Category Archives: Theatre

Review – Assassins, Menier Chocolate Factory, 11th January 2015

Posted on by

The musical theatre is a very broad church. Only a few hours ago I was writing about how Anything Goes is a brilliant show but ever so lightweight. Today I am writing about Assassins, also a brilliant show (in a different way) but as dark as dark can be. If Anything Goes can be likened to nibbling at a stick of candy floss (and I think it can), Assassins is like tucking in to a lump of nutty slack. It first hit the UK stage in 1992, at a time when Mrs Chrisparkle and I didn’t see much theatre, so it’s great to be able to fill in the gaps of one’s Sondheim knowledge. Up till now the only link I had between the notion of assassins and musicals theatre was a character called The Assassin, who sang “I’m an A double S a double S I N”, from Tim Rice’s long forgotten Blondel. I think I used to irritate Mrs C by singing it a lot. Fortunately it’s a phase I’ve grown out of.

Sondheim’s assassins are not really in the Tim Rice mould. The show takes several famous assassins (or wannabe assassins), all of whom had a crack at taking out an American President (and I don’t mean on a dinner date). The show gathers them together and makes them confront each other, even though in real life they lived at different times and places. Sondheim forces them to look at their motives, their modus operandi, and their influence on each other. They challenge each other, they support each other, they goad each other on; and, for the most part, they each come to a sticky end. All this jollity set in a nightmare fantasy fairground. Well, where else would you set such a show? In fact when you descend those old steps into the Menier auditorium it’s like going to Luna Park in Sydney – a thoroughly creepy experience. The place is littered with all sorts of fairground ephemera, including those huge open mouthed clown faces and a decrepit old dodgems car. You have pick your way quite carefully to your seat, which may include encroaching on the stage a little -which is in traverse for this performance, something the Menier lends itself to superbly well.

Regular readers (bless you), may recollect my mantra that I prefer a brave failure to a lazy success. Well, this is an extremely brave and innovative show, and I certainly wouldn’t class it a failure by any means. To be fair, you couldn’t call it Sondheim’s strongest score, and I can’t really remember any of the tunes; but it’s very enjoyable. However, when it was all over, Mrs C and I looked at each other and just felt completely baffled by the whole thing. If I were to be able to ask Mr Sondheim just one question about it, it would be the one word: “why?” It’s an incredibly niche content – not just murderers, but assassins; not just assassins but assassins of US Presidents. I can’t believe Sondheim had people knocking at his door begging for this to be the subject matter of his latest show. I can only put it down to a huge burst of creative eccentricity.

One of the great things about the Menier is its intimacy. When you sit in row A, our usual chosen position, you’re within touching distance of the cast. Assassins has a cast of sixteen, the majority of whom are all on stage at the same time, and when they’re doing fairly intricate and powerful dance moves and gestures in that relatively small area, it feels incredibly close. There’s a lot of bringing your feet in as much as possible so you can’t trip anyone up (never send a murderer arse over tip is a good motto I feel); and there are some sequences when the cast sit on chairs staring out at the audience, which is an opportunity to see if you can out-stare them. They’ve practised that – they always out-stare you back. Much of Chris Bailey’s choreography is quite stompy (not a criticism, merely an observation), and as the cast stomp around you, you can feel yourself literally shaking in your seat. This is an all-round experience production – loud, vibrating, vivid, powerful and literally in-your-face. No one’s going to nod off during this show.

Whilst there are some star names in the cast, it’s very much an ensemble piece, and it’s hard to identify any particular role that outweighs the others – apart, perhaps, from the central character, “the Proprietor”, played by Simon Lipkin, whose fairground (I presume) we inhabit. He spends most of the show standing up to the assassins and getting regularly shot by them, all the time masked in the most terrifying circus make up. If you see Mr Lipkin’s face in the programme, you’d never believe they were the same person. Imagine an elaborately painted clown’s face that has been left out in the rain for an hour or so, resulting in streams of contrasting colours trickling down and ruining his vest. It’s a long shot, but if you remember the RSC’s Comedy of Errors from the late 1970s, his appearance reminded me strongly of Doctor Pinch, the Schoolmaster. I really enjoyed Mr Lipkin’s performance – powerful, terrifying, intense; the stuff of nightmares.

Another slightly strange role is that of the Balladeer. For the first three-quarters of the show, he sings and strums his banjo on the sidelines, commenting on the action, like an Everyman figure; pivotal in the show numbers but neither, as far as one can make out, an assassin nor a victim. However, towards the end he becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, antagonised by John Wilkes Booth (who despatched Abraham Lincoln) into committing a crime you feel he had no reason to undertake other than that supreme sense of flattery when everyone knows your name. He’s played by one of our favourite performers, Jamie Parker; you always know you’re in very safe hands with him in the cast.

The majority of the male assassins are rather dour creatures. David Roberts’ Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated President McKinley, could be mistaken for Lenin on a dark night, despairingly flitting across the stage in an angst-ridden quest for justice, until he goes all gooey eyed at his heroine Emma Goldman – it’s an unexpectedly amusing scene between them. I was very impressed with Harry Morrison’s performance as John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Reagan; a seething mass of vengeance under a barely concealed veneer of calm – so different from the Mr Morrison we enjoyed a few months ago in Chichester’s Guys and Dolls, which is, coincidentally, where was last saw Jamie Parker too.

Steward Clarke’s Giuseppe Zangara, who attempted assassination on Franklin D Roosevelt, is portrayed as a vicious, angry victim himself – driven mental because of his constant stomach pains., Mr Clarke’s unnervingly wild eyes contribute to a very compelling performance, particularly when Zangara meets his electrifying death. Mike McShane, dressed as a rather bedraggled Santa Claus for a reason I couldn’t quite make out, takes the role of Samuel Byck, the unhinged wannabe assassin of Richard Nixon, whose murderous attempt was somewhat hapless and ended up with him killing himself instead. Mr McShane is a fine actor with a great stage presence, but I found his monologues where he is recording messages to Leonard Bernstein just a bit too long, and lacking in dramatic tension. It’s the only place where I felt John Weidman’s book needed some trimming.

On the other hand, a couple of the male assassins were much brighter characters. The always entertaining Andy Nyman (who we’ve seen at the Menier twice before – has he taken up residence?) plays Charles Guiteau (assassin of President Garfield), bouncing around the stage like an excited puppy. He’s obsessed with becoming Ambassador to France, and is clearly a maverick and a charlatan, and immense fun to watch. His death by hanging scene is a great piece of stagecraft, encompassing tragedy and hilarity at the same time. Broadway favourite Aaron Tveit takes the role of John Wilkes Booth, bestriding the stage, moustachioed like Van Dyck, cajoling and coaxing many a wannabe assassin into action. With controlled power, Mr Tveit gives us almost every emotion under the sun; never let him near an empty coke bottle. It’s a very enjoyable performance.

There are only two female assassins, both of whom acted in collaboration with each other in two separate attempts to assassinate Gerald Ford: Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, played by the excellent Carly Bawden (unforgettable as Eliza in Sheffield’s My Fair Lady), and TV favourite Catherine Tate as Sara Jane Moore. Carly Bawden is wonderfully irrepressible as Fromme, balancing no-nonsense serious threats with totally loopy adoration of Charles Manson; and Catherine Tate is hilarious as the rather inept and definitely thick Moore, taking her son and her dog to the assassination, hurling bullets manually at the President when the gun doesn’t work (which is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on stage in a long time). If you like Catherine Tate’s TV show, you’ll love her in this – Sara Jane Moore would fit perfectly into her repertoire of weird and wacky characters. Mind you, I’d better be careful what I say about Moore and Fromme as they’re both out on parole now.

A big theatrical experience, with a great band, costumes, make up, and set; more gunshots than you would normally expect in a lifetime at the theatre; and a colourful finale that cleverly covers the entire stage and some of the seats in a sea of blood (don’t worry, it’s an illusion, you don’t get wet). A very high impact production and, rarely for me, one of the occasions when not having an interval feels strangely appropriate. Whilst there is some humour, it’s not what you’d call a Musical Comedy; and I can’t say that you leave the theatre on a high – we left it rather shell-shocked at what we’d seen. But it’s certainly a stunner. It’s on at the Menier until 7th March, but if you haven’t booked, it’s too late as the whole of the rest of the run is sold out. There’s got to be the potential of a transfer, surely – but it needs to be kept intimate, so as to preserve the claustrophobic power of the whole thing. Congratulations to the Menier, another winner!

