Category Archives: Theatre

Review – Camelot The Shining City, Sheffield Crucible (and beyond), 11th July 2015

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When we go to Sheffield, gentle reader, we always like to go for a double-header – seeing a play in the afternoon and in the evening. With the Crucible, the Studio and the Lyceum all within a pixie’s bootie of each other, it’s not normally a challenge to find a suitable date on the calendar where at least two decent shows collide. I had really wanted to see The Effect – and I’m glad we did, because it was excellent. But what to combine it with? The only real option was Camelot The Shining City, which sounded intriguing with its promise of a cast of 150, with the audience following the action on foot from the Crucible theatre and onto the streets of Sheffield. Done well, it could be magic.

A co-production between Sheffield Theatres and Slung Low, specialists in open air/unusual places theatre, you quickly realise what a major undertaking this venture is. On arrival at the Crucible, friendly helpful ushers give you a mini-training session on how to use your headphones, as you will need them to hear what’s going on when you go outside for Acts 2 and 3. I’d already checked online in advance, and there were precious few seats left unoccupied – and indeed, when we entered the Crucible auditorium, headphones around our necks like DJs, umbrellas and coats at the ready for a potentially inclement Sheffield shower, I saw that the auditorium was fuller than I’d ever seen it before, even for major productions like My Fair Lady or Oliver! So the production is definitely tapping into some Zeitgeist or other.

The story begins. Bedivere is returned (from somewhere, to somewhere) and subjected to water torture and quite a lot of roughing up. We meet Bear, an attitudinal young lady who questions everything but joins a group of other young people sitting in a circle; representative of the Round Table, methinks. Bear has a tutor, Michael (I’m presuming he’s like a Merlin figure) who has a tough time keeping Bear on her books as she has visions of greatness, of leading her people into the fray and returning Sheffield to those bright days of yesteryear. She swears herself to chastity, which must be a bit of a disappointment to prospective boyfriend Luke; and she kills her General father. Michael has a degenerative disease and declines from active teacher to Stephen Hawking-lookalike within forty minutes. In amongst all these activities, every so often the stage is invaded by groups of soldiers, children, and other citizens, who march, stand, stare, look gloomy, then march off.

Within about five minutes of the play starting, I was already totally confused. I understood that it was a modern take on the Arthurian legend (the clue was in the title), but even so, I didn’t get what was going on at all. I whispered to Mrs Chrisparkle, “I hope you’re following this?” to which she looked at me with bemused eyes and whispered back, “not a clue”. The speeches were all portentous and imbued with heavy significance, but lacked simple dramatic clarity. This became even more evident in the later acts when, now with our headphones in place, there were much wider spaces to look at, and whilst you were listening to someone speaking, you were looking here there and everywhere to find which actor was mouthing the same words.

As a result, new characters were being introduced, but you weren’t always able to identify them amongst the other 149 people around and about; and, to be honest, I couldn’t tell who half of them were. I got Galahad – I understood him. But there was another woman – who by process of elimination and clever use of the programme (but only after it was all over) – must have been Elaine, but her part in the story I never comprehended. There may have been yet another extra woman too, we weren’t sure. It struck me, whilst listening to the disembodied voices intoning these heavy, undramatic speeches, and without seeing who was talking, it was like listening to one of those really pretentious Radio 3 afternoon plays. You know the type – it probably has some literary merit if you want to look for it, and the characters speak with immaculate Standard English pronunciation, and it’s as tedious as all hell.

There was also a real hotch-potch of events and elements to the play, especially in Act 2, where it seemed like the creative team just wanted to throw as much at the production as possible in the hope that some of it sticks. At times it was like watching a village fete, with the local children’s dancing teams being put through their paces; at other times it was like watching a hard hitting Channel 4 police drama, as a mob smash through the windscreen of a taxi. By the time we get to Act 3, it’s all-out war. A word of advice to anyone going to see the show – it’s vital that you position yourself for a good view of what’s going on when you get out and about onto the streets. You want the front row by the central railings in Act Two – as central as possible; and the front row of the raised lawn edge for Act Three. Don’t make the mistake we did of getting our coats on inside the Crucible when leaving Act One for Act Two. By the time we’d politely joined the queue to get out, all the decent places were taken.

Tia Bannon, who plays Bear, has a great stage presence, a lovely clear voice, and could melt your heart at twenty paces. This is her professional stage debut and I think she could well be One To Watch. She portrays pretty convincingly Bear’s journey from idealistic heroine to loopily self-aggrandised tyrant. I also liked Ed MacArthur as Luke – especially in Act One – you can really identify with how he surprises himself by striking it lucky to get the top girl, and he nicely brought out what little lightness and humour there was in the script. I don’t know if Oliver Senton, who played the General, had some kind of throat problem, but I felt that vocally he was underpowered. The majority of the rest of the cast are amateur/semi-professional and all gave a good account of themselves. It was just the ponderous ploddy script that let it down. So badly.

Halfway through Act Two I received a text. It was from Mrs C, standing in front of me. It read: “do we have 2 stay 4 the 3rd act?” I replied: “Ermmm”, although primarily my concern was her sudden decline into textspeak. I didn’t want to stay either; but the alternative would have been just drinking yet more Rioja than is probably good for us. So I vetoed the early departure, if only so I could see whether Act 3 would have more dramatic quality than Act 2. Answer: fractionally. We did however both agree it wouldn’t have been worth getting rained on for.

I’d loved to have loved it. And I’m more than happy to recognise the enormous effort that went into creating and performing it. Mrs C quoted back to me my old saying that I prefer to see a brave failure to a lazy success. True. However. There are limits. We don’t often hate shows, but this was one of them.

Review – The Effect, Studio at the Sheffield Crucible, 11th July 2015

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Laughing in the face of M1 roadworks, we drove up to Sheffield for the third time this year for yet another Crucible-based theatre weekend. And what could be a more enjoyable and sociable way to start than by meeting up with Lady Lichfield and the young Duchess of Dudley at Wagamama for a yummy lunch of warm chilli chicken salad followed by white chocolate and ginger cheesecake. Add some Sauvignon Blanc into the mix et voilà! Instant delight.

All four of us headed off to the versatile little Crucible Studio, one of the best small acting spaces anywhere, which, rather like the Menier, lends its own personality to any production lucky enough to take place there. The Studio’s current offering is The Effect by Lucy Prebble, which won the Critics Circle award for Best New Play in 2013, when it was originally produced by the National Theatre. This is the first time I’ve seen anything by Ms Prebble – we missed ENRON, much to our dismay. But I can verify she is a writer of great wit and imagination, and that The Effect is a fascinating, thought-provoking play that intrigues, amuses and horrifies in equal measure.

I’ve never been involved in a drug trial. I don’t think I know anyone who has been involved in a drug trial. And, having seen The Effect, I’m not sure I would ever want to. The scene is a science lab, where Connie and Tristan, amongst unseen others, have volunteered for a trial of a new drug, which will require their undivided presence and compliance for four long weeks. No mobile phones, no outside contact, and oppressed by near-constant supervision. Once Dr Lorna James, who’s in charge of the trial, has satisfied herself that the volunteers are indeed suitable for the task ahead, the experiment commences. Small dosages at first, followed by regularly rising dosages of the drug on trial appear to create side effects that the doctor and the Pharmaceutical company were not expecting; and Connie and Tristan fall in love. But is the trial all it seems? Is the doctor as in control as she seems? Is the pharmaceutical company as open about the trial as they seem? And is the future rosy for the two young lovers?

The play is so beautifully and subtly written that you can interpret many of its events in different ways. For example, there’s the question of the placebo. If one of the clinical study participants is taking placebo rather than the drug, then it can’t be the drug that’s causing the side effect – can it? But maybe no one’s on placebo. Maybe it’s not only the drug that’s on trial here. And what happens if someone accidentally overdoses? Supposing one of the candidates hasn’t been fully truthful about their medical history? Supposing the pharmaceutical company and/or the doctor in charge have their own private agenda? How scientific can any trial be when you’re dealing with people, because people have their own emotions, foibles, secrets; and nothing can ever be 100% watertight. Can it? You’ll go on asking these questions for hours.

Daniel Evans’ direction suggests the audience are minor participants in the trial too. The stark white chairs on the stage are the same as the stark white chairs on which the audience sit. The computer readings are displayed on large screens in all four corners of the auditorium so no matter where you sit you can see them. The fifteen minute interval is counted down on a screen both inside and outside the auditorium, daring you to be late back after your half-time Pinot; nobody was, as we didn’t want to face short shrift from Dr James. All in all, you get a great sense of everyone participating in the same experiment; it’s a real shared experience.

