Candide - Menier Chocolate Factory, Sunday 22nd December 2013

Synopsis:

Candide, the illegitimate nephew of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronck, is bullied by the Baroness and her son Maximillian.  Candide is in love with Cunegonde, the Baroness' daughter. Along with Cunegonde's maid, Paquette, they  discover that Dr. Pangloss, a man thought to be the world's greatest philosopher, has taught them happiness.  Candide and Cunegonde dream of what married life would be like with wildly differing views. The Baron is angered at what Candide has done to Cunegonde, as he is a social inferior. Candide is promptly exiled and is recruited by the Bulgar Army, who plots to liberate Schloss Thunder-ten-Tronck. His attempt to escape the army is foiled, and both armies attack the castle.  All the principal characters are killed.  Candide returns to the castle's ruins and searches for Cunegonde.  Hebecomes a beggar and gives  the last of his coins to a syphilitic man who turns out to be Dr.Pangloss, who reveals that he was revived by an anatomist's scalpel.  Apparently he contracted his syphilis from Pacquette.  A merchant offers the two employment and they sail to Lisbon. As they arrive, a volcano erupts and the ensuing earthquake results in the death of 30,000 people. Pangloss and Candide are blamed, arrested as heretics and publicly tortured to face the Grand Inquisitor. Pangloss is hanged and Candide is flogged.  Candide eventually ends up in Paris, where a mysterious but beautiful woman is shared sexually by a rich Jew and the city's Cardinal Archbishop.  Cunegonde (for it is she, miraculously alive) contemplates her fall from purity in exchange for wealth. Candide is reunited with her and forgives her. Her companion, an old lady, forewarns Cunegonde and Candide that Cunegonde's lovers are about to call. Candide inadvertently kills both. The three flee to Cadiz with Cunegonde's jewels, where the Old Lady reveals her colourful past.. The jewels are stolen and the Old Lady offers to sing for Candide's dinner.  The French police arrive and attempt to apprehend Candide for murdering the Jew and the Archbishop. Candide befriends Cacambo, a Brazillian, and accepts him as his valet. Accepting an offer to fight the Jesuits in South America against the Spanish government, Candide takes his friends to the New World, and they sail away, hoping to find peace and happiness.

In Montevideo,  the four are reunited with Maximillian and Paquette who have escaped from Europe dressed as slave girls. The governor of the city falls in love with Maximilian, but quickly realizes his mistake and falls in love with Cunegonde. The Old Lady convinces Cunegonde that her marriage to the governor will support her financially and she reluctantly submits. Candide and Cacambo stumble upon a Jesuit camp and discovers that the Mother Superior is actually Paquette and the Father Superior is Maximilian. When Candide tells Maximilian that he will marry Cunegonde, Maximilian challenges him to a fight. Maximilian is once again inadvertently stabbed to death by Candide, who flees into the jungle with Cacambo.

Three years later, Cunegonde and the Old Lady are bored with life in Montevideo Meanwhile, Candide and Cacambo are starving and lost in the jungles. Finding an abandoned boat  they float downriver until they finally reach Eldorado, the fabled city of gold. Finding peace for a while, they stay, but eventually Candide begins to pine for Cunegonde and are given blessing to leave and take several solid gold sheep with them.  Durign the journey, the sheep die or are lost until only two remain. Unwilling to go back to Montevideo, Candide gives Cacambo one of the sheep to ransom Cunegonde, telling them that they will meet again in Venice

Arriving at Suriname,  Candide meets Martin, a local pessimist.  Vanderdendur, a Dutch villain, offers his ship, the Santa Rosalia, bound for Venice, in exchange for the golden sheep. The ship sinks and Martin and Vandendur drown.  Candide drifts ashore with the last remaining sheep, and travels to Venice where the Carnival festival is taking place. Candide searches for Cunegonde and meets Maximilian, who is revived once again and now is the corrupt Prefect of Police. Paquette is now one of the town's most successful prostitutes. Cunegonde and the Old Lady are employed to encourage the gamblers.  Pangloss wins a game of Roulette, but fritters his money away.  Candide discovers that Cunegonde is leading a dissolute life and is appalled.  Between them, the characters scrape together enough money to buy a small farm. Candide and Cunegonde are reconciled and they all settle down to a simple but happy life together.