Review – Anything Goes, Sheffield Crucible, 3rd January 2015

Posted on by

If you’ve followed the first part of our annual post-Christmas Sheffield shindig, you’ll know that Mrs Chrisparkle and I, together with Lady Duncansby and her butler William enjoyed a riotous afternoon of panto comedy with Dick Whittington. After hotel check-in, a brief nap and woofing down a Café Rouge Salad Paysanne and Coupe Rouge, it was time to return to the Crucible to see Daniel Evans’ production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. About ten years ago, Mrs C and I took the Dowager Mrs C to see Trevor Nunn’s version at Drury Lane. I think she quite enjoyed it – I think we both found it a trifle dull. In many respects, it’s the kind of musical I usually don’t like much – lots of set pieces, very slight story, a stop-starty structure; designed to be entertaining for its two and a half hours duration, then disappearing into the ether once it’s over – pure stage candy floss. I like my musicals to have a bit more oomph, some depth, and some tragedy mixed in with the comedy.

In a nutshell, Anything Goes is the simple tale of person a) being in love with b) but b) is engaged to c) and d) quite fancies a) too. A)’s boss e) is travelling to England on board the SS American but so are b) and c) and even though a) might well lose his job over it, he doesn’t get off the ship so that he can tell b) how much he loves her. Meanwhile f) and g) are on the run from the law and the whole lot of them end up on board ship; and 165 minutes later, they all live happily ever after. Not a lot to it really. To be fair, there is a fascinating sub-theme running through the show regarding the cult of celebrity – which is here seen as very amoral. When a) is suspected of being Snake-Eyes Johnson (Public Enemy No 1), rather than be terrified of him or want him captured and taken off the ship, the passengers all want his autograph and he gets to sit on the Captain’s Table. But when he is revealed as just simple a), he goes from hero to zero in a split-second. Apart from that, it’s a plot as slim as Mr Creosote’s wafer-thin mint.

The thing is, Cole Porter knew how to write a choon. Depending on your definitions (and taste), this show contains at least six show-stoppers, five of them before the interval, which makes for a slight sense of imbalance. I Get A Kick Out Of You was one the first Cole Porter songs I loved – and that was because of Gary Shearston’s moody 1974 pop single, remember that? It’s the first song you hear in Anything Goes and it never feels to me like a show-opener, because it’s too mid-tempo, too I’ve considered the situation and this is the position I’ve arrived at and not enough opening gambit. But it’s a terrific song. Actually, I’m not really sure if any of the songs have that much connection with their alleged role in the show, they’re much more like individual celebrations of song-and-danciness. You could pick them up and plonk them down anywhere you like and they’d still work. And that’s actually what has happened. A number of them were originally in other Porter musicals – for example, Friendship was written for DuBarry Was A Lady, and It’s De-Lovely for Red, Hot and Blue – they’re generic musical numbers that can slot in anywhere. It’s no wonder you just get that slight feeling that the actual show structure is somehow compromised.

I may be giving you the impression that I didn’t enjoy this show very much, but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an outstanding production. It all looks and sounds so ravishing that no one could be immune to its charms. The cast play their parts with such verve and gusto that you get carried along on a sea of delight that masks any weaknesses in the plot.

Richard Kent’s design is awash with primary colours and both Mrs C and I admired the very clever curve of the flooring upwards at the back of the stage to suggest the length of the ship carrying on way into the distance. Then there’s Alastair David’s choreography. Once again he has come up trumps with some incredible set pieces, just like he did with My Fair Lady and Oliver! The extended tap-dancing sequence to accompany the title song just before the interval is simply superb. It brings out the best in the ensemble boys and girls – extraordinarily good throughout the show – and it’s one of those theatrical moments that just lifts you to a new high; their energy transfers to the audience and fills you with more sweetness than any air freshener.

The whole cast are uniformly excellent. I’ve not seen Debbie Kurup before – she plays Reno Sweeney (d if you’re following the synopsis in paragraph 2), the nightclub singer who gets caught up with all sorts of shenanigans assisting her pal Billy (a) and ends up marrying posh nobility in the form of Evelyn (c). She is a fantastic entertainer. Terrific stage presence, wonderful voice, great dancer and incredibly watchable. Surely she will become a big star one day. I particularly loved her spirited rendition of Blow Gabriel Blow, another song you could more or less scoop up from any lesser show and plant as a show-stopper wherever you like. Matt Rawle plays Billy Crocker, the young Wall Street broker in love with Hope Harcourt (b) – he’s also a very talented musical performer whom we really enjoyed as Che in Evita; he glides effortlessly through this role, pattering his way expertly through You’re The Top and It’s De-Lovely.

Zoe Rainey – excellent in the Royal and Derngate’s Dancing at Lughnasa in 2013 – makes for a stylish, emotional Hope, making the best of her engagement to Evelyn and attempting to parry the ripostes of her mother Evangeline, played by Jane Wymark, on splendid form as usual. Then there are three very funny chaps: Stephen Matthews is a brilliant Evelyn – the epitome of the show’s Wodehousian origins (P. G. co-wrote the original book) – his great comic timing working wonders with the song The Gypsy in Me (which was originally sung by Hope – see how the songs just get criss-crossed or mixed and matched). Simon Rouse gives good bluster as Elisha Whitney (e – hope you’re keeping up) with some nice physical comedy when he gets his glasses nicked and holds out hope for a passionate experience with Evangeline. And Hugh Sachs gives a thoughtfully understated comic performance as Moonface Martin, Public Enemy No 13 and (f).

We loved Alex Young as Erma (g) – a real gutsy performance, full of fun. She really shines in this kind of role, just as she did in High Society a couple of years back. She’s obviously made for Cole Porter. And there’s another fantastic performance from Bob Harms as the Captain (we saw him in Pippin when he was understudying Matt Rawle and he was sensational) –a great song and dance man with a terrific feeling for the comedy. If you’re old enough to remember Edward Mulhare in The Ghost and Mrs Muir, I’m sure that’s the look he was trying to achieve.

Enormous fun, performed with panache and flair throughout, this is has sure-fire winner written all the way through it like a stick of rock. After it leaves Sheffield the SS American is embarking on an extensive UK tour till October 2015. For sheer enjoyment this is hard to beat – I predict a lot of happy theatregoers this year!

Review – Dick Whittington, Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 3rd January 2015

Posted on by

Where do the years go? This was our fifth annual trip to Sheffield for a theatrical weekend over the Christmas period where we take in the Lyceum panto and the big show at the Crucible. Christmas really wouldn’t be Christmas without it. It’s a family occasion, so we brought Lady Duncansby and her butler William along for the ride.

The beautiful Lyceum theatre is looking even more spick and span since the last time we visited it, and is a credit to its city and local theatre trust. That whole theatre square, with the Crucible as well as the Lyceum, plus the Crucible Corner bar where you can mingle with the stars late into the night (as we did later on) always makes me feel as though I’m coming home, even though I’ve never lived in Sheffield. In fact my only connection with the place was, at the age of 19, going to a friend’s house in Hillsborough for dinner, only she didn’t realise you couldn’t cook a frozen chicken from scratch. After a long time of thawing it in sinks full of hot water, it was finally ready to eat at 3am. Not sure how I survived the experience.

Back to 2015, and after a tasty light lunch at the Museum (which is a pub, not a museum), it was time for Dick Whittington. Ever since she knew which panto we were going to see, Lady Duncansby’s not let up with her favourite line “half past seven and still no sign of Dick” (or variations on that theme). Who said panto is for kids? I guess someone must have, as there were plenty of them in the audience, but strangely, our row was almost entirely populated with Adults Who Should Know Better. At least we resisted the temptation to buy flashing wands and princess dresses.