The cast of four give outstanding performances, fully inhabiting the intricately drawn characters that Lucy Prebble has created. Ophelia Lovibond is simply stunning as Connie. Careful to conceal aspects of her current relationship and resentful of questions that she considers are too personal, she appears nevertheless willing to play the clinical trial game to the best of her ability. But you never quite know what her attitude to any event, any question, or any situation might be. You can read in her eyes as she processes new items of information, that she is working out what her reaction is going to be. My guess is that in every performance she is probably understanding anew each time what her character is going through; and you, the audience, are accompanying her on that rather savage journey. Emotional, anxious, uncomfortable; Ms Lovibond takes Connie through a gamut of reactions, before finally becoming a changed person; one with a purpose in life that she had previously lacked.

She is matched with an equally brilliant performance by Henry Pettigrew as Tristan. Where Connie is initially reserved and careful, Mr Pettigrew presents Tristan as an instantly self-confident, flirtatious charmer; a natural rule-breaker (not the kind of person you’d really want on a clinical trial!), a pusher of boundaries, a loveable rogue, with more than a side-dish of lock up your daughters about him. Mr Pettigrew interprets him as a really credible, adult version of a naughty schoolboy, encouraging other classmates to skip lessons and sneak off into an out-of-bounds area where they will get up to no good.Together the two have a wonderful chemistry, and you’d swear they were either in love in real life or really, really good actors. As the play progresses and the balance of power between the two characters changes, so that Connie is more in control and Tristan’s fortunes have declined, the love still continues, albeit more in an “in sickness or in health” vein. Nevertheless, I note with amusement the first appearance of a stagey “masturbation under the bedclothes” scene since Miss Julie Walters did it to the late Richard Beckinsale in Mike Stott’s Funny Peculiar back in 1976; although if I remember rightly, her provision of erotic stimulation wasn’t limited just to her hand. You can’t beat a good “providing sex to a patient” scene for shock comic purposes.

Connie and Tristan are not the only twosome to have their problems in this play. There’s obviously been some history between Dr Lorna James and Toby of the Pharma. It’s never made totally clear quite what went on between them, but as a result Dr Lorna has something of a tenuous grasp on sanity; and, like Tristan, but in her own way, she too falls foul of the Pharma client. In a slightly heavy use of symbolism, Toby continues on, wrecking lives one way or another, where you might otherwise traditionally expect the drug company to look after people’s wellbeing. Priyanga Burford gives a mesmerising performance as Lorna, the doctor with a steely eye for the accuracy of the trial but who begins to fray around the edges as her ability to control comes into question.And Stuart Bunce is splendidly disconnected as Toby, ostensibly reasonable and professional, but hurting too; and with just the right lack of empathy not to notice the trail of destruction in his wake.

A fascinating play, with first class performances in a stunning production. What’s not to like? It’s running until Saturday 18th July – unmissable.

Review – An Audience with Jimmy Savile, Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, 7th July 2015

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Like most people I would imagine, when I first heard that they were producing a play about Jimmy Savile, starring Alistair McGowan, it sounded to me like the height of tastelessness. We’ve all had our individual reactions to the Savile affair, from “I never liked him” and “I always liked him” to “he did all that charity work just to cover up his evil” and “but he did all that charity work, can he be that evil”; from “I never would have believed it” to “I always knew it” and a whole host of other reactions besides.

I also originally thought that taking on the role would be a kiss of death to Alistair McGowan’s career. It would have to be a superbly written and produced play to take the subject matter seriously and creatively enough not to cause any additional offence, and indeed, hopefully, to cast new light on it. Even then I thought there might be some kind of backlash. However, I think it was Mrs Chrisparkle who suggested we should see it because, after all’s said and done, it sounds utterly intriguing. It’s also on at the Park theatre, in Finsbury Park, which we hadn’t yet visited. So we booked.

Being brought up in Wendover, near Aylesbury, Jimmy Savile was a fairly familiar sight in the 70s and 80s in our neck of the woods. He’d often go jogging the couple of miles from Stoke Mandeville to Wendover and back again, although he never came into the pub that my parents ran. After the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle retired, she started volunteering at the Stoke Mandeville National Spinal Injuries Centre. As a result she frequently saw him there. I don’t think she had any knowledge of what he was getting up to, and although she found it amusing working side by side with a celebrity, and he used to refer to her as “My friend Violet”, she didn’t like him very much. On one occasion when she felt the supervisors had been hard on her for something she had or hadn’t done – I can’t remember the details – she appealed to him to intervene but he refused to take her side. Sadly the Dowager has suffered from dementia for the last eight years, so she doesn’t know what scandal was going on all around her – I’d have loved to have talked to her about it in light of the recent revelations.

Like most people of my age, I grew up with Savile on the radio and TV. I was one of those youngsters who really liked him. I particularly used to look forward to his Double Top Ten Show on Radio 1 on Sunday lunchtimes, and I have no doubt he was a gifted broadcaster. I wasn’t too much enamoured with Jim’ll Fix It – it was ok, but a bit “goody-two-shoes” for my taste. Retrospectively, that’s ironic, isn’t it? By the time he was in his 80s he certainly looked like a parody of himself. He seemed generally grumpier – and vainer – but yes, when he died, I felt a pang of sorrow.

I’m dwelling on those memories and personal thoughts because that’s precisely what you have to juggle with when you watch Jonathan Maitland’s Audience with Jimmy Savile. From my side perch in Row A of the circle at the Park 200 (fantastic view by the way) it was equally fascinating to witness the audience’s ongoing reactions to the play as it was to watch the play itself. Savile was, and as a spectre still is, loathsome, evil, calculating, manipulative, cruel, heartless, vicious; in fact, if you think of any adjective with negative overtones, he probably falls into that category. So to watch an audience, watching a play, where a much-loved TV presenter is falling over himself with niceness, to present a tribute programme to that wretch, is fairly strenuous on the nausea reflux. When Savile comes out with quips and jokes, those trademark catchphrases and his avuncular (shudder) approaches to any “young ladies” in the audience, where once they would have been greeted with polite and/or knowing titters, the Park audience watch him in stony silence, arms crossed, mouths rooted in downturned disapproval. As you can imagine, Alistair McGowan’s impersonation of Savile is top notch quality,which makes his direct looks and asides to the audience even more uncomfortable to deal with. He almost challenges some audience members to react; they don’t; he turns away and carries on with his speech; the audience member feels the heat is off and they smile guiltily to their companions. It’s a fascinating study of an audience under pressure.

At 85 minutes, with no interval, this play is one of the few instances when I think having no interval is a good thing. You don’t want the audience discussing it amongst themselves half-time and openly deciding how to deal with it; this is challenging, go-it-alone audience territory. The play takes the structure of one of those flattering and adulatory TV endurance tests, “An Audience With….” I’m sure you’ve seen them. An Audience with some ageing star beyond their best but still with a reasonably fond personal following, where they meet old friends and acquaintances, and other stars “in the bizness”, who say hideously nice things about their target. In Jonathan Maitland’s take on this format, as the show (within a show) progresses, you get to realise first-hand that this eccentric, charitable and amusing Sir Jimmy, OBE, is in fact a bully, an abuser of young women, violent in both deed and word, and has dubious friends to say the least. Scenes of this “accolade” show are interspersed with the developing story of Lucy, raped by Savile whilst she was in hospital at the age of 12. You see her battling to convince her father that her allegations are true, approaching a newspaper editor with her story, and his subsequent dealings with Savile; coping with an unwilling police force who are more keen to point out that she will be ripped apart in court than to consider the victim or the crime itself; and finally confronting Savile with the truth about what he did.

I had read reviews before seeing the play that suggested that opinions were divided as to the play itself. Some thought it was challenging and well written, others thought it was completely lacking in drama. Personally, I thought it was oozing with drama from the start. At the beginning you have Savile, in control, in demand, in excelsis almost, contrasted with Lucy, unable to finish sentences without crying. By the end, Lucy is in control, challenging Savile directly, firmly and assertively making her point; whereas we’ve seen Savile decline, both physically and reputatively, through his associations, his dressing-room activities, his argumentative and defensive interviews, and his final visible lack of control. The play is very nicely balanced, cunningly written to reflect Savile’s own cunningly constructed answers to difficult questions, and with a final scene that Mrs C found extremely moving.

At the heart of the play is Alistair McGowan’s performance – a fantastic impersonation, but never played for laughs; this is serious drama and Mr McGowan gives us Savile’s voice saying the kind of things we never heard him say in real life. So this is not mere impersonation but a full characterisation of an evil man, barely concealing his evil from an adoring public. I really enjoyed Mr McGowan’s performance – after the initial shock (for there definitely is one) of seeing Savile almost alive again, I found myself smiling at Mr McGowan’s portrayal of his eccentricities because they are cleverly done and they do bring you back to a time when one used to find Savile funny. I felt as though I ought to stop smiling, in honour of those people whom he abused. But that’s one of the tricky things about challenging drama – you never quite know how you’re going to react until you’re actually confronted with it. In my defence, I also found his portrayal quite disgusting too – the tacky shell suit, the unkempt straggly hair; and there’s a final scene where he’s removed his track suit bottoms and is just in a pair of short shorts, which goes to emphasise the lascivious threat he could pose to anyone weaker than himself. Thoroughly unpleasant – but superbly well done.