Cast:

Dr. Pangloss/Cacambo/Martin: James Dreyfus

Candide: Fra Fee

Paquette: Cassidy Janson

Maximillian: David Thaxton

Cunegonde: Scarlett Strallen

Baron: Michael Cahill

Governor/Vanderdendur: Ben Lewis

Old Lady: Jackie Cline

Creative Team:

Music: Leonard Bernstein

Adaptation: Hugh Wheeler

Lyrics: Richard Wilbur

Additional Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lilian Helman, Dororthy Parker

Director: Matthew White

Choreography: Adam Cooper

Set and Costumes: Paul Farnsworth

Lighting: Paul Anderson

Well, if you have to sell your house in order to get a ticket for this, do it. You won't regret it.  I have to admit that I was slightly concerned that Him Indoors had paid well over the odds for our tickets (they were relatively expensive: we usually sit in the cheap seats and lump it) but I would gladly have paid double to see this. There is energy, enthusiasm, creativity, great direction, humour in buckets, a fantastic cast who work their collective backsides off and, most importantly, heart.  Candide is a work that needs heart, or it will fail miserably.  If you saw the National Theatre production of this yonks and yonks ago, you will know what I mean.  The production didn't have any heart. 

This production, however, has more heart than should be allowed. The entire place brims over with it.  Every single person on that stage works like a trouper.  There is not a single person who is being "carried" and there is not a single weak link in the chain.  They earn their money.  And more.
 

Yes, the show is flawed.  Its waaaaay too long (this is the "opera house" version not the pallid 1956 one), wildly uneven and can be very dark. There are places where it drags terribly and the story runs out of steam several times.  As a response, several songs (notably "Dear Boy", "We are Women" and "Quiet") and a few minor scenes  have been cut and  it still drags in a few places (by halfway throught the second half, both the cast and the audience are knackered; this, however, may well have been a lot do with the intense heat in the auditorium.  Such a small space heats up very quickly).  But by the time you get to the rousing finale, nobody cares.  Everyone has had a good time.  Everyone has gone on the journey, undergone its various triumphs and calamaties with the characters and come out the other side relatively unscathed, a lot wiser and hopefully a lot happier.  We've loved, laughed, suffered, cried, been shipwrecked on the barren coasts of loss and celebrated at the festival of life. 

There is a clever and simple framing device to the story.  The audience enter the auditorium through tented entrances, displaying a small playbill.  Apparently a peformance of Candide is going to be given.  We sit around the fringes of a  small, Mittel-European town square, bedecked with shutters and balconies and a troupe of slightly ragged travelling players tumble into the square and start unpacking.  Costumes are pulled from chests and donned and the show begins.  So we're not just watching a show, we are watching a performance of a show.  Clever.  This gets round the problematic size of the cast of characters, as most of  the troupe double-, triple- or even quadruple-up their parts.  The need for multiple locations is got around by using simple props to evoke a place, just as it would be in a "strolling player" production.  Look closely and you will see that the costumes bear the traces of long use, of being sweated into and hauled about from place to place stuffed into trunks and in bags.  They are frayed around the edges, down at the hems and going bald in places.  Umbrellas and parasols have spokes missing, wigs are moulting.  Just as it should be. 