As ever, the star of the show was Damian Williams – one wants to call him “Sheffield’s own” but he actually lives in Tilbury. This year he played Dolly the Cook. He really understands the over-the-top spirit of the pantomime dame – gutsy, inelegant, boisterous; breaking that fourth wall like there’s no tomorrow. In all my years of theatre going and seeing pantomime dames the only one I can recall who came even close to Mr Williams for rumbustiousness was Terry Scott. Mr Williams knows that he looks like a fool, and plays up to it massively. During the course of this show he had all sorts of outré outfits, including being dressed as an East Midlands Train (and saying “East Midlands Train” as often has he could, which was pretty often – kerching!) But his most memorable costume this year, for all the wrong reasons, was his skimpy bikini, a hilariously inappropriate feat of engineering created by Helga Wood.

All the usual scenes were there, including the patter running gag between Mr Williams and Andy Day as Captain Crabstick (cue for a pirate’s “Harr, harr” every time he appears), where they named as many towns and villages in the Sheffield area that they could in five minutes whilst holding up the appropriate road sign (that scene was a particular favourite of the chap who checked us in at the hotel later on). And it wouldn’t be a Sheffield panto without the world famous Lyceum bench scene that this time featured gorillas sneaking up behind the cast. We’ll have to do it again, then, won’t we!

A highlight this year was a particularly splendid villain in the form of John Barr as King Rat, a star struck scoundrel who peppers his wicked attempts to send a plague of rats to blight the kingdom with songs from the shows, much to the delighted booing of the entire theatre. Mr Barr ends the first half performing from one of the boxes, which meant that when we pottered out during the interval to retrieve our half-time bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, we, and a family full of little kids, bumped into him in the foyer. “BOOOOOO!!!!” the children all screamed at him. “But I’m really very nice” he mildly protested with a knowing glint in his eye. That’s the magic of theatre.

This year’s fairy was played by Samantha Womack, fresh from her tricky will she-won’t she die Eastenders Christmas special (or so I understand – Mrs Chrisparkle and I see far too much live stuff to have time for soaps). With a name like Fairy Bow-Bells, I was rather expecting a cor blimey sort of wood-nymph, all apples and pears and how’s your father; but in fact she was a rather prim and proper fairy, with nothing very Laandaan about her at all. To be honest we didn’t care much for her material where her rhymes didn’t rhyme because of north/south accents – when she turned on the northern accent to make the rhyme work it sounded patronising to me. Still what do I know? Reading through her bio in the programme, I’m always disappointed when someone airbrushes out of history the fact that they appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest. Representing your country not worthy of a mention, Samantha? We don’t forget your 1991 10th place with A Message To Your Heart that easily, Miss Janus.However, I was delighted to see one of my favourite actresses, Gemma Sutton, as Alice Fitzwarren, having seen her in the last twelve months in Chicago, Drunk, and Gypsy. I’m really not stalking her, honest. She played a very earnest Alice, but not without a twinkle of mischief, and of course she has a great singing voice. She and Jo Parsons (Dick Whittington) made a cute couple and will have beautiful babies together.

The rest of the cast are all excellent, with an entertaingly bumbling Alderman Fitzwarren played by Patrick Clancy, a neatly feline Tommy the Cat played by Craig Garner (whose meow, meow, meow, meow, meow’s were enunciated beautifully), an imposingly hunky Sultan in the form of Tramaine Wright and with lots of enjoyable singing and dancing from the ensemble. I’m not sure which team of kids we saw, but they were great –and the girls making Mr Williams work hard for his living in the sweetshop scene were really funny. As you might expect, given its popularity, this year there were a number of Frozen references – I’ve not seen it but I gather they were quite clever. There was a brilliant “dick” line – see Lady Duncansby’s penchant in paragraph 3 – but sadly I can’t quite bring it to mind. I did, however, like Dolly’s East Midlands Train (kerching) comment – “all aboard, Deauville for the Continent, Skegness for the Incontinent”;and any panto that makes a reference to Tinder can’t be all bad (“We met using an online dating site. Tinder? No Tesco. I got a bag for life”.

Next year Mr Williams is back – yet again – in Aladdin. These Sheffield pantomimes are consistently brilliant. Can’t wait!

Review – Sunny Afternoon, Harold Pinter Theatre, 29th December 2014

Posted on by

If you’re like me, you can’t think of the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon without instantly singing to yourself, “the taxman’s taken all my dough and left me in my stately home”; although I always thought it was the even more savage, “the taxman’s taken all my dole and left me in my stately hole”. Those old songs really are steeped in emotion. If you grew up with the Kinks, you’ll probably find that each of their songs brings back a particular memory, a moment, or a sensation. Dead End Street always reminds me of the first time I heard it, as a little kid, being astounded at the pounding introduction and even more so at the whispering “yeah!” fade out. Days always takes me back to sharing a study with my best friend when we were at university, desperately trying to cobble together essays on English literature against the clock.

I’ve always thought the Kinks have been vastly underrated in the annals of modern culture, with Ray Davies’ songs being easily comparable to Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richard. In many respects they bridged the gap between the Beatles and the Stones. On one side, John Lennon wrote about “me” – “there are places I remember all my life…”, “is there anybody going to listen to my story….”- and Paul McCartney delicately crafted characters and places like Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane; on the other the Stones created the full rock guitar experience with songs like Satisfaction and Paint It Black whilst still incorporating thoughtful meaningful lyrics. Somewhere between the two Ray Davies and the Kinks could give you the introspective vision of Terry and Julie meeting at the Waterloo Sunset or the observation of the tiny caterpillar in Autumn Almanac, but still offering the full on rock attack of All Day and All of the Night, the gritty realism of Dead End Street, the wistful reminiscence of Days or the feel-good humour of Lola.

So a musical featuring the works of the Kinks is a nice idea. Would it be like Mamma Mia, where the songs of Abba get mish-mashed to create an original story, or would it actually tell the story of the group themselves? The Kinks’ songs are so full of story-telling technique that I am sure they would work well in the Mamma Mia model. But Sunny Afternoon (the musical) tells the journey of Ray, Dave and their mates and how they came to get a record contract, how they got their name, how Ray started to write songs of exquisite quality, how Dave was a loose cannon, how Mick kept on feeling like he wasn’t wanted, how they weren’t accepted in America, how they dealt with female fans, and, by ending with a rock concert finale, how their songs are still great today.

Joe Penhall’s book is adapted from Ray Davies’ own original story of the Kinks, so we can assume that pretty much everything you see on stage is factually true. The songs adapt very well to reflecting the group’s birth, rise and fall; it all develops organically, and nothing feels forced or unnatural. Of course, I was just a nipper when the Kinks were at their height but I always felt I had an extra link to them as my cousin was friends with Ray Davies – not that I ever met him. So there was plenty for me to discover about the group. I wasn’t aware of the all the legal wrangles that beset the group, nor of how they came a-cropper in the States due to the Union rules, and in fact were banned from performing there. I’d also forgotten what a wild lad Dave Davies was. Some of the best parts of the show are where you see the creative process in action – how did they get those brilliant guitar riffs on the early singles? How did the Davies family home inspire Dead End Street? The music creates its own drama, and it feels very exciting.

For this production, they’ve given the insides of the Harold Pinter (I still think of it as the Comedy) something of an internal rip-out. The front couple of rows and the back few rows have been converted to cabaret tables. Additionally, the middle seats have been removed from the first seven or so rows and been replaced by a catwalk, so that the action can come further into the audience, giving a greater sensation of everything happening around you. Mrs Chrisparkle and I opted for one of the front cabaret tables – a table for two just to the right side of the stage. You certainly feel as though you’re in the heart of the action, but this location is not for the fainthearted. Steps just to the right of us led up to the stage, and as cast members bounded up and down them I frequently felt the need to grab hold of my merlotso that it didn’t topple over with the vibration. Your ears are also perilously close to a whopping great speaker – when the first few notes were played at the start of the show, Mrs C virtually leapt into the air with aural anguish and spent the next minute or so creating earplugs out of tissues. There’s a lot of looking up to do – otherwise your eyes look directly at the performers’ feet – and unless you twist your back round at about 135 degrees, you can’t see what’s happening on the catwalk. However, despite all those quibbles, I really enjoyed our perspective on the show! You become something more than just audience when you’re that close, you’re really participating too; and the impact of the music is outstanding.

