Monthly Archives: January 2013

Review – Uncle Vanya, Vaudeville Theatre, 2nd January 2013

Posted on by

It’s always a delight to get your teeth into a meaty chunk of Chekhov, and I wasn’t that certain if I’d ever seen a production of Uncle Vanya before. If I have, it was a jolly long time ago. Mrs Chrisparkle was pretty sure she had never seen it. So, with a rather exciting looking cast it was an obvious choice for one of our three nights in London at the beginning of January.

Written as the 1800s turned into the 1900s, the play is chock-full of the themes you would expect to find in your average Chekhov. Unrequited love, people growing old tragically alone, the pompous pretensions of the middle classes, selfish older people, too much vodka and forestry. Never forget the forestry. Remember the Cherry Orchard, which ends with the trees being chopped down, representing the end of the old order? In Uncle Vanya you have the woefully underachieved Doctor Astrov,who likes to spend his time tending the forests, which activity is obviously attractive to the downtrodden Sonya, who admires and values his hard work. Today you would guess they would both work for the Forestry Commission. The forests that surround the Serebryakov estate depict life – but still, dull, fruitless, dark, never changing life. The kind of life that bored, sad Yelena has married into; she who is a beacon of light for both the doctor and the useless eponymous uncle (actually brother-in-law as far as Yelena is concerned), but a light neither of them will ever get to see by.

No one gets a happy ending but nevertheless it’s not a depressing evening. It’s a fascinating play that gives you loads to think about on the way home, and its flashes of humour are very believable and provide dramatic highlights in this production. It’s thoughtfully and gently directed by Lindsay Posner with no wacky modern ideas of souping it up. Christopher Oram’s sets are very realistic and claustrophobic, but they take a helluva long time to shift from Acts 1 to 2 and 3 to 4, to the detriment of the dramatic tension on stage, which begins to ebb away as a slight impatience for the next scene arises. If the slow scene changes are a subtle way of telling us that life in 19th century Russia moves at a snail’s pace, it doesn’t work.

One other aspect of the general design that I wasn’t entirely happy with, is that there are a number of moments when a character either observes something without other characters noticing, for example Vanya catching Astrov and Yelena in an embrace, or when someone talks about another character out of their earshot, as when Vanya criticises his brother. The Vaudeville stage isn’t that wide, and with the sets as detailed as they are, it is fairly impossible to provide enough visible space between the onlookers and the others to give a credible impression that one bunch of actors can’t see what’s going on at the other end of the stage. Yes I know this is one of those theatrical things where you have to suspend belief, but actually I found it quite hard to suspend it to that extent.

Ken Stott is a brilliant Vanya. He’s gruff and blustery, passionate and outspoken, but it’s easy to see that’s mainly a front and that deep down he’s a pretty inadequate human being. He could have done something with his life – maybe – his criticising mother (a suitably stern and grumpy Anna Carteret) certainly thinks so; but then he’s 53 and she still doesn’t treat him as an adult, so I don’t suppose he cares what she thinks. He is equally critical of Serebryakov, who has enjoyed some distant success, and Ken Stott plays Vanya’s dismissiveness of his brother’s achievements with a very credible glee. The scene where Vanya shoots his brother is a delight; both Mr Stott and Paul Freeman as the hideously self-obsessed Serebryakov react hilariously to the outcome.

Two other scenes that worked really well – and brought out the humour in the sadness – were the encounter between Astrov (Samuel West giving a great performance of charming inanity) and Yelena (Anna Friel giving equal weight to the character’s mischievousness and sense of total defeat) when she feigns interest in the doctor’s map collection in order to get his attention, ostensibly to find out if he fancies Sonya. He goes all anorakky about it and she fails to convince any interest in the dull old maps whatsoever;Mrs C and I both recognised some of the worst defects in our own personalities there, just as I expect millions of people have done for the last 114 years. I also very much liked the scene in Act Four where Vanya and the Doctor are sitting side by side on Vanya’s bed and he can no longer control his great sadness at the way life has turned out. It was a very moving conversation, played to perfection by Messrs Stott and West.

Laura Carmichael plays the hopeless Sonya with quiet dignity and gives a very convincing performance of someone who clings on to the tiniest hope even though she knows it’s absolutely fatuous. June Watson’s Marina is a kindly and strong old Chekhovian retainer and the always reliable Mark Hadfield brings out both the humour and the weakness of the wretched old landowner Telyegin.

