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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Abba the Album – an Appreciation

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Something different, gentle reader. A few months ago I was asked to write an appreciation of Abba The Album for Vision, the magazine of the OGAE UK (British Eurovision fans fan club). I wasn’t sure if it was to be brief or lengthy, so I went for lengthy; and it turned out that the brief was for it to be brief. So I drastically shortened it for publication; and now that it has been been published I thought I would treat you to my fully unabridged thoughts about that particular long=playing record. So sit back and enjoy the memories!

Memories…light the corners of my mind….. No that’s something completely different. But revisiting Abba the Album has been a real trip down memory lane. Its UK release was in early 1978, and I can remember buying it from our local Record House (don’t see those any more) and cosseting it all the way home before closing all the doors and windows to give it a full loud play on my top quality hi-fi of which I was so proud.

In many ways Abba the Album was considered the soundtrack to Abba the Movie, which 36 years on, I regret to say I still haven’t seen. The girl I was going out with at the time was desperate to see it, but I wasn’t over keen for some reason. By the time I’d finally given in and agreed to go, she’d got bored and I’d been dumped. Hence the film has never played a big part in my life. But the songs! They surely have.

In those days, for no reason whatsoever other than to look flashy, single LPs would often be packaged like a double, with the front sleeve an empty dummy just to display the pictures and lyrics, and with only the second part of the sleeve actually containing the record. You youngsters who know nothing other than CDs or, Heaven help us, Mp3s, might find it hard to appreciate the tangibility and sense of true ownership that owning a record brought with it. And you had the excitement of watching the grooves as the record spun round on the turntable. The patterns it made told you in advance whether there’d be a strong regular drum beat, if it would be quiet and gentle, or whether it would be a hotch-potch of many different styles. You don’t get that kind of visual clue from a computer file.

So when you put Abba the Album on for the first time and realised that the first track was absolutely massive it stopped you dead in your tracks. It broke all the rules for a pop group to have a track – particularly the first one on the album – as long as 5 minutes 50 seconds. That in itself was a challenge to the 17 year old me, my pop attention span already being moulded into a Eurovision-style sub-three minutes. But Eagle, that first track, hits you with that wonderfully relaxed and evocative instrumental introduction, suggesting wide empty skies, through which a majestic bird might fly, just as Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross had done about ten years earlier. Frida and Agnetha’s voices rise and fall in the eagle’s slipstream as they imagine sharing in its freedom. Apparently Bjorn had read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and took the book as his inspiration for the lyrics. Rarely does 5 minutes 50 seconds pass so quickly.

If you’re of a certain age, like me, where you were able to enjoy every stage of Abba’s career exactly as it was happening, it’s impossible to look back at their songs without remembering what they actually meant to you at the time. Eagle reminds me of visiting a friend’s house in the school holidays, mainly because he was trying to learn how to play it on the piano; quiet, happy, worry-free memories of no work and all play. Playing football in his garden, followed by afternoon tea in the drawing room. All very nice. The next track on the album has much more exciting memories though. In the summer of 1978 I took five weeks off between school and university and travelled to Canada, where I stayed with some distant relatives I’d never met before. I had a fantastic time – it seemed that every day of those five weeks held a new exciting experience for me. I felt so cosmopolitan. I remember being driven by my cousin all the way from Toronto to Virginia in one day – that’s one heck of a drive – and stopping somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the USA to fill up with petrol (I mean pump some gas) when a familiar sound came over the radio.

That instantly appealing introduction to Take a Chance on Me had followed me to Virginia, and snuck up on me via some east-coast radio station; sixteen seconds of vocals before any instrument gets played. Much has been made of the relationship difficulties between the two couples as being an influence and catharsis behind their music. Whilst the tone and sound of this song sounds irresistibly happy, if you watch the classic “talking heads” video, Agnetha’s expression and plaintive plea for being taken seriously as a lover absolutely melts your heart. A little bit like the Beatles, Abba often had a “sweet and sour” taste to their songs. Take away the light-hearted tune and the verbal dexterity of the guys’ backing accompaniment, and the one-sidedness of the couples’ relationships is really clear – the girls are good to go, the guys really aren’t keen. It gives you a subtle insight into how two people can want very different things from the same relationship. And all this is covered over by a poptastic musical arrangement. Here’s a nice trivia moment for you: guess how many times the guys sing “take a chance, take a chance, take a chuckachance chance”? I counted 64. Rumour has it that that “chuckachucka” rhythm used to go through Bjorn’s head when he was out on a run and it became the inspiration for the backing to this song. Sounds perfectly plausible.