Plaudits and hurrahs in bucketsful to Scarlett Strallen.  Her performance is a masterclass of how to play Cunegonde, and as for her rendition of "Glitter and be gay" - well, its totes amaze, as I believe they say.  It is fiendishly difficult anyway and yet she throws herself around the floor and drapes herself over a chaise longue and then puts a rope of diamonds (stolen, wittily, from a chandelier) around her neck and proceeeds to hula hoop them around her throat.  My dear, that is technique.   She is well and ably supported by James Dreyfus as Pangloss, Cacambo and Martin (if I were to make a cut, I would cut the character of Martin and his one song - "Words, words, words, words" -  as neither make any notable contribution to the plot), even though he is quite obviously outclassed by other performers more vocally gifted).  It is nice to see him not have to camp it up for once.  Jackie Clune's Old Lady is perhaps a trifle underpowered - sure, she does everythign that is necessary for the role but she is no exponent of comic timing, a vital attribute for the role, and a lot of the character's funniest lines go for nothing (ff you have the luck to see a recording of Ann Howard in the Scottish Opera version at the Old Vic, note her coming timing as well as her obvious operatic skills).   If there was one disappointing Principal then it was the oddly-monikered Fra Fee, who has not got the requisite top notes to sing the role of Candide as written in the score and who does not seem to have mastered the art of stage make-up yet either, looking like some kind of Westphalian Goth. 

Of the minor principals (I say "minor", but in this cast, nobody rests; when you are not playing a named part you are slogging your guts out in the chorus) then Ben Lewis is notable for his portrayal of the Governor of Buenos Aires and Vanderdendur.  Mr. Lewis has the kind of pure, clear, strong tenor voice that Mr. Fee can only dream of, and hits some amazing, completely unforced top B flats that ring out like cathedral bells.  Well, he did play the Phantom in Love Never Dies, so what do you expect?  Well done, that man. 

Take a bottle of water into the auditorium. Go to the toilet beforehand.  Try and avoid the front row if you are shy because you may find yourself roped unwillingly into the action at several points.  Check your cynicism at the cloakroom (you will find plenty more inside).  And have a bloody good night out in the company of people who know what they are doing and how to entertain.  And act, and sing, and dance, often all at the same time.  Sell your grandmother for a ticket if necessary.  If there is any justice in the world (and Candide teaches us that there is, indeed, no justice in this world,despite all our efforts to believe so) then this show will transfer to the West End and run and run and run and be showered with awards.   But, unfortunately, as the characters find out eventually and to their great cost, this is not the best of all possible worlds.  So catch this if and while you can.  The world will be a duller place without it.

What the critics thought:

http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-candide-menier-chocolate-factory/

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10492055/Candide-Menier-Chocolate-Factory-review.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/candide-menier-chocolate-factory--theatre-review-8979774.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/candide-menier-chocolate-factory

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/dec/03/candide-menier-review

We interrupt this broadcast....

Not that I have been broadcasting much over the last couple of months (for which my continued apologies - unfortunately life sometimes just gets in the way)....

Readers may have already heard about this evening's horrific events at the Apollo Theatre.  During a performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a section of the main auditorium ceiling gave way.  A lighting rig came down and fell onto a section of the Upper Circle, part of which then also collapsed.  There are many reported injured, 8 seriously, and our thoughts are with those people and their families after what must have been a terrible, terrible event.  Thankfully there are no reported fatalities. 

However, this incident does prompt serious questions.  The first is that the Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed building.  How then has the building been allowed to fall into what seems like such serious disrepair that such an incident can happen?  Surely English Heritage demand that such buildings are regularly inspected?  

The second is that Nimax Theatres, who own this and several other theatres, charge a compulsory "Restoration Levy" on each ticket sold. That's £1 on each and every ticket sold (theatre capacity is 775 seats). Over the years this must have netted the owners a considerable amount of £. This money is supposed to be spent on restoration and maintenance, which means that we, theatregoers, are putting our hands in our pockets and paying for maintenance ourselves, which is surely the responsibility of the owners?   Why has this money apparently not been spent on restoration and maintenance and, more importantly, where has it gone?  Into the pockets of Nimax and their shareholders??  

yeah yeah I know

I haven't posted anything for a while.  There is a review of Don Quixote hanging around that I keep meaning to write.  Soon. OK?  Not much money in the bank for theatre tickets at the moment.  Hence lack of reviews.  However, Him Indoors will be coming into some money shortly so expect that quite a lot of it will be going on theatre tickets. Hurrah.  Because I am getting bored with TV.