Leah Whitaker gives a very strong and heartbreaking performance as Lucy, picking up the pieces of a ruined life, and permanently running aground each time she seems to get closer to justice. I found her compelling and emotional, a very thoughtfully and honestly portrayed representation of a typical Savile victim, if there is such a thing. Robert Perkins was excellent in many of the supporting roles; I particularly liked him as the Newspaper Editor (where he reminded me slightly of Max Clifford, which is bizarre in itself), and as Savile’s slimy pal Ray Teret, lending great credibility to the old saying about how you can judge a person’s character by the company they keep. Charlotte Page also gave great support, especially as Alice, the researcher who’s also the recipient of Savile’s odious attention, D S Goldstein where she tries her hardest to be supportive to Lucy but also has to make her face unwelcome facts; and as Clare, the Stoke Mandeville representative, unctuously blinded by Savile’s celebrity, almost eerily serenading him with a quick blast of the Jim’ll Fix It theme. The final member of the cast is the splendid Graham Seed, as Savile’s TV inquisitor Michael Sterling, more concerned about how he himself will look on camera than posing any really searching questions to Savile.

There’s no doubt this is an uncomfortable and challenging play to watch, but it really helps you, the audience member, come to terms with how you feel about Savile; and you definitely come out of the theatre with a greater appreciation of the personal tragedies he caused and the way he manipulated the media and society to get what he wanted. Strangely enjoyable, and for all the right reasons. Plus Mrs C and I are delighted to have discovered the Park theatre, and can’t wait for another excuse to go!

Review – Immune, Royal and Derngate Young Company CREATE, Royal Theatre, Northampton, 4th July 2015

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When I booked for this production a number of months ago, it was just called “A New Play”. But I had already come to the conclusion that you can really trust the Royal and Derngate’s Young Company to deliver top quality entertainment through the power of drama, performed with maturity beyond their years. So I was happy for them to surprise me with their new offering, no matter what it might be.

Over the course of the last year the Young Company has divided in two – the Immerse group worked with the Actors’ Company on Aftermath, a play that explored Northampton’s involvement in the First World War, and most recently Kontakt, where individual members of the audience sat at a desk opposite a young actor, for a private yet shared fifty minute journey of personal transactions. Both were wonderful productions. For Immune, the Create group has workshopped various methods of story-telling and direct address on stage and fed back to writer Oladipo Agboluaje for him to start working on this “new play”. In addition, two other groups of young actors, from the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Theatre Royal Plymouth, have been through the same process, to help create a brand new work which will have three individual productions at each of the theatres, each with their own director, set designer, and sound designer. So this is not a touring production, but a different realisation of the same play by three different creative groups. It would be really fascinating to see them all.

So what’s Immune all about then? A day that starts very ordinarily, and ends very extraordinarily. Monday morning at school. The fights and the friendships. The fancyings and the funnies. The secrets and the rivalries. The mates and the gossips. It’s a school, but it could be any environment where a group of people are made to spend the day together – on a course, in an office, on a holiday tour, and so on. You know to expect the intertwined relationships, and the typical characters. The girl who says nothing. The boy who follows Jesus. The girl who’s the brainbox. The boy who’s always picked on. The girl who knows that shaking out her hair makes her look attractive. The boy who is only known for being a knobhead. They’re all here.

So this very ordinary day starts with all their usual interactions, but particularly going through the videos that they have (or haven’t) filmed for Creativity Day at the end of the week. Then they have to go to boring Mr Brown for a boring chemistry lesson. Two boys start a fight (as they do) which causes some chemicals to be knocked over. They react (the chemicals, not the boys) and create smoke and gas, there’s a flurry of coughing and gasping, but with the windows finally opened, it seems as though there’s no harm done. But then they find that one of the class has received acid burns, and is in hospital; and later on, there are more serious – not to say apocalyptic – repercussions for other school members, and the wider environment; for the town; for the country. One ordinary day. One tiny mistake. One apocalypse. It could happen.

Technically it’s both a demanding and rewarding production, with the cast being called on constantly to change the scenery themselves, wheeling panels around, locking boxes into place, sliding doors together, all in full view of the audience, and all done with immaculate calm and accuracy. In performance, I also really loved the device whereby the whole cast stand up and chant together the lines of the otherwise unseen teachers and adults. It created a nice distinction between the reality of the human emotions raging through the main characters and the almost robotic and anonymous other characters, devoid of emotion. Very effective.

The Young Company have once again worked hard to give us a tremendous performance, with great insight into the characterisations, some wonderful comic timing, and a real feel for the horror of the apocalypse. They work together as a terrific ensemble, and are very supportive and generous to each other on stage. If you’ve seen any of them before in previous productions, it’s very rewarding to appreciate their progress both as performers and as people. For instance, over four years ago we saw Luke Nunn (who plays Samson) in The Years Between, a rather spellbinding Daphne du Maurier story about a war widow who discovers she isn’t. Master Nunn was excellent in that, and today Mr Nunn is developing into a really assured and talented actor. Immune requires a lot of direct interaction with the audience, and he has that ability to take us into his confidence, as if he’s only talking to you, down to a Tee. Jakub Madej, who played (correct me if I’m wrong) the communist Dmitri in Aftermath, brings his imposing stage presence and superbly projected voice to the role of Albert, the workshy fantasist member of class. There’s a genuinely funny and realistic performance by Owen Howard as the hapless Craig, pretty much useless at everything, but a true survivor, (that is, if any of them do…). And possibly the most natural performer of the whole cast is Jarzinho Rapoz as Eric, who communicates instantly motivation, characterisation and thought processes with just one simple roll of the eyes or jokey facial expression. Definitely one to watch.

sme Joy Allen is a complete scene stealer with her brilliant performance as Bella, desperate to get Peter’s attention, fully aware of how she can manipulate and influence others, but as vulnerable as anyone else when the chemical spillage gets out of hand. I really liked Scarlett Jordan as Denise, big on intelligence and big on hair, very convincingly expressing that sense of power you assume when people think you are a natural leader, but without being big-headed about it. When she discovers that the problem is more than she alone can solve, her sense of inadequacy is painful – and engrossing – to watch; great characterisation. Mrs Chrisparkle and I both agreed that probably the best performance of all came from Bethany Priddy as the eloquent and emotional Bonnie, trying to protect her dad’s reputation (even though she knows he’s in the wrong), and confronted by what actually happens to him as a result of the apocalyptic nightmare. A technically terrific, and really moving performance. But all the cast members gave wonderful performances and contributed to a very entertaining, not to mention scary, evening. Congratulations to everyone involved.

So all in all, a gripping production combining a very likeable and talented cast with an excellent play, both funny and frightening. It’s finished its run at the Royal and Derngate now, but it is still to play at West Yorkshire Playhouse from 23-25 July and the Theatre Royal Plymouth from 19-22 August. If the play has one message, it is – I guess – that you should live each day like it’s your last, because one day you’ll be right. Cherish your relationships, make peace with your enemies and be true to yourself. Don’t get bitter about the pathetic little things – there’s a bigger picture out there, and that’s the one that really counts. Oh, and always keep the windows open and don’t knock over the chemicals.

Independent Traders of Northampton – Independence Day Fair at the Guildhall – The Cultural Quarter

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With 4th July looming, I was thinking about the nature of independence. Yes, I know it’s not like me to be that deep, gentle reader, but bear with me. Generally speaking, I can see there may be two stages of independence – the first, breaking away from a position where you are dependent – like a grown-up child leaving home, or the United States no longer being one of our little colonies; the second, maintaining and generally being independent, like that grown-up child taking the responsibility for his own life (and any who become dependent on him), and the United States growing into the most significant country in the world. Or at least until it was taken over by China.

For the most part – not exclusively, because life isn’t like that – it strikes me that independent people, countries, businesses, institutions, and so on, thrive through being independent, rather than following someone else’s rules, making someone else richer, or living out someone else’s dream rather than one’s own. We all like to have our own identity, to create our own space, to apply our own intelligence to our own lives, to make the world a better place. Otherwise we might as well set up shop in Pyongyang.