The set is simple but intricate – the walls are lined from top to bottom with speakers. All around, everywhere you look, woofers and tweeters abound. The emphasis is all on the music – and, as you would expect with all those speakers, it’s loud. The show is directed by Edward Hall, best known for his work with the all-male Shakespeare company Propeller – we saw their Henry V a few years ago and I was very impressed with the company’s sense of ensemble. You very much sense it in this show too, so it must be one of Mr Hall’s strong points. The choreography is by Adam Cooper, and you can’t get much more impressive a name-check than that.

The performances are great – both musically and in the story-telling. John Dagleish plays Ray Davies and does indeed have something of the look of the young Ray about him. Quirky, funny, gritty – rather like his songs in fact. Ned Derrington and Adam Sopp play the lesser known band members Pete and Mick with great 60s aplomb and attitude, but probably the best performance of the night is by George Maguire as Dave Davies – a real, unpredictable, wild child, oozing mischief, and with an overriding desire to have a good time. From our vantage point, I could see that Mr Maguirewas Absolutely Loving It. The final scene converts into a full on concert party, with the guys reprising all the best boppy Kinks numbers and Mr Maguire encourages us all to get on our feet and bop along. When I stood up, he looked at me with a big grin as if to say “you too, old geezer? Good on ya!” It made me feel quite welcome. However, perhaps the vocal highlight of the show comes a few minutes earlier when the four guys perform an acapella rendition of Days, which only the hardest of hearts wouldn’t find emotional.

There’s another excellent double act in the show – Dominic Tighe as Robert Wace and Tam Williams as Grenville Collins, two rather posh characters who end up representing the Kinks as Management in a rather hit-and-miss manner. Messrs Tighe and Williams really play up the toffee-nosed aspects of their characters without ever drifting into caricature, and they provide a lot of fun. We’d seen Mr Tighe a couple of times before, in the touring production of Barefoot in the Park and in the excellent Charley’s Aunt at the Menier, but he’d kept his musical ability quiet in those shows, so I was surprised to discover he’s really a very good singer! And we both loved Lillie Flynn as Rasa, Ray’s wife, giving great vocal support to the band numbers but also singing solo with great emotion – her performance of I Go To Sleep was a knockout. But everyone gives strong, enjoyable performances and there isn’t a weak spot anywhere; and you have to give a mention to the terrific band, directed by Elliott Ware, and the high octane guitar playing by Pete Friesen.

There are a couple of sins of omission; although the story is primarily seen from Ray’s point of view it would have been great to have at least one of Dave’s songs there as well – preferably Death of a Clown. I also missed Autumn Almanac, which is hippy quirkiness at its best, the cynical Plastic Man and the surreal Victoria. Still, you can’t have everything. It’s a feel-good show that brings the Kinks firmly back to the limelight where they belong. Irresistibly enjoyable, a perfect party show with great music and musical performances but also telling a strong story with a good sense of its time. I spent the following four days unable to get Kinks’ songs out of my head! If you’re a fan of the group, you’ll love this show – and if you’re undecided, I bet you’ll be fan by the time you go home.

Review – The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick Theatre, 29th December 2014

Posted on by

The Scottsboro Boys is based on a true story of racial prejudice and injustice in Alabama, a sequence of events that started in 1931. Nine black teenagers, none of whom knew each other at the time, were on a train going about their various business, doing or seeking work somewhere around Chattanooga, when they were accused by two white girls, also on the same train, of rape. The case became something of a cause celebre, with the boys adamantly protesting their innocence, but unfair trial after unfair trial found them guilty, even when one of the alleged victims withdrew her accusation. It wasn’t until 1937 that the rape charges against the four youngest boys were dropped, 1976 when the last of the defendants was officially declared not guilty, and, incredibly, 2013 before they were all pardoned. As the show reveals, the majority of them went on to lead variously tragic lives, in and out of prison, including suicide, manslaughter, and mental illness.

Sounds like a bundle of laughs, doesn’t it? It’s taken us a very long time to see this show. It opened at the Young Vic in October 2013 to great success, and then transferred to the Garrick last autumn, where it is scheduled to stay until 21st February. So Mrs Chrisparkle and I were pleased to get the chance to see it whilst we still could. As we were enjoying our pre-show lunch, we were talking about what little we knew (shame on us) about the case of the Scottsboro Boys, and how we expected it to be rather serious and sad. “…And it’s a musical?” asked Mrs C. “How are they going to make a story like that into a musical, without ridiculing or belittling the people involved?” A good question.

The answer is a stroke of genius. It’s not a serious, mournful sub-opera, but a song-and-dancey modern take on the traditional American Minstrel show, looking at its obvious potential for accusations of racism fair and square in the face, just as the American people themselves had to at the time. It follows the structure of the Minstrel show in great detail, with the performers sitting in a semi-circle, the characters of Bones and Tambo (named after their musical instruments) on the far ends each playing the fool, and with the whole thing MC’d by an interlocutor, in this case – unusually – played by a white actor, to strengthen the suggestion of racial injustice. It’s a bold strategy, but it really works, as, while revelling in the immense talent and skills of the performers, enjoying the comedy, and loving the music and dancing, nevertheless you spend a lot of the show considering how very un-PC all this is today.

But that’s the point – it’s that telling juxtaposition between what’s appropriate on a stage and what occurred in 1930s Alabama that is the driving force behind this show. Whilst the content is disturbing, the style is pizzazzy, and the challenge for the audience is to appreciate both equally. It’s full of surprises. There’s a moment near the end when some of the characters are telling the audience directly what was to become of them in the years and decades to follow. One character says he became a cop so he could finally find out what it was like to hold and use a gun – cue genuine laugh from the audience. Then you find out what he did with it and it was one of those Ayckbournian moments when your laughter gets caught in your throat. The ever-present unnamed lady, watching the action, occasionally adding gestures and reactions, seems an irrelevant and unnecessary add-on for much of the time until you finally realise her significance, which beautifully links the whole Scottsboro saga to the rest of the fight for racial equality in America.

It’s not surprising this is such a great production. The music and lyrics are by Kander and Ebb, creators of such masterpieces as Cabaret and Chicago (although Mrs C will point out they also wrote Curtains which we saw on Broadway in 2008 and which she, in particular, hated). Scottsboro Boys was actually one of the last shows they worked on together, as Fred Ebb died in 2004, and composer John Kander had to complete the lyrics to a few of the songs himself. Those songs have beautiful melodies but hard-hitting lyrics which bring you up short, as you might expect from the sweet/sour structure of the whole show.

Then you have direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, who put together the amazing Contact that we saw in 2002 (perhaps we should draw a veil over the fact that she also worked on the Menier’s Paradise Found – not an easy show by any means but within some rewrites of being good). Phil Cornwell’s orchestra recreates that American Dixie sound beautifully, with plenty of banjo twanging and high-falutin’ fiddling, and it’s all set on an eminently useful blank stage, with just some very versatile chairs that can link together to suggest any structure you want (plus they’re also good for just sitting on.) The backdrop consists of a couple of massive picture frames suspended without the aid of a spirit level, nicely suggestive of having to look at life through wonky angles.

Added to all that, you have an amazing cast made up of some of the finest singers and dancers you could ever hope to grace any stage. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play Mr Bones and Mr Tambo, dressed to the nines like a Robertson’s Golly, combining great physical comedy with verbal dexterity to recreate the traditional Minstrel show roles but doubling up as sheriffs, lawyers, attorneys and guards to emphasise the funny/serious contrast. They are an incredible double act. James T Lane, wonderful as Richie in A Chorus Line, continues to show his amazing dance skills as Ozie Powell; and gives a really heart-breaking performance after his character survives being shot by a guard.We both really enjoyed the performance of Keenan Munn-Francis as the youngest boy Eugene Williams, showing terrific song and dance skills as well as great comic timing – he’s definitely going to be Someone To Watch. But in fact all the cast perform with great commitment, juggling the dual aspects of tough injustice with sheer entertainment.

Veteran actor Julian Glover, whom I have admired ever since I saw him play Coriolanus at the RSC in 1978, gives a powerful performance as The Interlocutor. A southern gentleman dressed all in white with a touch of the Uncle Sam; slightly manic, physically still strong but with a sense of slight fragility, playing the show-must-go-on role of Master of Ceremonies, whilst occasionally stepping out of his bonhomie to become savagely aggressive to his colleagues, it’s a brilliant performance. But for me the star of the show was undoubtedly the splendid Brandon Victor Dixon as Haywood Patterson – a brilliant stage presence, great voice, and with amazing powers of communicating the character’s dignity and sadness. I know he’s had some success in America but he was new to me, and I have no hesitation in saying A Star Is Born. Overall, The Scottsboro Boys is a brilliantly envisioned show, masterfully presented and performed with wit, pathos and a helluva lot of great song and dance. We loved it.