Dracula - Wilton's Music Hall, Tuesday 29th October 2013

Cast:

Dracula – Jonathan Goddard

Mina Harker – Eleanor Duval

Jonathan Harker – Christopher Tandy

Lucy Westenra – Kristin McGuire

Doctor – Wayne Parsons

Priest – Jordi Calpe Serrats

Lord – Alan Vincent

Vampire Brides – Cree Williams, Nichole Guarino, Hannah Kidd

Creative Team

Choreographed and directed by Mark Bruce

Set: Phil Eddols

Lighting: Guy Hoare

Costumes: Dorothee Brodruck

Holy Mary, mother of God this is scary.  And even more so when watched in the atmospheric, creepy Wilton’s Music Hall.  Had there been room, I would probably have peed myself on at least two occasions – but you have to be thin to sit comfortably at Wiltons, because the seats are all closely lashed together with absolutely no room between them, so I spent most of the first half sitting on one buttock and the second half bolt upright with my shoulders well forward so that the people sitting next to me could sit with their backs against the chair backs, so that the people sitting next to them could sit bolt upright with their shoulders well forward, and so on and so on down the row.  This is not the level of buttock and shoulder room I expect when the seat price is enough to feed me for a week.  Because of the lack of room between seats, each person in the row was overflowing onto their neighbour’s seat by about 5cm, causing serious problems towards the end of each row for anyone with broad shoulders or a large bottom or both.  This was the theatrical equivalent of economy class on EasyJet.  Not that most of Wilton’s patrons will know what EasyJet is – there is a seeming creeping Hoxtonisation going on, rather like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  You know the sort – achingly trendy types with iPads, designer spectacle frames and nebulous jobs in the meeja.  The type who can’t go anywhere without a drink first and another drink in the interval and a polystyrene carton of something ethnic to munch on during the second half, like the impossibly pompous “student of Brecht” sitting right behind me whose knowledge of Brecht was so paper-thin that I heard a lot of talk about a play called “The irresistible rise of ……someone or other” which is apparently “like, you know, about, like, Hitler, I think”. 

Anyway, I digress.  As I said, Holy Mary mother of God this is scary.  Simply and economically told, pared down to the essence of the story (gone are the Van Helsing and Renfield sub-plots) and, to use a much over-used adjective, gothic.  Its also very smoky, so take some cough sweets.  And a bucket to pee into.  There are some flashes of humour – the courtship of Lucy Westenra by the doctor, the priest and a lord (a wonderfully rambunctious and randy characterisation by Alan Vincent, which wouldn’t have looked out of place on the music hall stage), for instance – but mostly its full on scary, and at times damned frightening; the carriage ride to Castle Dracula will stay with me for a long time, as will the rising of Lucy from her tomb.  There’s just one slightly odd note – before the interval, Count Dracula goes into a slightly grotesque version of a music hall number with top hat and cane, which I didn’t understand at all and which didn’t fit with the rest of the production in any way, seemingly – it looked like Baron Samedi doing a bit of soft-shoe.  The idea of having the three Vampire Brides act almost as a chorus, always observing, always present, is clever.  There are some very “filmic” moments – the scene in the tavern, the carriage ride, Dracula slithering down the castle wall, the final chase through the snow –some incredibly well-designed lighting and enough genuinely scary moments to haunt the dreams of anyone with an over-active imagination for a good long time. Atmosphere is provided in buckets by a wild smorgasbord of music from Mozart to music hall (for me, hearing a recording of the original version of “Down at the old Bull and Bush” echoing through a place where that original version is highly likely to have been sung night after night was really scary). Me, I’m keeping a light on and some garlic handy, just in case. 

