s night, shining invitingly that one might don one’s furs and skates, and take a single treacherous step upon its surface. Mr. Ellison shows the heretofore undsicovered humanity of the wicked criminal Magwitch (and indeed his climatic scene was portrayed in such affecting stillness as to silence even the fishwives and their ruffian consorts who had constantly gossiped and fidgeted through much of the performance to my chagrin. The young Mr. Jay-Davies makes a sterling portrayal of my young Master Pip and there is much to recommend Mr. Ellis who storms the stage and wraps the entirety in webs of legalese as the cunning lawyer Mr. Jaggers. Indeed so clever is his portrayal that, though but a relatively minor character, we leave the theatre duly impressed with the idea that Mr. Jaggers is indeed the puppet master making the dolls upon the stage dance as he wishes them to. My sympathies are directed towards Mr. Nivison, playing the older version of Pip, who is given little enough to do save at the very beginning and the very end; having set the wheels of my plot in motion by reminiscing about times and adventures past, he is forced to linger upon the stage like some untimely ghost denied the solace of Christian repose through lack of decent burial.

There is, in short, very much to recommend about Miss Clifford’s adaptation of my work for portrayal upon the stage, save for the somewhat murderous butchery necessary in pursuance of cramming my enormous, unwieldy child into the brief compass of a duo of hours. Indeed, it may be thought wise to pursue a thorough study of the story beforehand that one may follow the perigrinations of the story and not become most thoroughly bewildered. A fine evening, my masters and mistresses of the theatrical arts, whether those of you visible to the paying crowd or those who serve their particular muse in the dark and imp-haunted corners of the theatre.

The author extends his thanks to the fine Mr. Brick (who possesses such an interesting name that I do believe I shall find use for it to christen some future offspring of my fertile mind within an as yet unwritten tome) and his excellent company of ShowsInLondon for bestowing the wherewithal to attend this production and entertain you, dear Reader, with these poor wandering thoughts which are offered for your consideration and delight. The author’s companion, a fine lady of no small experience of the theatrical profession herself, graciously extends her thanks to your esteemed organisation and bids me express them to you on her behalf.

What the critics said
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/feb/07/great-expectations-review

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/38177/great-expectations