Two tracks in, and you’ve already chalked up two fantastic songs. Next up is One Man One Woman, which you can see as something of a companion piece to Take a Chance on Me. Whereas “Take a Chance” sounds jolly but conceals potentially irrevocable differences within the couples, “One Man” sounds sad but the lyrics actually point forward to a potential solution to those problems – “You smile and I realise that we need a shake-up, our love is a precious thing worth the pain and the suffering, and it’s never too late for changing”. There’s no denying the real angst in Frida’s vocals though, and this is a highly emotionally charged piece of music.

I mentioned earlier how I associate many of these songs with particular memories. The last song on Side One (how 20th century to think of it in that way, but that was the original structure) is The Name of the Game. Before buying this album, I already had the single of The Name of the Game and I absolutely loved it. In early December 1977, when the days were short, dark and cold, a lonely me, in Oxford in order to take a terrifying university interview the next day, went into an old-fashioned sheet-music shop (sadly no longer there) in the High Street, and there I bought the sheet music for The Name of the Game. “I have no friends, no one to see, and I am never invited….” I took it back to the college room where I was staying overnight, a barren, cold and comfortless room, and I read through it, and somehow it gave me security. I couldn’t wait to get home a couple of days later to play it on the piano. So I associate this song with reaching out for comfort and support at a time when I was really scared. And it has stayed with me ever since. This is my favourite Abba song.

Like Eagle, it has the most superb instrumental introduction. To be honest, that’s the part I really love. If it were to stop when the singing starts, it would still be a great record as far as I’m concerned. It’s slinky and sexy but also very disconcerting. The constant 4/4 drum beats are almost like footsteps creeping up behind you; there’s a sense of claustrophobia, and being trapped; but then Agnetha’s pure clear voice comes out of nowhere to cut through this oppression. Back in those days, every guy my age I knew, myself included, was in love with Agnetha. And here she is singing so directly and honestly to you – it still goes straight to my heart whenever I hear it. There’s a lovely juxtaposition between the tentative message of confused love in the lyrics with the jovial video where all four members of the group are sitting round joking and laughing over some simple board game. But each one breaks off from the game to recite some of the lyrics and you realise they’re all in an equal state of confusion, despite looks to the contrary. It’s a stunning melody with heartfelt words and for me ranks amongst the best pop songs of all time.

End of Side One. In the old days, you’d now have a physical break when you’d get up and turn the record over. A bit like the interval at the theatre, or half-time at a football match; only probably a lot shorter. To start Side Two you would expect a change of style perhaps – and it starts off with Move On. It’s a lovely anthemic tune which has for me qualities of a modern hymn; a very flowing rhythm and perceptive lyrics about the nature of life. I have to say though, Bjorn’s spoken introduction always sounds a bit creepy to me, and I think it’s one of those rare occasions where I’m not entirely happy about the arrangement. The piano and wind instruments sound thin and weedy, giving an overall impression that this isn’t as moving and as forceful a piece of music as it could be. So overall, I’m slightly on the fence with this one.

Track Two is Hole in Your Soul, another track where the keyboards can sound a bit too syrupy for my liking. When the verse kicks off you feel that this is going to be a top quality bubblegum rock song, but when it comes to the chorus there’s a huge disappointment that they didn’t seem to quite come up with an appropriate tune. It just tumbles along, not getting anywhere. A definite pot-boiler.