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/oct/17/mark-bruce-company-dracula-review

http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/theatre/436026/Dracula-dance-tour-at-Wilton-s-Music-Hall-review

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/29/dracula-mark-bruce-company-review

http://londondance.com/articles/reviews/mark-bruce-company-dracula-wiltons/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/10355795/Dracula-at-Tobacco-Factory-Bristol-review.html

About 2/3 of A Midsummer Night's Dream - Noel Coward Theatre, Wednesday 24th September 2013

Cast:
Theseus/Oberon - Padraic Delaney
Hippolyta/Titania - Sheridan Smith
Egeus - Leo Wringer
Hermia - Susannah Fielding
Demetrius - Stefano Braschi
Lysander - Sam Swainsbury
Helena - Katherine Kingsley
Peter Quince/Moth - Richard Dempsey
Bottom - David Walliams
Francis Flute/Mustardseed - Alex Large
Tom Snout/Peaseblossom - Henry Everett
Snug the Joiner - Craig Vye
Puck - Gavin Fowler
Robin Starveling/Cobweb - Stefan Adegbola

Creative Team:
Director - Michael Grandage
Set and Costumes - Christopher Oram (aka Mrs. Grandage0
Lighting (Paule Constable)

Lordy, this is a lazy production.  Lazy in that the text has been slashed to ribbons (presumably so that the plebs who are flocking to see David Walliams are introduced gently to the concept of Shakespeare; its less than 2 1/2 hours long including the interval) which is surprising because, as someone pointed out to me recently, the Dream is one of the few Shakespeare plays where you don't mind sitting and listening to it all).  Lazy in that the text that does remain is gabbled through at such a pace that you can't hear that much of it anyway - its almost as if the cast are either doing a "speed read" rehearsal or competing among themselves as to who can spit their lines out the fastest, or that someone has their eye on a particular train home and is racing for it.  Lazy in the fact that there are several people in the cast (some in major roles) who have never done any Shakespeare before in their entire lives) - if Mr. Grandage knew that people would be flocking to see someone in particular why did he not bother to give a bit more to his audience by surrounding them with the best actors he could find?  Lazy in the fact that a couple of people in the cast have already appeared in other plays in this season and Mr. Grandage obviously thought it would be easier and cheaper to keep them in the company despite being woefully inadequate for their role in Dream.  Lazy in that there is only one permanent set so there is no sense of "meanwhile, in another part of the forest". Lazy in that all the named fairy parts are doubled by those playing the Mechanicals.   Lazy in that there is absolutely no exploration of the play's darker themes.  Lazy in that although this is being trumpeted as "tickets for a tenner" none of the publicity mentions that in the £10 seats you can only see 2/3 of the stage - when characters stand on the "wild bank" at the rear, all you can see is their feet, and at no point can you see any of the backdrop whatsoever.   Lazy in that Mr. Walliams does nothing - nothing - with the pivotal role of Bottom other than exactly the same as he has always done before.  And lazy in that what comedy there is here mainly consists of cheap laughs rather than any real humour. 

 

Sheridan Smith is probably the best thing in this, and that isn't saying much.  At least she has a fair stab at Shakespeare's poetic Queen of the Fairies, but she looks and sounds like a superannuated character from Cats. There's nothing of the anger or the darkness of the role on show. She purrs and vamps her way though the part, completely ignoring the brittle yet otherworldy nature of Titania.  She is given no help whatsoever by Padraic Delaney, who is the worst Oberon I have ever seen (and I have seen Dream more times than I care to remember).  He has no gravitas, no mystery, no depth and no authority whatsoever, but giggles and simpers through the part and is seemingly channelling Ed Byrne.  His Theseus is a walking disaster.  The four lovers are anodyne and without a shred of character between them (and between all four can only boast minimal Shakespearean experience).  It would seem that Messrs Swainsbury and Braschi - Lysander and Demetrius respectively - were cast for their rippling torsos and pert buttocks rather than any kind of acting ability.  I suspect that Mr. Grandage fancied a bit of semi-naked eye candy to direct; all four lovers gradually (or not so gradually) lose items of clothing until they are running around the Athenian wood in their scanties.  Obviously not a very muddy wood (even though Titania observes that "the nine men's morris is filled with mud" as a result of the weather being completely out of synch with the season) because all remains pristine; perhaps Proctor and Gamble have put money into the production?  All four of them gabble at such a rate that their scenes become incomprehensible; if I didn't already know the plot backwards then I would have been completely and totally lost as to what was going on.  David Walliams is David Walliams and that is really all that can be said for his "performance".  Its a lazy retread of his various roles in Little Britain and shows us nothing new, nothing of his supposed "range".  I don't think he actually has one;  this is probably all that he can do.  And yet people were practically falling about in the aisles.  I have no idea why.  In retrospect it was fortunate that there were no solo curtain calls because I would have booed very, very loudly.