There’s going to be a Love Northampton Fair at the Guildhall in the town centre on Saturday July 4th, (Independence Day – appropriately enough) to celebrate and promote the town’s independent businesses and traders. One might think this just means shops, or cafés and restaurants, or bars. And of course, such places play a huge role in creating the individual sculpture that is our beloved town, and I shall be thinking about some of those places in another blog in a day or two’s time. However, there is more to it than that. In the middle of Northampton you find the classily demarcated zone of the “Cultural Quarter”, an area where many of the arts come together to form a solid heart in what would otherwise be a commercial centre. For example, here you will find the amazing museum with its massive collection of boots and shoes – a testament to Northampton’s shoemaking heritage – and NN, the Northampton Contemporary Art Space at 9 Guildhall Road, the home of the Northampton Art Collective, moved on from its now non-existent previous premises in the Fishmarket, which just goes to show you can’t simply demolish the arts. We actually popped into the NN Café upstairs last Saturday lunchtime for a glass of Pimm’s and a light bite – hurrah to them for providing top quality gluten-free paninis!

However, in the local arts scene, you won’t find a finer example of independent trailblazing than with the Royal and Derngate Theatres and their fantastic sidekick, the Errol Flynn Filmhouse. Comparing with our neighbour Milton Keynes, there they have a wonderful big theatre, but everything that runs there comes through the Ambassador Theatre Group chain – an assembly of big shows that tour the entire country. So what you see in Milton Keynes can also be seen in Birmingham, Woking, Wimbledon, Bromley, Richmond, Aylesbury, or Glasgow – and plenty more places besides. It’s good business for the theatre industry and I’m not knocking it. But it does lack a certain individuality.

Of course the Royal and Derngate will take some of those shows too, but more interestingly they also create their own home-grown productions. The annual Made in Northampton season is always a remarkable achievement, with six or more plays that make the best of local staging; and that challenge both the creative teams and their audiences with a season that does not shy away from taking on major projects and carrying them out magnificently. In the six years or so that I’ve been closely following the R&D’s output, they’ve created dozens of independent productions including transfers to the West End and Broadway (End of the Rainbow) and Shakespeare’s Globe (King John). Their productions have toured to Oxford, Leicester, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Edinburgh and many other venues. They’ve been delightfully experimental too. The audience has joined the performers on the stage (Private Fears in Public Places, Town) or in the Rehearsal Room (Midsummer Bacchanalia), at the Holy Sepulchre (King John), in the Mailcoach pub (Honest), in Beckets Park (Decky Does a Bronco) or in the Chronicle and Echo Print Works (The Bacchae). Now that’s what I call inventiveness!

And of course there’s also the Underground, a venue with its own tricks up its sleeve, where Mrs C and I have spent many an uproarious night with the Screaming Blue Murder comedy nights, but which can also lend itself for very experimental theatre experiences. The Actors’ Company performed Ayckbourn’s Revengers’ Comedies there in 2009, with the audience seated around the walls in a complete rectangle. Only a couple of weeks ago we saw the Young Company create their spellbinding Kontakt experience in a murky mist of incense and school desks. And I’ll never forget the extraordinary intimate staging of The Body of an American in 2014.

In addition, for the last couple of years, we’ve had the Errol Flynn Filmhouse, an oasis of celluloid culture where the cinema actually treats you like an adult. Reclining leather chairs, a state of the art sound system, films you actually want to see, decent food and drink including several lines from local producers, and above all you get the feeling it’s a place that wants to show you a film rather than a place that wants to sell you a vat of popcorn and chuck a movie into the bargain. It constantly rates highly as one of the Northamptonshire’s most popular attractions on Trip Advisor, and it certainly encouraged us to go back to the cinema after a long estrangement from that genre.

Just across the road is somewhere I regret that I still haven’t visited but I have heard great things about – and that’s the Looking Glass Theatre. They have a theatre school for 8 – 18 year olds and regularly present children’s shows and pantomimes, as well as having a major costume hire service. Further down Derngate you come across the extraordinary house at No 78, the only house designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in England. This is now an independent tourist attraction, welcoming visitors from all over the world who are attracted by Mackintosh’s unique style. Not only can you learn about the history of this fascinating building but it also has a fantastic restaurant, The Dining Room, which offers so much more than your usual museum café.

So wedged within this small cultural enclave are a wide variety of attractions, and we are very lucky to have them. We all know of shops, restaurants, pubs that have closed down due to lack of customers. Don’t let that happen to our wonderful arts spaces. Use them or lose them – they’re far too good to lose! Why not show your support for our independent artistic adventurers in the Cultural Quarter by visiting the Independence Day Fair at the Guildhall on Saturday. It’s free to get in and you might discover something new to enjoy!

Review – Kontakt, Royal and Derngate Young Company Immerse, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 21st June 2015

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You don’t need me to tell you, gentle reader, that with a bit of ingenuity and some thinking outside the box you can make theatre out of anything. I love experimental theatre. I love to be challenged, to be shocked, to be made uncomfortable. I want to come out of a show a changed person from the one I was when I went in. I want the cast to speak to me in a new way, for us to develop a relationship together, and to have a shared experience with the rest of the audience that you can talk about and reflect on long into the future. This is a big ask, and you don’t often get it. But Kontakt is one of those theatrical experiences that really offers something different, and has certainly led to more thoughtful and questioning post-show discussions than many a standard drama. For one thing, although Mrs Chrisparkle and I went along together, we had completely different experiences, and being able to compare and contrast our own reactions and recollections of what went on was fascinating in itself.

You have some basic information about the show in advance, but not enough to reach any substantial conclusions about what’s in store. “One table, two chairs, an actor and you. If a young person could ask an adult anything, what would it be?” When I first read that, I found it (naturally) intriguing, but I had a vision of a small audience sitting in a circle around an actor performing a fully scripted monologue involving a not inconsiderable amount of soul-searching. Well, how wrong was I?

I’m going to tell you my own experience with this show, which will be different from anyone else’s. If you’re about to see a production then I suggest you don’t read any more. The element of surprise is vital for its success, and you won’t thank me for spilling the majority of the beans. Still with me? Great! There is a constantly changing dynamic within this show that continuously wrongfoots the audience member. You’re forever swapping a sense of self-confidence for one of doubt and mystery. No sooner do you get accustomed to the current mood then you get whacked into a different one.

Let’s start at the beginning. You choose a number at random (I chose 6 because it’s my lucky number), receive a (rather antiquated) mobile phone and then you stand in a square drawn on the floor, awaiting….something. You’re not sure what, but let’s call it Kontakt. You’re on display, your usual props of self-protection are removed from you, and apart from maybe a couple of nervous chats with other people in other boxes you feel surprisingly alone. From the corner of your eye you notice a line of young people walk into an upstairs foyer, stand at the railing, and look directly down on you. They say nothing. They betray no thoughts. Do you look at them? Do you look away? I did both. They disappear silently.

Your phone rings. It’s not your phone, it’s the one they gave you, and, if you’re like me, you struggle to work out which button to push to receive the call. I guessed right. “Hello?” “Hello, my name’s Sam. What’s your name? “Hi Sam, my name is Chris”. Seven other people are having more or less the same conversation and you find it hard to hear the person talking directly to you. “How was your journey?” “Fine thanks, we only live a short walk away”. Another question, but I couldn’t hear it properly. “Sorry, can you repeat that?” He repeated it, but I still only half-heard, and answered the question I thought he asked. There was a pause. I must have answered the wrong question. I surprised myself by how much I wanted to make a positive impression. He’s going to think I’m an utter idiot, I thought. Sam sounded upbeat though. He directed me which way to go. “When you come in, I’m sitting at the desk nearest the entrance door, on the right”. “Well, I will be the last person in the queue to walk in”. Assignation made.

I walked in, to the space I know well as the Underground, where we regularly see the Screaming Blue Murder comedy nights, and a few other experimental productions. But with dim lighting and a vaguely smoky atmosphere of burning incense, it could have been another world. In front of me, a number of identical looking school desks, and audience members individually greeting their Kontakts. Sam gets up and looks expectantly. “You must be Sam,” I say, shaking his hand. He courteously offers me the chair in front of his desk, and invites me to stow the phone in the pocket attached to the back of the chair. I sit down, and he sits down. He starts to converse. At the same time, all the other Kontakts start to converse, each saying precisely the same words. The consonants of eight actors echo and clatter in the eerie atmosphere. It’s a private conversation, but it’s shared too. It feels unique – but seven other people are having the same experience, so it can’t be unique. It’s already breaking so many rules.