All in all it’s a very satisfying and straightforward presentation of a thought provoking and still relevant play. Definitely recommended.

Review – Hello Dolly, Leicester Curve, 30th December 2012

Posted on by

This was our first ever visit to the Curve Theatre in Leicester. To be honest, it was actually the first time I’ve been to Leicester at all. Mrs Chrisparkle had been there for work once and so wasn’t quite as enthralled at the prospect as I was. Problems on the M1 meant we had to take the slow country route through deepest Leicestershire, which was very pleasant by the way, and we therefore arrived much later than anticipated, thus reducing my orientation tour of the city to about half an hour. Never mind, there’s always another time. Mind you, the parking experience didn’t help.

We arrived at the NCP Car Park next door to the theatre, and wended our way up its narrow lanes and tight corners until we found a useable space – cramped, but useable. Never in the field of human parking endeavour has anyone managed to make such a performance out of reversing into a parking space. Mrs C had to get out and guide me back and forth about seven times. I even had to hurl myself out of the car in a fit of rage to gauge precisely what tiny dimensions I had at my disposal. Eventually I could park no more and let the car stand at whatever position I had finally achieved. At that point we realised that the car park ticket which you collect on the way in, and which you use to pay on the way out, had gone missing. Where could it possibly have gone? I kid you not, gentle reader, we spent the best part of half an hour ransacking the car, lifting mats and carpets, setting the iPhone to torch mode to peer into its darkest recesses, flipping through map pages, searching the glove box, etc etc and etc, until eventually the ticket made its appearance in the most ridiculously inaccessible and remote position, curled up and wedged inside the metal runners that allow the passenger seat to move. I think it’s fair to say that we were both, officially, the biggest pair of prize plonkers ever to have attempted to use a car park.

The Curve itself is pretty stunning in many ways. Shaped from the outside – you guessed it – like a curve, it’s an arresting piece of modern architecture in an otherwise rather drab quarter. There are a number of bar and café areas, a fairly good supply of seating, helpful staff and a (necessary with those charges) scheme for paying only £3.95 at the car park. One very thrilling dimension, that we only saw as we were leaving, is an open side wall to the theatre where you can see the stage from the wings, as it were; where all the costumes and prop tables are stored and it’s a fascinating glimpse into the backstage world of the theatre. What of inside the auditorium? Well, on the up side, the seats are reasonably comfortable, and from our position in Row J of the stalls, you had an excellent sightline to the stage. There was also hugely generous legroom, so you could really stretch out and get comfy. It’s a very wide proscenium arch, which gives the impression of the auditorium being somewhat shallow, even though it goes back to Row V. On the downside, it’s a little undecorated and featureless inside, which makes it feel a bit municipal, a bit soulless. But on the whole I would say it’s a jolly fine venue and one I’m glad to add to our repertory.

“I thought this was going to be about Hello Dolly”, I hear you mumble. And so it is. I’ve only seen the show once before, back in 1979 when I accompanied the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane to see Miss Carol Channing in the role. She had a smile that stretched a mile – Miss Channing that is, not the Dowager. She was a dab hand at the comic business – I particularly remember how funny she was in the scene where Dolly insists on finishing her meal whilst everyone else is awaiting her in court.Impossibly stagey and camp as a row of tents, she was just brilliant. She had the physical presence – and let’s face it, age – to suggest Dolly’s back catalogue of life experience; and an accent of pure Yonkers. Possibly because they were the same age, the Dowager looked on her as something of a role model, and it was a rare day that she didn’t find time to quote something about “snuggling up to your cash register” or “lose some weight, Stanley”. So I was very interested to see how Janie Dee, an extraordinarily versatile actress, would appear as Dolly.

She’s very different from Miss Channing, but she’s also extremely good. Her Dolly appears much younger – which feels slightly wrong to me – but she is so winning and cheeky in her disposition, and her instant rapport with the audience is so overwhelming, that she absolutely assumes the role with natural conviction and spreads around the inherent joy of the show, much as Ephraim Levi told us you had to spread around manure. She’s good hearted and gutsy – and can sing beautifully, which comes as a splendid bonus. She looks great, and well deserves Horace Vandergelder’s “wonderful woman” compliment at the end. There really appears to be no end to Miss Dee’s talents.