There was very little magic in this production.  The fairies are 60s hippies, spliffed out and dancing to tracks from the Carpenters and the Beach Boys.  This puts them firmly in the human realm when they should inhabit a parallel, dark world of Faerie. A dangerous world which may mirror the human one but is a fractured, enchanted ones.   At least give the poor buggers some wings, because otherwise it looks like they are just a load of dropouts passing through Athens.  OK, if they are on drugs and tripping out, at least make it look and sound and feel like they are spliffed out.  The magic flower that Oberon uses to enchant the eyes of Titania and the lovers was here a tab of acid - but there was no triply lighting effect, no sense of looking at the world and seeing it changed or somehow beyond your control.  To steal an idea from the FT review below, this entire production takes a puff on a joint but doesn't inhale.  And to steal another idea from the Telegraph, in Shakespeare the "wood" is both inside and outside - its inside your head (a place where you can escape and dream) and outside the city, away from the constraints of being who others expect you to be.  Its a place where you can literally cut loose.  But the production doesn't. 

 

Its so frustrating when you see a production like this.  All the potential for a really popular "bums on seats" production because of the "big name draw" was wasted.  One cannot blame the cast, merely Mr. Grandage for being so effing lazy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/london-shows/10315107/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream-Noel-Coward-Theatre-review.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a65952f2-205b-11e3-9a9a-00144feab7de.html#axzz2gIPulDtk

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/17/midsummer-nights-dream-review-walliams-smith

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/18/a-midsummer-nights-dream-had-acid-and-dope-but-lacked-a-little-substance-4048085/
 

 

Storm in a Flower Vase - Arts Theatre, Friday 20th September 2013

Synopsis:

Iconic floral designer and cookery writer Constance Spry remains a household name to this day. A pioneer for working women, she ran a successful business as the florist of choice for the highest of high society, designing floral displays for royal weddings and for the Queen’s coronation as well as creating the iconic dish Coronation Chicken.  But behind the image of this highly respected businesswoman lay a very different story  of marital discord, affairs and heartache….

Cast:

Constance Spry – Penny Downie

Henry Spry – Christopher Ravenscroft

Val Pirie – Sally George

Rosemary Hume – Sheila Ruskin

Hannah Gluckstein – Carolyn Backhouse

Syrie Maugham – Carol Royle

Creative Team:

Writer – Anton Burge

Director – Alan Strachan

Design – Morgan Large

Lighting – James Whiteside

WARNING – THIS PLAY CONTAINS SMOKING.  THERE IS ALSO ADULTERY, DECEIT, LESBIANISM AND SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE BUT YOU WILL BE CONFRONTED BY A SIGN ON THE AUDITORIUM DOORS WARNING YOU THAT CIGARETTES ARE GOING TO BE SMOKED ON STAGE.  IF YOUR SENSIBILITIES CAN COPE WITH ADULTERY, DECEIT, LESBIANISM AND SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE  BUT YOU FALL INTO A SWOON AT THE MERE THOUGHT OF TOBACCO BEING CONSUMED ON THE STAGE, DO NOT BUY TICKETS FOR THIS PLAY.

When making a flower arrangement, it is important not to try and cram in too much material, otherwise you may overwhelm the design.  The stems of this play are far too long and need a good trim down.  Even the hardier blooms in the audience on Friday began to wilt as the play ticked towards 2 ¾ hours.  I began to need an aspirin dissolved in the water.  Some of the material in the arrangement needs cutting back, and some elements are too showy and threaten to unbalance the layout in their favour.  Conversely, some parts resemble foliage stuck in to bulk out the design.  Never, ever, over-vase your flowers.   