Sam lifts up the desk lid to create an instant barrier between us. It had all been so friendly up to this point, but this one action disconcerts and stops you from saying anything. From behind the desk he slowly, silently, and incredibly threateningly, starts putting on a pair of surgical latex gloves. Your brain says “WTF?” but your mouth stays silent. It brought to mind the terrifying Act Four nurses in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, strumming their gloved fingers with potential abuse, as if by some devious manner Sam was about to lobotomise me without my consent. It’s a Verfremdungseffekt that would have Brecht curling his toes in ecstasy. “I’m hoping you’re hungry” says Sam suddenly, as he puts the desk lid down and reveals a picnic. A Tupperware box with two slices of bread and a rather sweaty looking slice of cheese; some bags of crisps, some strawberry jam, some Nutella. A big tub of Utterly Butterly. This is not the toolkit of a lobotomist. I’d not actually eaten anything since breakfast, so was pleased to opt for a cheese and crisp sandwich. The latex gloves came into their own as he deftly unwrapped the Kraft Cheese Slice and plonked it hygienically onto the bread. He carefully positioned crisps on top of said slice and delicately placed the other slice of bread on top. In this alien atmosphere it’s amazing how much you notice the slightest detail of what’s going on in front of you. It’s as though your brain is telling you to be on heightened alert because you don’t know what’s coming next. It could be fight or flight. “Triangle or square?” I chose triangle. He cut it diagonally and we shared a convivial cheese and crisp sandwich as Sam reflected that no one had chosen to mix jam and crisps, to some disappointment on his part.

And so it goes on. Light hearted conversation as we do a maths puzzle together; a game of Jenga where each piece has a number that refers to a question we ask each other; a game of noughts and crosses which he kindly lost; an exchange of top tips for life; discussions about our fears, irrational and otherwise; an unexpected group participation dancing to Aqua’s Barbie Girl and ending with a card trick that neatly brought the whole event full circle. That all sounds rather jolly and genial, doesn’t it? And indeed it was. But it’s not natural. It’s not organic. It’s fully controlled – or should that be kontrolled? Separating every seemingly genuine conversation, there’s a detached, non-sequitur-like, disquieting sequence. At one stage, a disembodied American voice starts giving advice on how to get the most out of life – and you notice your Kontakt is silently saying the same words, miming along precisely with the same rhythm and expression. I watch Sam’s lips intently as he intones the anonymous advice, like he has been possessed by some spirit. I appreciate the anomaly of someone young enough to be waiting for his GCSE results to come through, giving me, who has already started to draw down his pension, advice on how to lead a good life. But you find yourself responding, silently, to the points he is making. When you really agree with him, you mouth “absolutely!” or nod profoundly, and I discovered, to my surprise, that I was actively giving advice back without actually saying a word. And that’s when it was that I realised I had connected – or should that be konnected – with Sam. I gained a sense of confidence with him. I realised I was on his side. Later on, there was a sequence where all the Kontakts talked about the things in life that annoyed them. One person stood up to give one example, then another, then another. It was like a competition between them to out-declaim the others. I realised that I wanted Sam to “win” this game – to give the best examples of things that annoy, and to deliver them in the most telling or humorous way. And, of course, naturally, because I was on his side, he did. I was Team Sam.

We discovered – or should that be diskovered? – that we shared the same irrational fear of flying insects. I dismayed him by the fact that I actually like Barbie Girl and could embarrass him with my Ken impersonation. I gave him a congratulatory handshake for his excellent card trick that I still don’t know how he managed. A few times he hooted with barely suppressed laughter. I couldn’t tell if that was genuine, scripted, or somewhere in between. We drew a picture of each other, despite both of us having no artistic skills whatsoever. This was a surprisingly personal thing to do – and I felt rather embarrassed at how horrified he looked at the image of him that I was creating with my pencil. There was another sequence – I can’t quite remember how it fitted in to everything else that took place – where nothing was said, or done, except that he was trying to outstare me. I stared back. He took the liberty of repositioning my pen on the desk. Well, I wasn’t having that. I swivelled his noughts and crosses paper from portrait to landscape. He looked affronted. I started to smile. I felt mischievous. I looked up at the dangling light bulb above our heads. He looked startled. Still staring at him, I slowly raised my arm toward the light bulb. He appeared transfixed at what I might do next. Eventually I gave the light bulb the tiniest tap with my finger so that it wobbled fractionally. “Beat that” said my eyes. The sequence ended at that point, so I won that one.

At the end, I asked him why it was called Kontakt and not Contact. He wasn’t sure. He thought it was something to do with the original developer of the show back in 2008, but before we could discuss it further, came the signal that it was all over. The lights went down. We all knew that when they came back up again, we’d be alone at our desks. And, sure enough, when we could see again, we were, like a modern day debit card, contactless. Or should that be kontaktless. But I know why it’s Kontakt. A genuine meeting between two people, where you just chatted and organically shared experiences would have been a contact. But this is not that. It’s similar; it sounds the same, but it looks different. The actor calls the shots. For you at times it feels like it’s interrogation, a test, an interview, an assessment. You are powerless to steer the course of these 45-60 minutes. It feels like the actor decides when each segment ends. He decides when a genuinely heartfelt and concerned conversation about how we deal with ISIS, changes into a surreal scripted monologue, or a stare-athon. And of course it’s the same for all the actors; their rules, their mood-swings, their agenda, their control; their Kontakt. Even after the show was over, I was at a disadvantage. We all received texts from our Kontakts, thanking us for participating. My instant reaction was to text back, but my ham-fistedness on an unfamiliar phone meant that I couldn’t even formulate the word “thank” – it became “thigh”, which wasn’t an entirely suitable response. So I ended up not replying, which felt thoroughly ungrateful.

The success, or otherwise, of this experience, depends on a number of things. The audience member has to play the game. I could imagine that if you were unco-operative, or somehow destructive, or spoke inappropriately, it could be a disastrous experience all round. There’s a huge amount of trust and respect at stake here. I liked the fact that, although the allocation of Kontakt to audience member appeared to be random, each couple was either male/male or female/female, primarily because this increased the opportunities for shared experiences and opinions or advice, and reduced the potential for true embarrassment.

For someone like me, who actively enjoys the process of making new friends, this was a fascinating and eye-opening way to spend an hour with a stranger. Frustrating too, as you realise afterwards the possible/ probable artificiality of what felt like a genuine meeting. How much of that person opposite me was the real Sam? A lot, I think, but it’s impossible to be certain. Mrs C (who had got on thoroughly well with her interlocutor, Heidi) and I agreed that to carry off this sequence of Kontakts over a number of performances was brilliant training for these young people. If nothing else comes of it, they will be so much more confident in interview situations in the future, and will have developed some superb social skills. I also hope they met some nice people! Obviously, I can only speak for Sam but I thought he gave a brilliant performance – if it was a performance. The show raises many questions about public and private identity, reality and fiction, individuality and herd behaviour. I was totally wowed by it! And I want to know how Sam does in his GCSEs!

Review – The Hook, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 10th June 2015

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Every so often our wonderful local theatre makes the news. One such occasion was a couple of days ago, when I got an excited phone call from Mrs Chrisparkle on her morning drive to work (hands free, naturally – the phone that is, not the steering wheel) saying “Turn Radio 4 on!” And there was the redoubtable Jim Naughtie talking about the World Premiere of an Arthur Miller play in little old Northampton. Certainly a contender for the greatest American playwright of the 20th century (Arthur Miller that is, not Jim Naughtie) – maybe even in the world – this joint production between the Royal and Derngate and the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse is a major theatrical event. Who even knew Miller had written something that hadn’t yet been performed?

The programme (which I really recommend) has two very helpful articles about how the production came into existence and about Miller’s background and association with the longshoremen of New York. Miller had originally written The Hook as a screenplay and offered it to Hollywood, but they wouldn’t touch it with the proverbial bargepole unless Miller rewrote the characters to make the union members into communists. Miller refused to back down; Hollywood refused to take it – On The Waterfront appeared instead; and thus it sat, mouldering in a drawer somewhere, unloved and unproduced. Director James Dacre and designer Patrick Connellan have done extensive research over a number of years, discovering all Miller’s drafts (I’m sure that’s a euphemism for drinking Canadian beer), collating as much raw material as possible for playwright Ron Hutchinson to come up with a theatre adaptation that’s intense, hard-hitting, with a few meaty roles, and that tells a story from the heart.

That story concerns one Marty Ferrara, a decent, honourable man who works as a longshoreman in New York and who fights against what he sees as the rotten, corrupt nature of the union and the employers, who turn a blind eye to the dangerous conditions in which the men have to work, pay lip service to their rights, and are happy to rip off the men at every opportunity. Marty’s wife Terry wants him to be happy and to be true to his own integrity, but at the same time she needs him to earn money as otherwise the whole family will be destitute. Marty’s angry struggle takes him through some very bad times, including attempts made on his life, and culminates in his standing for Union president in a rigged election of which Kim Jong-un would be proud.

Why The Hook? Well it takes place in Red Hook, Brooklyn – where Miller was born, and each of the men working on the piers has his own hook tool which he uses to help lift and move the containers they are unloading. But other hooks are also at hand. Each man is hooked, so to speak, to the docks as his only means of income, and if anything threatens that dependency, like electing a new, agitating union leader, that hook just gets stronger. In the end, Marty is rewarded with a union post, thereby masking the corruption of the election, and getting the union leader off the hook. Am I taking this too far?