Horace is played by Dale Rapley, who gives a really good supporting performance; terrifically underplayed, for example, during “So Long Dearie” where he allows Dolly completely to overwhelm him. He’s got a good singing voice too – and gives a super, comic performance of “It Takes A Woman”. Again he feels a lot younger than I would expect Vandergelder to be; you wouldn’t have thought he would need a matchmaker to set him up with a choice of widows, at his age he should still be able to set his own agenda. Nevertheless it’s still very funny when he goes on his date with the lovely Ernestina – Kerry Washington superb as a voluptuous canary lookalike – and his eventual match with Dolly seems perfectly right.

I’d not seen Michael Xavier on stage before – he plays first underdog Cornelius – but I’m not surprised he’s been nominated for all those Olivier awards. He has an amazing voice; loud, clear and expressive, perfect for this kind of show, and he brought great colour and likeability to the role. As second underdog Barnaby, Jason Denton had just the right level of believable goofiness, and the pair of them made excellent suitors for their two ladies.

Laura Pitt-Pulford is a marvellous Irene. It’s not that exciting a role, to be honest, and I remember in my youth whenever I played the soundtrack album, her song “Ribbons Down My Back” was always one I would skip. But I have to say I have never heard that song sung so beautifully as it is here by Miss Pitt-Pulford. For me, she made the song sound fresh but also wistful in a way that had always passed me by before. I would happily go back just to see her perform that song again. Ngo Ngofa’s Minnie Fay is full of fun, rather cute, and she and Barnaby will be a lovely couple.

Of course, what everyone remembers and awaits is the Waiters’ Gallop followed by Dolly’s staircase appearance and the huge number that is “Hello Dolly”. Expectations of this scene are so high that maybe it’s inevitable that there’s a slight sense of disappointment. The dancers are great, no question – and it’s also delightful that they used so much (if not all?) of Gower Champion’s original choreography (all that thigh patting and wavy hands in the air stuff); it’s just that the Curve stage is so wide, that I did not feel they occupied the area enough. This is a production with high values – the costumes are terrific, the sets are effective, even the props seem really good quality. The band are incredible and produce a superb sound. There just needed to be something else that gave the waiters’ scene an extra impact. Maybe they simply needed another six dancers – or a smaller stage. It’s still a really enjoyable scene and it went down very well with the audience, but I wanted just a soupcon more oomph. The cinematic style backdrop which suggested changes of scenes was also a little too small to have great impact, but the sets – and one’s own imagination – more than make up for it.

The performance we saw had a few minor odd moments – Dolly’s handbag seemed to have a life of its own – getting left behind here, suddenly appearing there – and I am still not sure Dolly said hello to the correct Stanley – my powers of lip reading suggest Stanley said something to her like “why are you saying that to me” and he certainly didn’t look as though he needed to lose weight anyway. But these don’t matter with such a colourful and high octane show. I’d forgotten how good the majority of the songs are – especially in the second half – although the whole “Dancing” sequence in the hat shop has always left me cold. It took a good week after we’d seen the show for some of these songs finally to work their way out of my brain. Mrs C pointed out that the whole thing is very “hokey”, and of course she is right. Hokiness is its raison d’être. This is a very entertaining and extremely enjoyable production, and one that fully warrants the good box-office business it seems to be doing – but there are still some good seats available and it would be a great shame to miss it.

On the way home Mrs C asked if Dolly and Horace really love each other, or is it just a marriage of convenience. With the sounds of “…and we won’t go home until we fall in love…” ringing in your ears during the finale, surely they must love each other. Mustn’t they? True, Dolly is an ace manipulatrix, and she certainly gets what she wants – Ephraim even gives her his sign of consent – so I expect she loves him sufficiently well to make a go of it. Horace, I am sure, is besotted. What do you think?

Review – A Christmas Carol, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 28th December 2012

Posted on by

Hello again, gentle reader, and Happy New Year! Lovely to see you again. I am sorry about the lack of posts here for the past few weeks, but it’s been a very busy time. Mrs Chrisparkle had need of a long break from work, so we have been away both before and after Christmas. I can tell you about those travels in due course. We have also seen a few shows and with your indulgence I will be delighted to tell you about them.

Of course, the downside of having left it a bit late to review these shows is that some of them have already closed. So even though I might recommend that you see them – in some cases, you can’t. Sorry about that. A Christmas Carol, the festive play production at the Royal Theatre in Northampton, is a case in point. Its season finished on 6th January, and you’ll know, if you saw it, that it was a terrific little production.