This is an old-fashioned arrangement of a kind that will appeal to a certain audience.  It will find favour among middle aged, middle class ladies who belong to the WI and who consider themselves too old to go out on the lash before screaming obscenities from the rear stalls at The Bodyguard.  There will be coach parties coming up from the Home Counties, armed with OASIS, pin holders and crumpled chicken wire. 

Penny Downie “Constance Spry”  is a hardy perennial and is shown off to good effect in this particular vase, working particularly well in this arrangement.  The creeping bindweed in the plot is the role of Hannah Gluckstein, scrambling all over several long scenes and in need of cutting back.  It is an unsympathetic, stereotypical part, badly written and, like Ruta graveolens (rue),  irritating after a while and frankly somewhat embarrassing.   The appalling wig a la Glenda Jackson on a particularly bad hair day doesn’t help.  Conversely Carol Royle “Syrie Maugham” appears in two scenes and blooms gaudily all over them, pulling focus from the other parts and threatening to overbalance the arrangement.  Always strive for harmony in your arrangements, ladies.  Each specimen must support but not outshine the others.   Fortunately, good support is offered by Christopher Ravenscroft as a dry old stick propping up some of the foliage. 

An opportunity was lost here to create drama.  Spry’s arrangements were always dramatic but, like a branch of Corkscrew Hazel, this representation weaves about all over the place and doesn’t really come to any definable conclusion.  Rather like the one floral arrangement at the local flower show that fails to win any prizes, it is pleasant enough but there’s no real drama.  The end of the first act is a bit of a fudge – everyone leaves the stage and the lights dim, and therefore the audience thinks its time to clap, but then the lights go up again to reveal a solitary painting hung in an art gallery.  The applause dies out – and then the lights go down again and everyone has to start clapping again.  We may possibly have been mislead into clapping as Carole Royle’s mother was obviously in the audience and applauded on her exit.  When this happened again after Ms. Royle’s one scene in the second half, nobody was fooled and the auditorium rang out with the sound of one person clapping.  They soon stopped when they realised nobody else followed suit. 

There are an awful lot of plastic flowers in this show.  Unfortunately Monkshood (aconitum napellus) is referred to as being in the first bunch you see but there isn’t any in it.  There is also a red Anemone “De Caen” in a scene that takes place in January, which is wrong, because Anemone “De Caen” blossoms in April.  At one point a painting is made of a floral arrangement.  The painting contains a single bloom of Anthurium but the floral arrangement it depicts does not – there are white tulips, calla lilies, narcissus and sprays of some kind of daisy-type “filler” flower but no Anthuriums.   One of the characters in the play is based on Syrie Maugham but this is spelt as “Maughan” in the programme.  The back of the programme carries an advert for what I assume is a hideously expensive Covent Garden florist.  The photograph in this advert is of appalling quality.  The photograph includes a large arrangement of deep red flowers (possibly roses, but the picture is of too poor a quality to be sure).  The picture is in black and white.  Red flowers do not show up well  in black and white images and you would have thought that a) a professional photographer would have known this and b) the firm it advertises would have commissioned a better picture both in terms of quality and presentation of their products.  There is a facebook tag on the back of the flyer with the facebook “F” followed by “artstheatrewestend”.  Unfortunately this makes it read as Fartstheatrewestend. 

Personally, I think “Storm in a Flower Vase” is a really, really naff title and smacks of desperation because the author couldn’t think of a better alternative.  The root phrase “storm in a teacup describes something which is wildly overblown but really adds up to nothing very much, a bit like this play.  Inoffensive, pleasant enough, slightly old fashioned and over-vased.  

Sincerely, Mr. Toad - Greenwich Theatre, Friday 13th September 2013

Synopsis:

Kenneth Grahame makes the lives of his family unbearable while writing The Wind in the Willows and then his son kills himself.  It takes 2 and a half hours to get to this point, by which time nobody cares.