PS. It’s a pet hate of mine, so I must say it – I would have preferred it to have an interval. At 1 hour and 45 minutes non-stop, no matter how good it is, I always end up shifting the buttocks and stifling (or giving in to) a yawn. Yes I’m old fashioned, but I like to stretch the legs, get some oxygen flowing, have a chance to chat about it so far with Mrs C, use the facilities and so on. The modern trend is to rush through the show in one gulp so you can get out of the theatre more quickly and Do Other Things. Apparently I’m in the minority by preferring to have intervals. I can live with that.

Review – Made in Dagenham, Adelphi Theatre, 27th December 2014

Posted on by

Having endured a not altogether rewarding experience in the afternoon at the matinee of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, I looked forward to our evening visit to see Made in Dagenham with some trepidation. I’d heard from one friend who had seen a preview that it was ace and that we would love it; I met someone else at a party who thought it was unmitigated rubbish and extended sympathy to us that we had paid for full price tickets in advance. Surely we couldn’t be unlucky twice on the same day?

Not a bit of it. Made in Dagenham is a funny, emotional, feel-good show that takes an important aspect of social history and brings it to life with an engaging cast that keeps up high energy levels throughout the whole evening. It has been adapted from the original 2010 film, with music and lyrics by David Arnold and Richard Thomas, and the book by the ubiquitous Richard Bean. Knowing Mr Bean’s penchant for involving the public in his shows we wondered if there would be any audience participation in this one – thankfully, not.

In 1968 the female sewing machinists working at the Ford plant in Dagenham went on strike for equal pay, to bring them in line with their male colleagues. The inequality had been underlined by the decision to class the women as unskilled workers, whilst the men were skilled. Today the concept of equal pay is a given (even if in practice, it still doesn’t quite exist) but in the 1960s, many people considered it was more important, if not desirable, for men to be paid more than women. This included the government, as well as an overwhelming number of the men at Dagenham. The story is based on the fictional character of Rita O’Grady, one of the workers there who had no ambition to be anything other than a mother, wife and sewing machinist, but who gets propelled into the world of union negotiations, finds she has something of a flair for it, and ends up conducting high level discussions with the powers that be, even though she’s largely out of her depth and comfort zone. The success of the campaign, and its effect on her home and family life, are what the show’s all about.

Dagenham in 1968 was a very different world from today; a black and white world where everyone was either West Ham or Millwall and the rule of traditional roles applied in families and at work. Although the strikers altruistically lose pay in order to achieve the goals for the greater good – namely a striving for equality – these ladies are no angels. The character of Beryl, for example, makes what today would be very inappropriate sexually intimidating comments to her co-workers of both sexes. Rita’s husband Eddie is a traditional guy who expects Rita a) to be a good wife, b) to be a good mother and c) to do all the shopping and housework. As Rita’s star rises, he falls behind into a position in which he feels very uncomfortable. He knows she’s doing good things, and he knows he ought to support her as much as possible – but it doesn’t come naturally, and when it comes to the crunch, he can’t take it. He’s inadequate, he’s a failure; and his inability to cope with this change of power emphasis is totally realistic.

It’s a smart and entertaining production on all levels. Bunny Christie’s superb set conveys both the modesty of the O’Grady residence and the technicality of the factory, with its scenic motif of mechanical parts ready to be punched out of their moulds, rather like the little pieces of plastic we used to click out to create Airfix models back in the day. The costumes perfectly reflect the dowdy uniforms of the workplace, contrasted with the glamorous Swinging Sixties’ styles – such as in the Cortina advert scene. The songs are good quality and keep the story moving forward, and the performances are all terrific.

Gemma Arterton gives a very strong performance as Rita; likeable, cheeky, irrepressible in the face of adversity from the authoritative figures of government or the employer Ford, and bloodied but unbowed in her grim determination to continue despite the effect it’s having on her family. She’s a great singer with an excellent stage presence. She is matched perfectly by a very effective performance by Adrian der Gregorian as Eddie, his brash personality slowly being beaten down as he struggles to cope with his wife’s increased status. The machinists make an excellent ensemble, although Sophie Stanton is outstanding as the no-nonsense Beryl, and there is a charmingly funny performance by Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Cass, who wants to become an air stewardess – cue for a delightful twist at curtain call time.

Isla Blair invests Connie, the self-effacing union rep who sacrifices her home life and her health for the good of her members, with a sense of iconic kindness – it’s not a very exciting role, but an important one. I enjoyed Naomi Frederick’s performance as Lisa, supporting the strike unequivocally despite being married to management, fighting her own battles to be taken seriously as a strong and able woman in her own right. There’s also great support from the rest of the cast, including David Cardy as well-meaning but toothless union rep Monty and Scott Garnham as charismatic Buddy the Cortina man.

Last but certainly not least, there are those famous politicians who played a part in the story. Prime Minister Harold Wilson is depicted as a Vaudevillian parody, doing silly dances and hiding behind his props of pipe and Gannex raincoat, looking after Number One and making sure his pockets are lined before any thoughts about what’s good for the country is concerned. He’s portrayed as being against the strike, not in favour of equal pay – and as such, deserves the mockery that the production heaps on him. He’s played by Mark Hadfield, a master of this self-deprecating, self-mickey-taking kind of comedy. However, possibly the best performance of the whole company comes from Sophie-Louise Dann as Barbara Castle; hearty, confident, calculating, a huge personality, and very credible – and with an amazing voice. We loved her in Forbidden Broadway and she’s superb here.

There was only one thing that jarred for me – the characterisation of the parachuted-in big Ford boss from America. The first song of the second act – This Is America – is a hard-hitting criticism of the “Everything is bigger and better in America” syndrome, which may well be worth criticising but to me it came over as rather xenophobic; and then it gets worse when that boss starts calling a member of the UK board “faggot”, which may well have been accurate for 1968 but makes me feel very uncomfortable in 2015.

Nevertheless, you come away from this show with your curiosity piqued by the story, and you want to find more about what actually happened in this strike, and about the real life characters who played a part in it. The show makes you realise the place this particular battle has in the history of equal rights in the UK, and that equal pay to women has been beneficial for both men and women in the long run. Beautifully staged and performed, with that added dimension of social realism, I recommend this very enjoyable show whole-heartedly!

PS. Here’s a first for us: when Act Two started, the woman in front of Mrs Chrisparkle lit up an e-cigarette, and continued to puff away at it for the first ten minutes or so. I have no idea if that was legal or not – but it’s certainly very discourteous and distracting. For one thing, the blue light it emits is as eye-catchingly disturbing as any light from a mobile phone. And then the e-smoke itself clouds the vision; and there’s also the smell, which doesn’t particularly bother me but Mrs C hates it. Oi! E-cigarette users! No!

Review – Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Playhouse Theatre, 27th December 2014

Posted on by

To help celebrate the festive season, Mrs Chrisparkle and I often like to go to London to see a show or two – well, it makes a change to get out occasionally. This time we decided to go the whole hog and stayed over for three nights, seeing two shows on the Saturday and two shows on the Monday. On the Sabbath Day, we rested. When I was planning which shows we should book, I noticed that Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown would be previewing during our stay. I don’t normally do previews, as I like to be sure I’m seeing the final version. Still, the potential for phrases like “hot ticket” and “smash hit” kept tickling my brain, as well as the very attractive sounding “Tamsin Greig” – Mrs C and I love her in the TV series Episodes – so the decision was made; that would be our Saturday matinee choice.

Pepa is a voice-dubbing actress of reasonable success who has been having an affair with Ivan for some time, only to be dumped by him at the start of the show. As she tries to put back together the shattered pieces of her life, she has to cope with demands of her career, her friends, and selling her flat; which includes an attempted suicide, a Shiite terrorist, a court case and the discovery that she’s pregnant. Just any old 48 hours really. And that, in a nutshell, is the show.