The story is an old favourite. You simply cannot experience Christmas without some reference to it in film or on stage at some point over the holidays. The only other time we have seen the story performed on stage was in Tommy Steele’s Scrooge about six or seven years ago, when we took the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle to the Palladium one New Year’s Eve. It was probably a mistake – the whole show was a mystery to her. About 30 minutes into the second half she loudly announced “Has Tommy Steele come on yet?” – the aforesaid Mr Steele having been “on” since the show started – so God knows what she thought had been happening on stage up till then. At the end Mr Steele invited us all to cross hands with our neighbours and sing Auld Lang Syne. When the polite little girl to our right tried to link hands, the Dowager glared at her and shoved her out of the way as she though she was trying to nick her handbag. Ah, happy Christmas memories.

But I digress as usual. Whilst there is some incidental music involved, this isn’t really a musical version. It is, however, an imaginative and charming telling of the old story, with a lively and talented cast, directed by Gary Sefton with his usual flair. The set is reminiscent of other Sefton specials at the Royal – it especially brought back to mind “Travels With My Aunt” – with its multi-layered construction using suitcases, steps, ledges, boxes, windows and furniture, all apparently positioned higgledy-piggledy but which cunningly conceal many entrances and exits, acting areas and seats. A great job by designer Michael Taylor – I particularly liked how Scrooge managed to perch on a chair high above nephew Fred’s Christmas party to witness the fun he had previously chosen to scorn. The costumes are excellent, and I particularly enjoyed Scrooge’s festive outfit in the final scene – definitely worth scouring the length and breadth of H&M trying to find that one. I’m no expert on the story, but Lady Duncansby, who was also in attendance and has spent a lifetime devoted to the tale, advised that the adaptation by Neil Duffield was very true to Dickens’ original.

At the heart of any version of Christmas Carol is of course, old Ebenezer himself. The name is a testament to Dickens’ brilliant use of language – could ever a name sound so miserly as Ebenezer Scrooge? It’s an excellent performance by Sam Graham. Detestably miserable when you first meet him, he relishes his mean and self-obsessed condemnation of wider society that he insists must fend for itself no matter how poor or downtrodden the people may be. The two ladies who call at Scrooge and Marley’s collecting for charity looked genuinely disgusted at his withering refusal to donate. Unfortunately the sound he emits to represent “Bah Humbug!” reminded me of the eponymous jeering laugh of TV’s Mrs Brown’s Boys, but no matter. As he goes through the process of meeting the three Christmas ghosts, you quickly see the prospect of his redemption. In fact, I’ve never seen a performance of Christmas Carol/Scrooge – on stage or on film – where I have been so absolutely convinced that Scrooge genuinely means it when his character is reformed at the end. This really is the supreme depiction that it’s never too late to replace a bad life with a good one.

The visions presented by the Ghost of Christmas Past include a wonderful short scene where Ebenezer as a boy is found amongst his fairy tales and the story of Aladdin comes to life before our eyes; and it’s the first time you see any sense of joy in Scrooge. I thought that was a beautiful and lovingly performed sequence. You also see the moment when young Ebenezer turns away from his love – or rather she rejects him as he appears to have gone cold on her – but instead of chasing after her to win her back, he resigns himself to a life of counting pennies, much to the exasperated dismay of the onlooking old Scrooge. The storytelling and presentation of these scenes is beautifully clear and compelling.

There’s not a weak link in the cast; we all loved Greg Haiste’s Bob Cratchit, with his quill pen dancing in the windy breeze, and especially as the family man bringing some Christmas Cheer to his wife and kids, including the poignantly tragic Tiny Tim. He was also extremely funny en travesti as Mrs Fezziwig and as the wannabe flirtatious Topper at Fred’s party. Kate Graham gave a subtly rewarding performance as Mrs Cratchit, fighting her natural desire to despise Scrooge but setting a good example by toasting him nevertheless; and she was dignified but determined as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Eric Kofi Abrefa was Decency Itself in his role as Fred, and David Osmond was all too believable as the young Ebenezer putting joy behind him. There are also three teams of children playing Cratchit’s kids and the street urchins – we saw Team A, I believe, and they were superb. Their doleful expressions, as presented by the Ghost of Christmas Future when Tiny Tim is alas no more, brought genuine tears to Mrs C’s eyes.

The arrival of apparently “real snow” at the end, descending from heaven into the stalls, was a touching way to envelop the audience and cast together in the same theatrical magic and an absolutely packed Royal Theatre audience left extremely happy and heart-warmed at the end. It’s a really rewarding and life-affirming production, and we all loved it. “God bless us every one.” (Sniff).