Cast:

Kenneth Grahame – Adam Venus

Mouse – Keith Jack

Elspeth Grahame – Sarah Borges

Beth Thorpe – Kirsty Anne Myers

Ensemble – Luke Foster, Jamie Jukes, Gareth Healey, Gracie Hughes, Kayleigh Smith, Emma Salvo, Julia Cave

Creative Team:

Music – David Andrew Wilson

Book – David Hutchinson

Lyrics – Katie McIvor

Director – Phillip Rowntree

If I had known this was by the Sell a Door Theatre Company then I would have run a mile from it.  I’ve suffered at their hands before.  And in the process of expressing my opinion, found myself on the receiving end of abuse from members of the company.  Well, I had better dig out my tin hat and flak jacket because I am probably going to get some more 

This has got FAILURE written all over it.  To start with, the subject matter is tired, and I can’t say that its one I really care for anyway.  Essentially, the story is about how dreadful Kenneth Grahame’s life was and how he got so obsessed with writing The Wind in the Willows that he made everyone else’s life awful as well, ignoring his wife and eventually leading to the suicide of his son, Mouse.  This kind of thing – digging about in the psyche of authors of famous children’s authors and uncovering darkness – has been done before  and it didn’t work then.  To set this kind of depressing story to music just isn’t going to work full stop.  Particularly when the story is set in a specific period and the music doesn’t reflect this at all. In fact, the score of this musical is so wildly inappropriate to its subject that I began to think that Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad might soon be waving flags on the barricades as Paris burnt down around them.  Its all very sub-Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Even though His Lordship was actually in the audience , where were Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad all night?  You would have thought that, given the entire story is about the man who created them from his imagination, it might have been appropriate to have incorporated them as characters?  Only once did we get a glimpse into Grahame’s fantasy world of animals and you have to wait for the opening of act 2 to get it – by which time we had nearly given up.  In fact, Him Indoors turned to me in the interval and said “Do you want to stay for the second half?”, which in retrospect I now recognise as a thinly-disguised request to go home.    Grahame’s story is dreary, without sparkle and so portentous that you can tell after the first 20 minutes that you ain’t going to get a happy ending .  Knowing that its all going to go tits up is depressing, and you can feel the doom reaching out to you and dragging you down.  Its over-long by at least half an hour, mainly because the subject is so depressing.  I am sure that everyone went home wondering whether to feel miserable (Mouse commits suicide in some undefined way at the end – possibly there is a train involved but this is unclear) or elated  because they didn’t  have to sit through any more of it. 

Production values were so thin as to be see-through. On a budget this might have been, but this looked cheap and nasty.  Someone’s old bedsheets made makeshift drapes to “decorate” the stage (serving only to emphasise the bleakness rather than hide it) and there was a tiny plywood desk on wonky castors with old books nailed all over it.  Two sets of steps disguised as stacks of books must have taken up a goodly chunk of the production budget and, to be frank, I think it could have better been spent elsewhere.   Better costumes, certainly.    At least, I think they were meant to be books.   Given a decent budget, it might be possible to turn this show into something worth watching, but its going to need some far superior choreography to that which it has at the moment , a major rewrite and a complete change of director. 

Whoever was working on the Sound Desk needs retraining or sacking.  It was all so over-amplified that for a long time I couldn’t hear anything that was being said or sung.  

Given the dreariness of the material, everyone tried hard.  Mouse is a character without any redeeming qualities whatsoever and it is impossible to feel empathy with him, so it is lucky that Keith Jacks didn’t even seem to be trying.  Winsome will only get you so far, love.  Sarah Borges as Mrs. Grahame hid her light under a bushel until almost the very end, taking on a solo of such musical complexity and requiring an incredible vocal range so she can be excused for finding the upper and lower reaches slightly difficult.  Move the song away from the end of Act 2, direct it more sympathetically and it has the potential to be a showstopper.   Nobody else really made an impression.

A real stinker. 

http://londoneer.org/2013/09/review-sincerely-mr-toad-greenwich-theatre.html

http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/blog/2013/08/15/musical-review-sincerely-mr-toad/