It is of course an adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar’s film of the same name. He is a Big Name in cinema. If you are a regular to my blog – for which thanks, and Happy New Year, gentle reader – you’ve probably guessed that neither of us have seen any of his films. I appreciate that it’s the sin of omission; occasionally we can be quite a sinful couple. But I know of many people who think his work is outstanding, so I was looking forward to a musical representation of some feisty Spanish women chucking their weight around in 1980s Madrid.

I’m not sure that’s what I got. Maybe in the minor roles; I enjoyed the smug bitchiness of Rebecca McKinnis’ Christina, and Holly James’ Matador is certainly feisty – albeit completely surreal and strangely detached from the rest of the action. One of the best performances is from Seline Hizli as Marisa, the virgin enamorata of Pepa’s lover’s son Carlos, largely because the character is quite well fleshed out, and you kind of get a sense of what makes her tick. I wouldn’t describe her as feisty – particularly as she has to spend a lot of the show fast asleep after an accidental Valium overdose – but she’s quite wise and clear thinking.

However, you can’t describe the other characters that way. Tamsin Greig does a good line in portraying Pepa’s brave “chin-up” attitude, and frequently blesses us with that perplexed/stunned/slightly vacant look that she does so well on TV; but for the most part the character is in the eye of the storm and just reacts to what goes on around her. Haydn Gwynne’s Lucia – Pepa’s lover’s ex-lover, suing him for abandoning her – is a rather miserable character, excruciatingly dominant over her son and his girlfriend, painfully unable to handle the mental stresses of her existence and wallowing in self-pity at every opportunity. Even more unattractive a character is Anna Skellern’s Candela – Pepa’s model friend – an egocentric spoilt show-off brat who cares not one jot for the plights of anyone else but herself, and, rather than her being funny, to me the character just came over as immensely tedious.

In fact, nearly all the characters come across as either unpleasant or very flimsily written which is, I think, why the show as a whole said absolutely nothing to me. We didn’t actively hate it, that would have implied a strong enough reaction; we just didn’t actively enjoy it, or even participate in it. It committed the sin of being boring – really, very boring. I desperately wanted to enjoy it, but there was nothing to grab hold of in the story or the presentation to concentrate on and cherish. The whole thing looks delightfully stylised, with its bold coloured lighting, but that masks both a clinically plain set and a remarkably empty sense of drama. You can’t call it a triumph of style over substance, because that would require some sense of triumph.

There were a few good lines, and occasional comic moments, but there were even more sequences where you just thought, what the hell is going on, this is just ridiculous. If it was trying to be quirky and clever, it failed. Musically, it has a few curiously entertaining – if downbeat and introspective – tunes, but for the most part the songs merely punctuate the show rather than move the plot forward. To be fair, it all brightens up enormously just after the interval, with the first three songs and scenes seemingly written by a completely different person, and you cross fingers that they just might turn it around and rescue it; but then you get the horrendously boring scene and song where Lucia is pleading to the court, at which point I switched off and couldn’t care less anymore.This had the effect of making the “climax” (I use the word ill-advisedly) a long, drawn-out, bizarre sequence of non-events that somehow peter out into a conclusion. I don’t know if the terrorist sub-plot is meant to have a sense of danger or excitement, or surreal ludicrousness even; but to me it came over as pathetically lame. There’s also the scene where Marisa appears to say she’s no longer a virgin. We couldn’t work out if she’d had some extraordinary mental vision or if she’d been light-heartedly raped. Either way, we didn’t think it was either believable or palatable.

The performances range from the good to the adequate; despite really disliking the character of Candela, Anna Skellern performed the patter song “Model Behaviour” with technical expertise, and I really enjoyed Jérôme Pradon’s singing of “Yesterday Today and Tomorrow”, the moment when Ivan cunningly moves on to his next woman. Tamsin Greig’s singing voice has an attractive fragility that conveys the emotion and dramatic reflection of songs such as “Island”, but I always felt she was just millimetres away from hitting the wrong note, and sadly I just didn’t have confidence in her overall performance. Ricardo Afonso gave an entertaining performance as the Taxi Driver, although I felt his singing lacked a sense of occasion or urgency – too laid back to fill the role of commentator. The excellent Dale Rapley – a wonderful Horace Vandergelder to Janie Dee’s Hello Dolly in Leicester a couple of years ago – is strangely caught up taking a few of the minor roles.

The book, music and lyrics are David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane, responsible for the sublime Dirty Rotten Scoundrels a few yards away up the Strand. It’s fascinating to consider that the same team can create one such good work and one such bland one. The couple to Mrs Chrisparkle’s left absolutely hated it; the American tourist to my right who was “up for it” before it started just slept all the way through. I don’t suppose I was the only person who muttered the phrase “audience on the verge of a nervous breakdown” on the way out. Online research tells me that they have actually cut a couple of the songs from the original 2010 Broadway production. For this relief much thanks. Not good enough to survive, not bad enough to become a cult hit.

Review – Merlin, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 18th December 2014

Posted on by

We usually take our nieces, Secret Agent Code November and Special Agent Code Sierra, to the festive season play at the Royal in Northampton because it’s always a child-friendly but adult-friendly-too, non-panto production that takes a well-known story and brings it to life. When we sent out our invitation (in secret code of course) for this year’s offering of Merlin, the reaction was lukewarm. “Maybe we’ll pass this year” came the official response. Perhaps the story of Merlin, King Arthur and jousting knights just doesn’t do it for some 13- and 11-year old girls. But Mrs Chrisparkle and I aren’t deprived of our Christmassy treats so easily, so undeterred we sat in the middle of Row C last night, looking expectantly at the shimmering letters projected on the screen curtain, ready to be transported back to a fantasy world of myth and magic. And enormously entertaining it was too! Characters you can identify with, a funny script that still took the darker side of the story seriously, some very strong performances and it all looks and sounds fantastic.

I’m no expert on Merlin. I’ve never read Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, (have you?) and I never saw the TV series starring Colin Morgan. I don’t even think I’ve seen Disney’s Sword in the Stone – I’m feeling a bit deprived now. So I’ve nothing to benchmark this Merlin against, but I would guess he’s slightly more the popular fiction version. Young Arthur, Merlin and Gwen are pals, larking around in the Court of King Uther, but all the fun has to stop when the King orders Arthur to leave Caerleon and head for Lothian, land of the unprepossessing King Lot, be victorious in joust and win the hand of his daughter, the fair Princess Scintillata, to ensure peace throughout the land. But what they don’t take into account is Merlin’s affinity for a spot of dark arts magic – which King Uther has made illegal. Will Merlin resist being able to do a Harry Potter? Will this help or hinder Arthur’s quest? I’m sure you know already, but I’m not going to tell you.

Yannis Thavoris’ set featuring wall to wall books gives the immediate impression of great learning and knowledge. Merlin’s world is a veritable library, providing the perfect environment for his magic experiments. The literary theme is continued by having props made out of book pages, like the lining on the back rest of the King’s throne, which is rather clever; and the way the library converts to the site of the jousting contest is simply inspired! Does it matter that some of the books are obviously those Readers’ Digest ones from the middle of the 20th century? Probably not. It is, after all, a play all about magic. The costumes are excellent, suggesting both nobility and sorcery, the special effects are fun – Mabinogion the dragon is particularly cute – and John Nicholls’ music is terrific. Not only the introductory and background themes, but also the songs that are interspersed with the dialogue throughout the play. They have great tunes and very enjoyable arrangements. It’s not often you come out of a play – that isn’t really a musical – wanting to hear the songs again.

Ella Hickson’s script is an excellent blend of the serious and the comic, with the main characters providing a lot of incidental humour in their roles as teenagers becoming adults, and getting to grips with all those adult-type emotion-things. There’s a wonderful scene between Merlin and Viv, Arthur’s intended sister-in-law, when, discovering they have something in common, they almost kiss – but don’t – and he can’t quite work out why, and she knows full well. Poor Merlin – girls are always much more advanced at that age. Both Mrs C and I loved the use of modern language in the historic context – it makes for some very amusing juxtapositions; Merl and Art, what a team they make. There’s a moment when Merlin is being interrogated – by a tree, naturally – to prove his mettle, his self-will, his inner strength, his quest to become a real man; a rousing, encouraging, motivational speech, which ends with a thud and his being told “now bog off and save the world”. I bet you don’t see that in the history books.