In the course of the play Miller addresses themes of loyalty, corruption, reward and democracy, creates some memorable dramatic moments and a credible story line. However, if I’m honest, I don’t think the character of Marty is invested with anything like the tragic hero potential of Willy Loman, Eddie Carbone or John Proctor. For one thing, he lives! He survives the play and presumably goes on to have some kind of life in the future – what kind, is up to the audience to decide. For that reason I felt it had an upbeat (if extremely sudden and slightly unrewarding) ending. Mrs C took a different view – she thought that Marty’s future would be spent achieving nothing, and therefore found the end profoundly pessimistic. Maybe that’s an observation about our own differing levels of cynicism. Or maybe it’s a neat Miller trick to confound his audience at the end.

The production looks and sounds stunning. Patrick Connellan’s set is extraordinary and constantly reveals new capabilities through the course of the evening. It converts from office to pier to the Ferraras’ home with effortless ease. The sharp black pinstripes of the union leader and the businessman contrast perfectly with the thin and well-worn work clothes of the stevedores. The sound design by Tom Mills is amazing; tiny effects like placing a glass on a table or ominous footsteps reverberate and echo with portentous doom to create a really claustrophobic atmosphere. Isobel Waller-Bridge’s incidental music is disconcerting and brooding.

But I have to confess to experiencing some confusion with the plot. Attuning to the accents meant that quite a lot of the early dialogue hit my ears but never quite reached my brain (not helped by two chatterbox young ladies to my right) and identifying and understanding some of the characters and story twists happened more in retrospect than at the time. Mrs C noted that at least two of the tables in the bar during the interval had people explaining to their friends who was who and what was happening. I think that was the trouble with the chatterboxes, as they were explaining to each other what was going on. Even today in discussion Mrs C and I realised that we still hadn’t quite worked out the relationship between some of the characters and what their actual jobs were. Some of the performances in the first act were also a little on the shouty side – one of Mrs C’s pet hates – although to be fair many of the characters had plenty to shout about.

The central character of Marty is given a forceful and characterful performance by Jamie Sives, promoting the workers’ causes, a natural leader, genuinely resistant to all the pressures of corruption that surround him. There’s a particularly moving scene when one of the men is writing in the dust on the floor, adding up a sum of how much money the union has cheated from them. Marty is so infuriated with it that he physically hurls himself into the dust to erase the offending calculation. It’s an extraordinary visual depiction of his deep need to eradicate the injustice against his fellow men, and to his willingness to degrade himself if necessary to achieve it.

At the other end of the societal scale there’s a splendidly villainous turn from Joe Alessi as Louis, the self-aggrandising, pocket-lining, cigar-smoking, superiority-obsessed union leader whose choices in life depend entirely on to what extent they benefit himself. Today he would be in charge of FIFA. It’s an excellent portrayal of corrupted power. There’s an electric scene between him and Sean Murray as Rocky, where the two powerful men stalk each other mentally, looking for gaps in each other’s defence, like a boxing match disguised as a business meeting. Mr Murray nicely conveys an element of decency lacking in his opponent’s character elsewhere in the play – there’s a memorable scene at the beginning where Rocky’s henchman Farragut (a suitably weaselly performance by Jem Wall) dismissively tosses a spare coin to the floor so that the men who didn’t get work that day can scrabble undignified on the pavement for it – and Rocky cuts him down to size as a reward.

There’s also a sterling performance from Susie Trayling as Marty’s wife Theresa, downtrodden yet supportive, a voice of domestic reason, but still too insignificant to him to influence his driven need to represent the working man. I also enjoyed Paul Rattray’s earnest and eloquent performance as Enzo, Marty’s most loyal comrade (not that they’re communists, see paragraph 2) and Ewart James Walters as Darkeyes, trying to make a measly living selling trinkets and taking bets; a modern Tiresias, the blind man who sees the truth. Miller loved a bit of Greek Tragedy in his plays, you know. The ensemble is augmented by members of the local community theatre who do a grand job of creating a sense of busy crowds and a wider society. I particularly liked the way a whole bunch of men suddenly appeared out of nowhere whenever the daily work was to be allocated by the bosses.

So, all in all a significant new work given a very good production, although if you’re hoping to see A View From The Bridge Mark#2 you might be a little disappointed. In the year that celebrates Arthur Miller’s centenary, this is a very welcome addition to his repertoire. After it finishes its run in Northampton on 27th June, it visits the Liverpool Everyman until 25th July. If you’re interested in the works of Miller, this is a must-see.

Review – Communicating Doors, Menier Chocolate Factory, 7th June 2015

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Hurrah for the theatre programme archive boxes in my study which quickly yielded up the programme for Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors, which Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw on Saturday 3rd February 1996 at the Savoy Theatre, with Miss Angela Thorne playing the part of Ruella. That’s almost twenty years ago. Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that twenty years have passed since the play first opened in the West End, as there are two periods of twenty years each that separate all three of the time scales in the play. But it’s not an epic staged over forty years, it all happens at the same time. Didn’t you know about that? Am I going too fast for you?

The scene is a grand suite at London’s Regal Hotel, in the year 2020. Poopay, a rather sassy visiting dominatrix has come to give aged and infirm client Reece a good going-over. Reece has other ideas for her though, getting her to witness his signature on a document where he confesses to have arranged the murder of both of his ex-wives. In an attempt to escape for her life, Poopay dashes through a communicating door in the hotel room, only to find that, rather than taking her to another room, it takes her back to the same room, only twenty years earlier. Thus she discovers Reece’s second wife Ruella on the eve of her murder (by his somewhat violent and wicked business partner Julian, as it happens). Once Poopay has cottoned on to what’s happening, it’s up to her to convince Ruella of the danger she is in. Fortunately, Ruella is a spirited sort who enjoys a challenge. Ruella discovers she too can go back another twenty years via the communicating door, to discover Reece and Jessica (Wife #1) on their honeymoon night. Can the three women gang up together to use time to their advantage, defeat evil and create some happy-ever-afters where the course of all three of their lives turns out beautifully? You’ll have to see the play to find out.

Ayckbourn’s play is a modern classic of the “playing with time” genre. It was J B Priestley who really explored this style all hammer and tongs in the 1930s and 40s. Among his time-plays are Dangerous Corner, I Have Been Here Before and of course An Inspector Calls, rather moody, melodramatic plays, all revolving around time-tricks that are impossible in real life, with Priestley often using the device to expose hypocrisy and wickedness. Whilst the threat of violence and death is not inconsiderable in Communicating Doors, cocking a respectful hat to Psycho in one scene, Ayckbourn’s version of the time-play is nevertheless a much jollier affair, played strictly for laughs, and you don’t have to gen up on any Einsteinian time theories in advance. But I’m sure Priestley would have loved it all the same.

For this production, the wonderfully flexible Menier space has been set up as a traditional proscenium arch, creating a very wide stage perfect for the grandeur of a five star hotel suite. Whilst the main living room area of the suite has a timeless appearance, it is perhaps stretching credulity that the ensuite appearance and tiling would be the same in 1980 as it is in 2020. But then I can’t believe I’m actually looking for consistency in bathroom fittings over a period of forty years when the play itself is a complete flight of nonsense from start to finish.

It’s often been said that Ayckbourn writes great roles for women and here is a triumivirate (or should that be triumfeminate) to rank with the best. Imogen Stubbs is brilliant as Ruella, mixing hearty, brave, and enthusiastic characteristics with demure and unassuming behaviour. Mind you, she’s not above fluttering her womanly wiles at the hapless security man to get her way, manipulating in a thoroughly nice and decent manner, of course. Rachel Tucker, too, gives a delightful performance as Poopay, the dominatrix who’d probably be more comfortable tucked up with a late night cocoa, occasionally subtly revealing a hidden insight into what you imagine might be her rather sad and lonely world. As she faces her fears, running the gauntlet of Reece’s and Julian’s evil scheme, she and Ruella show great sisterly solidarity with each other, like a kind of time-warp self-help group. And then you have the wonderfully near-vacuous Jessica, played by Lucy Briggs-Owen, sweetly dippy on her wedding night, but blossoming in sophistication in later years – with a wonderfully underplayed moment where you realise what her ultimate fate will be. All three of them join forces in one amazing slapstick scene on the balcony – physical comedy at its funniest.

The “supporting” male cast are all very good too. There’s a splendidly low-life performance by David Bamber as the irredeemably horrible Julian, dripping with snide and malevolence, ready to snap your neck as soon as look at you. Robert Portal convinces us with both the nasty and kindly sides of Reece – being nasty certainly does nothing for Reece’s health, that’s for sure (nice work from the make-up department). And there’s some wonderful comic timing from Matthew Cottle as security man Harold, both bumptious in youth and beaten by age, and who also gets his own share of happy-ever-after.