The Girl with the Golden Hair – Three Scenes from a Mini-Musical. I wonder what The Girl with the Golden Hair would have been like, had they made it? Abba’s Magical Mystery Tour perhaps? If you’re very old like me you might remember Keith West’s Excerpt from a Teenage Opera (1967) – that project never came to anything either. Apparently the Girl with the Golden Hair was to be a short story about a girl leaving her hometown to go out and become a star. It’s probably wise that they backtracked and never made it. The final three tracks on Abba the Album are all songs from this mysterious mini-musical that never was. In fact the previous track – Hole in your Soul – was a reworking of Get on the Carousel, another song from the mini-musical, that never made it to the album.

With the benefit of hindsight, wouldn’t it have been great if Thank You for the Music had been the final track on the album. It’s the epitome of a “goodbye” song. The end of a show, a concert, a party, a disco – it winds the night up perfectly. It sentimentally looks back on the past – the things Mother said, the girl’s history of bad joke-telling, the music we’ve enjoyed – and gives thanks for what we’ve got now; but crucially, it doesn’t look forward. There’s only yesterday and today in this song, no tomorrow. And that feels quite weird – probably another symptom of the group’s cohesion falling apart due to divorce. Even when this first came out, I remember wondering why they started the three songs from the mini-musical with the song that must obviously come as the finale. It uses the rather gloopy piano tones of the previous two songs, which gives a too-rich, over-ripe quality to the quieter arrangements; but then it becomes quite “pub singalong” in its choruses. There’s also something of a religious aspect to the song. If you were to say “thank you for the music, for giving it to me” who would you say it to? A singer/composer/musician? Perhaps – although Agnetha’s not really thanking other musicians for their work, she’s thanking a Much Higher Being for the gift of music, her ability to perform. Deep down, this is a prayer.

So where to go from there? I wonder (Departure) apparently, the penultimate track. That looks like an interim title for starters. Should they call it “I wonder”? Should it be “Departure”? Let’s go for the middle path of calling it “I wonder” but keep the Departure bit in, as that’s the role it plays within the structure of the mini-musical – the moment she leaves (wherever it is she’s leaving and wherever it is she’s going to). It’s a delicate little song of uncertainness and anxiety, and I’m not sure it stands alone particularly well outside of the wider context of its place within a musical. However, Frida sings it with great conviction and sincerity, and it is said that there is an autobiographical element to this song, having parallels with Frida’s leaving her young family to start her music career.

Final track, of both the mini-musical and the album, is I’m a Marionette. It’s quite a spiky and quirky song with lots of attitude and chances for both Agnetha and Frida to show off their vocal abilities. But energy saps in the middle with a rather boring instrumental section, and it ends in the same place that it started, with no sense of progress. If you seek out youtube videos of Abba performing this in Australia in 1977 (from Abba the Movie I guess) I reckon it would have been sensational live. However, on the album it feels a bit flat.

And that’s it! A game of two halves if ever there was one. In the first half, they hardly put a foot or a note wrong, with four really rewarding tracks. On Side Two things get a bit patchier. It really marks a midway point in their recording career – there’s less of a disco theme to the majority of these tracks than previously, and we start to catch sight of their darker side, which would develop over the next four years. On a personal note, I’d like to say thank you for both the music and the memories – it was great to be there at the time. The best of these songs will last forever.

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

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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 – The Imitation Game, Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Northampton, 11th December 2014

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There are secrets and there are secrets; but one of the best kept secrets in the history of mankind must be that of the wartime activity that happened within that innocent looking compound at Bletchley Park – the home of the code-breakers, whose success is believed to have shortened the length of World War Two by two years, saving an inestimable number of lives. Personally, I feel a certain affinity with the place. As the infant Chrisparkle, I spent my first five years living in the nearby village of Newton Longville; the Dowager Mrs C had a cousin who worked as a typist at Bletchley Park during the war – but of course we never really knew what she did; the Soviet spy John Cairncross, who also worked there, was the brother of the Master of St Peter’s College Oxford, my alma mater. Forsooth, Enigma is the life blood coursing through my veins.