Will Merrick’s Merlin is an excellent study of someone who grows in confidence and ability from a – shall we say – difficult start in life to a hero. Not only is he the boy becoming the man, he also makes the several jumps from commoner to wizard, from pal to royal advisor; in fact from Confused of Caerleon to Chief Consultant of Camelot. I loved how his sense of innocence transformed into a sense of duty. He’s a great contrast with James Clay’s Arthur, who is all young-hero-in-the-making in comparison with Merlin’s rather shifty anxiety. Mr Clay gives a very believable portrayal of a young chap to whom greatness will come if he’s man enough to deal with it. Francesca Zoutewelle’s Gwen is also a great study of a tomboy becoming a woman, in the constant company of a prince and a magician; a fun pal to have around but who might have some other charms too. She’s not exactly torn between two lovers but the hint of it is there.

The whole cast are excellent. I remembered Fergus O’Donnell as a brilliant Malvolio in Filter Theatre’s Twelfth Night, and here he is full of decent kingliness as Uther and humorous bluster as King Lot, as well as an unsuspecting knight partial to a bit of cheese. I loved Charlotte Mills as the wonderfully appalling Scintillata, a calculatingly mischievous mantrap who’s had a list of suitors under her pillow since kindergarten; a vision in pink atop her tower, demanding knights spill blood over her (not literally, perhaps), but who changes her tune and her fortune and ends up closer to Xena, Warrior Princess than Barbie.

Tom Giles gave a brilliantly camp comic portrayal of her French suitor, the buffoon Garotte, with a kilt like a mini-skirt, barking out orders and proving himself to be the cad and the bounder we had all along suspected. I also loved Imogen Daines’ spiky performance as Viv, presented as early Scots Goth, full of attitude but not entirely trustworthy; and her interpretation of a somewhat laconic Lady of the Lake was a delight. Katherine Toy fills in many of the minor roles, including making a wonderfully Jobsworth royal guard, and does fantastic work as Musical Director. When the cast all come on for their curtain call, there’s a sense of real surprise that there are only eight actors who together have presented so many characters and so much activity. They must work very hard – I don’t think any of them are going to put on weight over Christmas.

I thought it was a magically fun show, hitting just the right note of festive caperings whilst respecting the story’s more serious heritage. I’d be happy to see it a second time, if only to listen to the songs again. It’s on at the Royal until 4th January and would be a perfect Yuletide alternative to panto for anyone who is a teenager, is looking forward to being a teenager, or who enjoyed being a teenager. Now that’s magic!

Review – John, DV8, Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, screened at Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Northampton through the NT Live process, 9th December 2014

Posted on by

This was our very first foray into the world of live theatre screened direct to your local cinema. I’d heard both good and bad things about this form of presentation; that it’s just like being there in real life and that the camera angles are amazing; and I’d also heard that you just sit there and sigh “I wish I could be there in person”. Having experienced it first hand, on the whole I’d agree with the first statement. The camera angles are indeed amazing, and you get an excellent combination of both close-up and the wider full stage view; and because you hear the audience’s reactions and indeed see the audience settling down at the beginning, and leaving at the end, you really do get a sense of being there. And of course, all this for half the price of the train fare to get to London in the first place. The only mental sideswipe I experienced was at the end not being able to join in with the London audience’s applause – that really did emphasise the fact that you weren’t there. But, as like as not, if you hadn’t seen the NT Live coverage, you probably wouldn’t have seen the show either. So I classify the whole enterprise as A Very Good Thing. And also, presumably, someone somewhere has a nice recording of the performance so that it can be kept for all time.

We’d seen DV8 once before, at the Wycombe Swan in 1997, performing Bound To Please, a curate’s egg of a show that took on the subject of age and beauty, with the bold highlight of the evening being the sexagenarian Diana Payne-Myers, elegantly and gracefully dancing naked in full balletic style. But the piece was hampered by a rather ham-fisted desire to turn against and humiliate the audience which wasn’t really necessary. We also saw their television film The Cost of Living, which I remember being rather entertaining and very positive. Although much of those shows is now a distant memory, I am convinced that John is a far superior work to either of them.

Lloyd Newson’s initial creative idea was to interview a number of men about their attitudes to sex and love, and to see what themes emerged as a result. What emerged was the remarkable character of John, his story, his relationships, his struggles. About half a dozen of the people interviewed are represented in this piece, but John is by far the most predominant. As this is a verbatim production – nice new buzzword there – all the lines spoken by the performers are precisely as John and the other men spoke them at the interview. As a result, it’s a 100% true production. The issues raised, the events experienced, the hopes and fears discussed are all real, identified and probed during the interviewing process. This gives the production an unbeatable integrity, acting out real lives through physical theatre, paying homage to genuine experiences and real people.

If you are one of those lovely folks who checks into my blog on a regular basis, gentle reader, then you will know my mantra that I much prefer to see a brave failure than a lazy success. I love to be shocked and challenged in the theatre – and if Quentin Letts considers this as sleazy, amoral and a national disgrace, that’s all the incentive I would need to go and see it. John is full of bold and brave subject matter, and takes it head on in a no-holds-barred exposé – and overall the production is much more a success than a failure.Much has been made of the extended sequence of the comings and goings in a gay sauna, which of course will not be to everyone’s taste, but personally I rarely have a problem with seeing anything sexual on stage, and am much more likely to be offended by violence. There’s quite a bit of that in the first half of the show, as we see John’s early family life, which is damaged by a rapist of a father, a drug dependent mother and siblings in and out of trouble. John takes us on a journey of petty crime, drug addiction, and through a sea of girlfriends – very cleverly suggested by their dresses on hangers – eventually to prison and then an attempt at rehabilitation. His efforts to trace his long-lost son are beautifully told, and end with heart-breaking sadness. This whole sequence was storytelling by dance and physical theatre at its finest.

And then it very much becomes a game of two halves as the scene changes to the gay sauna in an instant, with no preparation for it, and nothing in the earlier material to suggest something like this might be on the cards. It’s just a very sudden change of scenery, emphasis, characterisation and subject matter. At first I found the change rather annoying, as I still felt I wanted to find out more about the John whose character had been built up so effectively by his own words and Hannes Langolf’s magnificent performance; then I found it intriguing to see if the extraordinary juxtaposition between the two threads would work; and then after a while I wanted to go back to the beginning again, as the length of the sauna sequence is simply out of balance with the rest of the performance. The first half of the show reflects John’s first thirty-plus years; in the second half John admits he’s only been to the sauna three times over a period of about six months, so the time spent observing the sauna activities carries an inordinate weight in comparison to the time spent accompanying John through his struggles.

There is a loss of momentum too, as John plays a much smaller part in the second half than in the first – presumably this is where the other voices who were interviewed get to play their part in the proceedings. Nevertheless, it was interesting to hear the day to day activities and concerns of the guys who run the sauna – including their constant battle with the evil and ubiquitous poo, which provided unexpected comic relief; and the sexual proclivities of the teacher were rather amusing – if extremely irresponsible and unwise. But you can’t overcome the fact that the sauna scene has a distinct Lack Of John about it. Nothing against the performers who took a more major part in that scene – it’s just that we’d built up a relationship with John and it was left mid-air. But then, such is the challenge of a DV8 piece – never expect it to comply with the norm.

It’s a really strong production. I loved the revolving stage, so that, in order to remain in full view of the audience, John has to keep pacing through doors and in and out of rooms, providing a visual metaphor of his progress through the stages and locations of his life. The combination of John’s speeches and the dance movement serves to emphasise both; staccato movements accentuating tough words, flowing intimate movements accompanying more personal and private moments. Hannes Langolf has a lot of words to say as John, and it is a testament to his personal fitness that his energy keeps high throughout the whole show, his accurate and demanding dance movements never losing power as his verbal dexterity continues to deliver John’s thoughts and experiences. We really feel as though we know John, and despite (maybe because of) his demons and his struggles, we really like him. Mr Langolf creates a real man out of this interview material.