We’re pretty sure all the loose ends tie up together, and, in the strange otherworld logic of the play, it kind of all makes sense. Incidentally, the original production had the three elements of the play set in 1974, 1994 and 2014. In our more modern society, Lindsay Posner has chosen to set the “future” scenes only a handful of years away, rather than a complete generation. A result of that is that whereas the original production had the “Ruella Years” for the contemporary setting, this production has “today” hovering somewhere between the two. So it looks like the director can play with time just as much as the author. Whatever, this is a timely opportunity to catch this great Ayckbourn play with a cast that do it terrific justice.

P.S. Great idea at the Menier now to have the bench seats in different colour fabric every two seats. That makes it so much easier to see where you should (and should not) be sitting, and may well discourage some people from spilling over into next door’s patch. Nice work!

Review – Beautiful Thing, Leicester Curve Studio, 30th May 2015

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At the risk of repeating myself, gentle reader, back in the Dark Ages I undertook postgrad research into the effects of the withdrawal of stage censorship, and, as a result, potentially censorable (or just plain naughty) plays have always held a certain fascination for me. That was one of the reasons I wanted to see Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing. If it had been produced in the mid-1960s it would most certainly have been censored – although primarily, I think, for its frequent use of the C word. However, the play first saw the light of day in 1993 and by 1994 was winning awards in the West End, long after the abolition of censorship. Just as that was a very different time from the 60s, it’s also a very different time from today. I can’t imagine nowadays a repeat of the incident that apparently happened in 1994 where a local councillor from Bexley went to see it at the Duke of York’s then left after twenty minutes, saying it was misleading to call it a comedy, that they were intimidated by gays in the bar and that it was sickening to see older and younger homosexuals in public together. Three different eras indeed.

But the themes of the play are timeless. Bullying, self-discovery, addiction, and above all, young love; creating a beautiful thing out of a wasteland. 15 year old Jamie lives with his barmaid/pub-managing mum Sandra who rules the roost as any good pub landlady would. When the play opens she is furiously ditching all his childhood games and ephemera as a punishment for his continually bunking off sports afternoon at school. A slightly misleading start, actually, because, as you know in advance that it’s a play about two boys falling in love,I wondered if this was her initial reaction to discovering her son was gay. But no, it’s not; that discovery comes much later. In a close-knit, working-class community, Jamie’s neighbours are 16 year old Ste, very much his opposite as you can’t keep him off the sports field, but whereas Sandra is an essentially loving parent (although you can’t always tell), Ste’s father is an abusive alcoholic and his family basically treat him as their laundry slave, merrily assaulting him just for the hell of it. Jamie’s other neighbour is Leah, expelled from school for drug-taking and other misdemeanours, who whiles away her hours listening to Mama Cass.

When Ste runs to Sandra for shelter whilst his father’s on a drunken rampage, she insists Ste stays overnight and thus Ste and Jamie end up sleeping top-to-tail in Jamie’s bedroom. When Ste returns a second time, bearing the bruises on his back where he’s been beaten up, he stays in Jamie’s room again, but this time Jamie convinces him to go from top-to-tail to top-to-top, as it were. And that’s how their relationship starts, and the rest of the play covers how they deal with it (Ste is very uncomfortable about it at first), how Sandra finds out, and how they all come to terms with their new situation. At the risk of using the J-word, all the characters undergo their own journey, and over the course of the two hours, nothing stays the same – That’s What I Call Drama. And, joy of joys, it even has a happy ending, with Jamie and Ste dancing together with full glitterball effect, and with a positive eye to the future. Although we always suspected it would end happily – the show starts to the sound of Mama Cass singing “It’s Getting Better”, and you can’t get much more positive than that.

It’s a beautifully written, smartly crafted play, with some really meaty characters for the actors to get their teeth into, and this honest and straightforward co-production between the Nottingham Playhouse and the Leicester Curve did it proud. Sadly, you can’t go and see it anymore, as the last three dates on the tour – to London’s Arts Theatre, Cardiff and Brighton – have been pulled due to lack of ticket sales earlier on in the run. As they said in Blood Brothers, an unfortunate sign of the times, Miss Jones. So I’m very pleased we snuck in to see the last matinee, at one of my favourite venues, the Studio at the Curve. For an intimate theatre it has a relatively large stage, so you can put on a full scale show whilst retaining a cosiness that’s lost in the main theatre.

Colin Richmond’s set is usefully shabby and conjures up the relative poverty of the environment without ever going over the top. There’s a very nice contrast between the well-worn old baby bike that’s always left outside, on which Jamie and Leah like to play (emphasising their youth) and the aspirational, quality, hanging baskets that decorate Sandra’s front door, which she guards with her life. And one of the stars of the show is Jamie’s bed, magically appearing from below with a simple unrolling of a blanket and sheet – very deftly done. Mr Richmond’s costumes are also very well chosen, with some delightfully tarty dresses for Sandra, Ste’s too-big sports t-shirt (no doubt, he’ll grow into it), and an outlandish creation for Leah when she’s on her bad trip.

But it’s the performances that really make this play work. Central to the whole show is a fantastic performance by Charlie Brooks as Sandra. Strong, outspoken and determined from the start, she lays down the law (or tries to) right from the start, with a cunning blend of heart of gold and utter bitch. Protective towards her boy but definitely into living life to the full and for herself, it’s a really convincing portrayal of someone who has to work very hard, wants to provide a good life for her family, has a sense of fun but is also pretty ruthless with it. Not being a soap watcher, Miss Brooks is new to us, but she’s got an amazing stage presence and gave a walloping good performance.

She is matched by two other superb performances from the actors playing Jamie and Ste. Jamie is played by Sam Jackson with quiet confidence and growing charisma, as he develops from awkward little boy to proud young man. Thomas Law as Ste gives a stunning mature performance, as he wrestles with the character’s internal emotions and sexual needs; a boy with a man’s problems. The two actors portray Jamie and Ste’s relationship with great tenderness and integrity, creating a very moving account of first love. Not to say it doesn’t have its humour too; at a moment of early intimacy where Ste is laying down on his front and Jamie is rubbing peppermint cream into the bruises on his back, and you think something significant may just be about to happen, Ste hurriedly dismisses Jamie’s invitation to turn over for further treatment presumably in order to stifle a hidden erection in the sheets. Very nicely done. There’s also excellent support from Vanessa Babirye as the troublesome but troubled Leah and Gerard McCarthy as Sandra’s latest flame Tony, propelled into resolving all sorts of family difficulties when all he was hoping for was a few decent shags.

My only quibble with it – and I’m not sure if it’s a problem of the play or the production – is that I didn’t get a sense of the timespan involved. I couldn’t work out if it all happens over a few days or a couple of years. Certainly the boys are 15 and 16 when they start their relationship – but by the end of the play they are regulars at the gay pub, Sandra’s career is on the upturn, Leah seems to be taking steps to improve her life and Tony has gone from hero to zero. It would make more sense (in my head at least) if the story was set over a reasonably prolonged period – but neither visually nor in the text (I think) was there anything to give us that clue.

The performance received a hugely warm reception from the audience in the Studio and, even if it wasn’t a commercial success, artistically and emotionally this will have touched hearts and broken down barriers. A funny and warm play, superbly performed.

Review – King John, Royal and Derngate and Shakespeare’s Globe at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton, 25th April 2015

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Wasn’t it Tony Hancock who said, and I believe it was, “Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?” Actually, no, she didn’t. Because one of the off-shoots of the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta is this co-production between the Royal and Derngate and Shakespeare’s Globe, of King John; one of Will’s lesser-known histories, relatively infrequently performed; an early play, not considered to be one of his greats. Geeky me, when I was 15 I devoted the summer holidays to reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. I didn’t understand King John much; and it hasn’t featured on my radar since, until this splendid opportunity to combine seeing a Shakespeare play with visiting the extraordinary Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton, built in Norman times in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre church in Jerusalem. It’s an amazing place – and if you’ve not visited it before, and your ticket to see King John only leaves your curiosity piqued (as it surely will), come back and visit it on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons during the summer. It’s full of history and surprises.

However, not only is it a splendidly atmospheric venue, it’s highly appropriate to this particular play too. King John himself is believed to have visited the church several times, and Shakespeare sets Act Four and the first scene of Act Five in Northampton Castle. Given that the castle fell into ruin and what was left of it was swept aside to build the railway station in the 1860s, bringing the play to the Holy Sepulchre gets us as close as we can to sharing a truly theatrical experience in its original surroundings.

King John is an episodic dash through the highlights (or should that be lowlights) of the eponymous monarch’s life. As an early play, Shakespeare hasn’t got much of a narrative style going on here, it’s more like separate snapshots of the savage sovereign’s reign – his coronation, his deciding between the two Faulconbridge brothers as to who should inherit, the assault on Angers, the manipulation of the French King by the Papal legate to cause war with England, the almost-torture of Arthur, Arthur’s death, and finally King John’s death and succession by Prince Henry. It’s a bit like The Archers but with more blood. Look a bit more closely and you can see traces of much greater things to come. Talk of the clashing of swords and shields presages his more eloquent writing in Othello. Three forcefully meaty female roles look forward to King Lear’s daughters. The character of the Bastard – a complete invention of Shakespeare’s, as it turns out – paves the way for Edmund, also in Lear. King John himself is in some ways a forerunner for Shakespeare’s interpretation of Richard III.

We knew a few people to whom this production would definitely appeal. So a veritable baker’s dozen of us turned up at the Holy Sep on Saturday night. We were joined by Lady Duncansby and her butler Sir William (recently knighted for services to the vehicle bodywork repair industry), the lovely Belle of Great Billing, Lord Liverpool and the Countess of Cockfosters, our nieces Secret Agent Code November and Special Agent Code Sierra together with their Mum and Dad, and Professor and Mrs Plum. The good Professor had previously accompanied us to the magnificent, site specific production of The Bacchae three years ago – indeed he gave a talk at the theatre before one of the performances; maybe one day Prof & Mrs P will actually get to see a play inside one of the Northampton theatres. The production of The Bacchae, directed by Laurie Sansom, and of King John, directed by his successor as Artistic Director, James Dacre, make fascinating comparisons, both extracting an extraordinary atmosphere from an unusual location, encouraging an amazing sense of ensemble from the cast, and creating productions that will stand the tests of time as being definitive for that particular play.

Prior to its Northampton run, the production had indulged in some previews at the Temple Church in London; I’ve not been there, but it’s another extraordinary setting, I’ll be bound. We saw its second preview in Northampton so it is possible that some things might have changed before its “proper” opening. Something that might benefit from a change – if I might be so bold – is what happens when the doors to the church unlock and you enter the building. Hooded monks sing a requiem for the late Richard I, walking solemnly around the rotunda. It’s a stunning opening image. An usher invites you to stand and listen to the requiem – just the first of many exquisite compositions by Orlando Gough. However, with unreserved seats, the temptation is to head straight for the pews and nab the best viewpoint. As a result you only get that stunning image fleetingly – and although you can still hear the requiem from your seats, it’s not as impressive as actually remaining in the rotunda to hear it in full. I wonder, therefore, if there could be some way of imposing a delay on the physical progress of the audience, just so that they enjoy the requiem a little longer.

Guided by the ushers you locate your seat. The church is dark and mysterious, lit by candles, and whatever fading light remains is dramatically converging through the stained glass windows. The stage area takes the form of an enormous crucifix, with the audience in pews either side of the central vertical strut. King John’s throne is at the top of the crucifix – and there are five entrance and exit points on to the stage which enable a constant flow of characters in all directions. As a theatregoing experience this is all enormously vivid. Sitting in the front row, knights, courtiers, royalty, soldiers all sweep past you, their brightly coloured capes swirling and rustling in front of your eyes. The thump of their footsteps reverberates against your feet. They stop and converse just inches away from your face. Their gloriously performed plainsong is delivered directly to your ears. Their intense stares, the glints from their eyes, their mischievous smiles, invade your personal space. Battle rages terrifyingly all around you. It’s a communal experience. You can’t be this close to the action without actually being part of it. And, whether or not you have any faith, there’s definitely a frisson to be derived from experiencing the juxtaposition of all this medieval death and villainy whilst sitting in a House of God.

It’s a rare theatrical event when absolutely everything comes together with stunning perfection. The gloriously atmospheric building. The haunting music and ominous drum beats. The costumes, both lavish and poverty-stricken. A group of actors who have been so well cast in their roles that you absolutely believe they are their thirteenth century originals. And whilst the play itself is rather turgid at times, with some chewy and hard to understand dialogue, there is such clarity in this production that you’re never at a loss as to what’s going on. Every word is spoken with precision and value, every sentence with insight and every reaction with honest expressiveness, creating two and a half hours of sheer viewing privilege. As I was watching it, I could not stop thinking that the experience was so riveting, so stimulating, and so downright exciting that I was incredibly lucky to be there to witness it.

At its heart is a sensational performance by Jo Stone-Fewings as King John. Whilst we were talking about the play before it started, Lord Liverpool declared that when most people think of King John, the Disney version voiced by Peter Ustinov in Robin Hood comes to mind. It does for him anyway. For me, I think of him more like the character in A A Milne’s Now We Are Six masterpiece King John’s Christmas. But my Lord Liverpool was right. Mr Stone-Fewings looks remarkably like the Disney John, but his performance is no cartoon. Calculating, panicking, conniving; this is a true wretch of a man hiding behind a regal exterior. You instantly got the measure of him during his opening coronation ceremony when he hurriedly assumes the crown whilst no one’s looking. We’d previously seen Mr S-F in the RSC’s Twelfth Night and the Trafalgar’s Richard III, but his performance in this production outshines those completely. A terrific blend of charismatic leader and utter degenerate.

Barbara Marten, as his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, has that classic look of Middle Ages wealthy respectability – she could have stepped straight out from a contemporary portrait. Powerful and dominating, more statesmanlike than her son and heir, it’s a superb performance of control and manipulation. Tanya Moodie is extraordinary as Constance, mother of Arthur, who is King John’s nephew and claimant to the throne. I’ve rarely seen such an intense, moving and overwhelmingly strong performance. Her clipped enunciation is a delight; her stage presence extraordinary.

One of the strongest aspects of this production is not only that the actors are so good but that they are so appropriately cast in their roles. There are some spectacularly dynamic scenes with Arthur and Hubert and I cannot imagine anyone more perfect for these characters than Laurence Belcher and Mark Meadows. Mr Belcher’s quiet demeanour, youthful pallor and innocent expression and voice all create an unforgettable image of the vulnerable young pretender, who died aged 16 – although his jumping off the prison wall is another of Shakespeare’s inventions. His final scene, where he falls dramatically to his death, is staged simply but inventively and I know the Belle of Great Billing was devastated to find the poor lad lifeless at her feet. Mr Meadows’ Hubert looks for all the world as though he would carry out his liege’s wishes no matter how dastardly, and you can see the internal angst as he tries his hardest to comply with the king’s villainous instructions but cannot overcome his innate decency. It was one of the best acted scenes I can ever remember.

Another role that’s perfectly cast is Alex Waldmann as the Bastard. He instantly engages the audience in his soliloquies, talking to us openly and frankly, as though we had been mates for ages. He’s one of us, we’re one of him. We’re on his side as soon as he invites a member of the audience to participate in his speech – in our performance, it was “if his name be…. Justin…. I’ll call him Peter…” He’s one of the few characters who remain faithful to King John throughout the play and although we think of the King as a pretty bad man and therefore the Bastard is carrying out some pretty bad things, we have a sneaking regard for his loyalty and common-touch decency. It’s a fantastic performance, immaculately judged; a fine balance between humour, vengeance and ambition. His down-to-earth manner and slightly wide-boy approach sets him apart from the essential nobility of Ciaran Owens’ performance as Faulconbridge; they may both be of royal blood but only one of them is ever going to get their hands dirty.

The whole cast work together like a dream – Aruhan Galieva makes an extraordinary stage debut as the compliant yet self-reliant Blanche, and the eerie Peter of Pomfret; Joseph Marcell, a hard-as-nails papal legate Pandulph whom you wouldn’t trust further than you could swing your incense burner; Simon Coates, a delightfully manipulable King Philip of France, and with great support from Daniel Rabin as the faithful Salisbury and Giles Terera as the bloodthirsty Austria.

In 48 years of theatregoing I can only think of a handful of Shakespeare productions on a par with this. Judi Dench in the RSC’s 1976 Comedy of Errors. The Oxford Shakespeare Company’s chilling Macbeth. Albert Finney as Hamlet. For clarity of vision, for intense atmosphere, for immaculate performances and for all-round satisfaction, this is about as good as it gets. After it finishes its Northampton run, it plays Salisbury Cathedral for the last week of May then is at the Globe in June. I can’t recommend this highly enough. Simply a triumph.

P.S. I was travelling on the train back from Euston on Monday afternoon, and, as I was preparing to get off at Northampton, I recognised someone also getting their bags together before getting off the train. It was Arthur. Who would have guessed that the young Duke of Brittany would have been on the same commute? I resolved that if we stopped at the same pelican crossing walking into town I would have complimented him on his performance. However, he made a beeline for the chocolate counter of W H Smiths, so an embarrassing moment was avoided.