Lloyd Newson’s choreography has his performers depicting everything from the Neanderthal to the sophisticated and they do him proud. Whilst Mr Langolf is extraordinary in his physical presence, the rest of the cast also form an incredibly good ensemble. Ian Garside provides some memorable moments as John’s son and, along with Taylor Benjamin, as one of the sauna owners. Simple devices, such as the seamless removal of a t-shirt worn by one dancer and on to another give hints of intimacy; whilst the rapid undressing and dressing and undressing again and dressing again by various performers in the background whilst the sauna owners talked about their problems gave the impression of a constantly active and busy changing room, without having a large cast. The dance action/physical theatre is constantly engrossing throughout the performance, and even when the narrative itself loses strength, you always admire the skilful and creative movements of the performers.

If you’re a fan of physical theatre and you like to be challenged this is an excellent production which will give you much to think about and admire, capturing the essence of an unknown person and doing him justice. Technically superb performances are the icing on the cake. To Quentin Letts I say grow up and get real. To be honest, unless you’re straight and you’ve never been confronted with intimate homosexual behaviour, you’re unlikely to be too surprised by anything you see. Years of attending Eurovision discos means Mrs Chrisparkle and I are old hands at that! And I did get an insight into how a couple of gay friends, who met at a sauna, might have started their long-lasting relationship. No names no pack drill! It’s not a perfect show by any means but its positives more than outweigh its negatives and I’d definitely recommend it.

Production photos are by Laurent Philippe, Gergoe Nagy, Kris Rozental and Hugo Glendinning.

Here’s a trailer that gives you a good idea of the show.

Review – Calamity Jane, Milton Keynes Theatre, 25th November 2014

Posted on by

As soon as I saw this touring show was coming to Milton Keynes, I knew I had to book straight away. Not only does it star one of our favourite performers, Jodie Prenger, but Mrs Chrisparkle was raised on a diet of Doris Day movies, with Calamity Jane being her favourite childhood memory. We only have to go out in a gentle breeze for her to suddenly burst forward with a chorus of “the windy city is mighty pretty….”, or to walk up a small hill for her sing “oh the Deadwood stage is headin’ on over the hills…” – I’m sure you get the picture. The young Miss Duncansby (as she was then) was never happier than when riding shotgun through those rough areas of New South Wales where she brought up, knocking back the sarsaparillas, dressed as a squaw.

Fortunately times change, but her fondness for that old film and its songs is unshakeable. Consequently, it’s fairly amazing to think that, in all these intervening years, she’s never got me sat down to watch the film on TV, so I didn’t know what to expect from the story. If you don’t know the plot either, here’s a brief outline. Calamity Jane (Calam to her friends) is the tomboyest tomboy this side of the Black Hills of Dakota, and rides the stagecoach, shooting to warn off (I hope not to kill) those pesky Injuns with their arrows. She’s pals with Wild Bill Hickok, but has a yearning for Lt Danny Gilmartin that isn’t reciprocated. One day Calam has to ride into Chicago to bring back a famous actress that the men of Deadwood fancy something rotten, to appear at the Golden Garter saloon.None of them has ever seen her, they only know her from her image in much lusted after cigarette cards. Thus Calam mistakenly brings back the wrong girl – a wannabe singer/actress – who gets found out, and it could have ended very nastily were it not for the fact that the wrong girl is a very sweet girl by the name of Katie Brown, who beguiles all the men, becomes best mates with Calam and indeed they end up sharing the same chalet. How does this menage à quatre sort itself out? That’s the show.

I’ve rarely been in a theatre where the atmosphere of expectation and excitement was as tangible as it was in Milton Keynes on Tuesday night. The show opens with the curtain down, a banjo hanging from a hook in full view of the audience; on saunters Jamie Noar (I think) as Hank, takes down the banjo and gently starts to strum – and half the audience started humming along with him! I felt as though I was in another world. When the curtain eventually opens up it reveals the Golden Garter saloon, and it’s as Wild Westy as you could imagine. A shoddy little stage at the back, a plinky plonky piano up front, bare wooden chairs and balconies, and everyone dressed like they’re in a John Wayne movie. It’s a very convincing staging – the only criticism I would have is that there’s not a huge amount of space left for dancing, but the cast cope with that problem admirably.

This is a Watermill Theatre production, so you know what that means, don’t you? No separate orchestra or band, instead the cast members play the instruments themselves on the stage, integrating the acting and the music to perfection. The first time I saw this trick (in Chess) it didn’t really work that well for me – it made the stage very messy and created blocking problems. Since then I’ve seen it done a few times and they’re getting better and better at it. Indeed I recognised a few members of the cast from the similarly staged production of Fiddler on the Roof earlier this year – I guess if you have the skill of being both an actor and an instrumental soloist, you’re in luck where it comes to this kind of production. Suffice to say the musical performances were all terrific.

I must say that technically also this was a faultless performance by the cast. With all those instruments, loads of prop handling (guns, lassos, glasses, bottles), lots of choreography, special effects, costume changes and so on, they didn’t put a foot wrong. It must be rehearsed to within an inch of its life, yet it all still looks really natural. So, it was incredibly disappointing that the sound amplification in some of the big numbers let it down. To be honest, at times it sounded absolutely awful, especially before the interval. If it were an old hifi system, you’d say that the treble was turned up too much, creating a strange distortion. The instruments themselves sounded fine – but the voices could have been singing in a foreign language, it was that hard to make out the words. Sadly, this was most problematic for Ms Prenger, who’s got a belter of a voice and could have filled that auditorium without the need for a microphone.

During the interval I walked Mrs C over to the Merchandise stall and offered her a Calamity Jane mug, which she refused, a Calamity Jane hoodie, at which she looked daggers at me, and a Calamity Jane soundtrack CD which she said she would never play. Sigh; you just can’t help some people. Still she’s going to be most amused to find a Calamity Jane Stetson under the tree on Christmas morning.

I don’t know if they tweaked some knobs during the interval but the voices were much clearer in the second half which was a huge relief. The amplification issue notwithstanding, nothing could detract from the standard of the performances, which were terrific and made the whole evening enormous fun from start to finish. Jodie Prenger has a wonderful stage presence and is the focal point for the whole show with her bubbly personality. She makes the most of all the comedy in the role, but is also very moving when it comes to the character’s inability to girl-up. Tomboy she may be, but inside she’s all woman. For me the highlight of the entire show was her incredible performance of Secret Love which gave me goosebumps – emotional, beautiful; it really soared.

Tom Lister as Wild Bill Hickok also gives a tremendous performance, mixing humour and pathos, and revealing a superb voice, particularly in Higher Than a Hawk, which had the audience so spellbound you could hear the proverbial pin drop. With Alex Hammond as Danny, the two leading men give a very entertaining “rivals in love” performance, and together with Phoebe Street’s charming performance as Katie, they’re quite a show-stopping foursome. The man sat behind me was really enjoying the show, getting totally carried away with the story. When Danny finally planted a smacker on Katie’s lips, he let out an involuntary “Go on, my son!” much to everyone’s amusement.

Finishing with an ending of almost Shakespearean comedy marriage dimensions, there are also very enjoyable musical and comic performances from Rob Delaney as Francis Fryer and Sioned Saunders as Susan. The rest of the cast all turn in excellent performances, and I was particularly impressed with Anthony Dunn’s hearty Henry Miller, Jon Bonner’s amusingly squeaky Doc, Paul Kissaun’s laid-back Rattlesnake and Christina Tedders’ bitchy Adelaid. Plus, as dance captain, Martin McCarthy as Joe is obviously keeping everyone on their toes with some really well executed dances, most obvious in the delightful curtain call which turns into a wonderful reprise-led hoe-down.

It’s a really entertaining show that we both enjoyed tremendously. For me it was fascinating to see how all these well-known songs fit in to a story that I didn’t previously know; and the natural fun that comes from the story and the performances just seeps into your soul to send you home with a real feel-good feeling. The audience adored it – and I guarantee you’ll be humming The Black Hills of Dakota for days. There’s a long tour ahead, so you’ve plenty of opportunities to catch the show – it’s travelling all over England and Scotland between now and next July.

P. S. This was the first time I’ve ever seen a musical where the programme didn’t list the musical numbers. What’s all that about then? Makes reminiscing about it much harder, and you don’t know whereabouts you are in the show as it progresses. Minus mark for the programme writer! However, to make up for it, their marketing department did create this brilliant little trailer which should get your toes tappin’ in anticipatory glee!