Although Bletchley Park is now open as a museum (and a jolly good place to visit too), many secrets from its past still remain; and that’s probably right and proper, both to protect the innocent and in the interests of national security. But it’s also important that we can consider it a national shrine to the memory of Alan Turing, code breaker extraordinaire, computer creator, and victim of anti-homosexual legislation which required him to be chemically castrated and led him on to suicide. From today’s perspective it seems at best bizarre, at worst immoral and criminal, that he should have been treated this way by the country that owed so much to him; but, as Chapman wrote in 1654, the law is an ass and will always remain so.

The screenplay for The Imitation Game is written by Graham Moore and is based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Wadham College Mathematics Fellow Andrew Hodges, so it’s got a reliable pedigree. The title comes from Turing’s own words, his description of an experiment to define a standard for a machine to be called “intelligent” – which later became known as the “Turing Test” and which, even today, is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence (according to Wikipedia anyway, so it must be true).Interweaving three timelines of Turing’s life – his schooldays at Sherborne, his working life at Bletchley Park and his final days at Manchester – the film tells his story clearly, compassionately and with a good deal of humour. In real life, Turing was doubtless something of a rum cove, too cerebral to waste time on friendships or personal relationships, and too literal to converse normally with his colleagues. This is amusingly portrayed in the scene where Turing is told by one of the chaps “we’re going for lunch” – with the unspoken implication “do you want to come too?” – but Turing only hears and deals with the fact that the others are going for lunch which is a mere statement that doesn’t affect him.

Nevertheless, Turing does have a close friendship with Newnham College alumnus Joan Clarke, a whizz at cryptanalysis, and to whom he was briefly engaged before admitting to her his homosexuality. Turing was definitely turned on by her intelligence – cue for another delicious scene where she is hilariously patronised when taking a test to see if she is brainy enough to work at Bletchley Park. One of the most intriguing things about the film is that it makes you want to find out more about some of the other people in Turing’s orbit at the time – like Joan Clarke, John Cairncross, Commander Alastair Denniston, and International Chess Master Hugh Alexander. Turing’s story has a very rich cast of supporting characters about whom one feels one ought to know something, and the film is definitely a good starting point to find out.

Despite the frequent flashes of humour, and the gathering momentum as the team get closer and closer to cracking the code, the main emotional sense from the film is one of sadness. For me, the two most poignant sequences showed the developing friendship between young Alan and his school friend Christopher Morcom, their messages passed to each other in code to help mask the necessary secrecy of the growing love between them – and how it ends; and the pathetic shell of a man that Turing becomes as a result of the enforced medication to reduce his libido, quaking with tears at the degradation he faces, an old man well before his time.

The film is beautifully acted throughout but boasts at its heart a real star turn from Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing. He absolutely gets that sense of edgy, uncomfortable, reserved intelligence, together with a dedication to his task, a justifiably high opinion of himself and a superior hollowness where his emotion should be. It’s only at the end, when he completely breaks down, that you see the years of repression spilling out, and it’s extremely moving. He is matched by a superb performance from Keira Knightley as Joan, irrepressibly and irresistibly upbeat, and determined to be seen as an equal in the misogynistic world of code breaking. Matthew Goode is excellent as Alexander, his nose put out of joint by Turing’s rise to power, congratulating his achievements with still a hint of resentment; and there’s a brilliant performance by Charles Dance as the no-nonsense Commander Denniston, permanently irritated by Turing’s lack of respect for his position, and always looking for a revengeful way to regain supremacy.

I also very much enjoyed Mark Strong’s quietly assertive and wryly humorous performance as MI6 boss Stewart Menzies; and Allen Leech played John Cairncross almost precisely the same as he plays Branson in Downton Abbey, but seeing as how they’re both socialists in a world of nobility, I guess that makes sense. Topping and tailing the timelines of the story I was very impressed by Alex Lawther as the young Alan – repressed, tight-lipped, tentatively pushing at the open doorway of a burgeoning relationship – and Rory Kinnear is as eminently watchable as he always is as the apparently sensitive, but ultimately law-enforcing, Inspector Nock.

An engrossing story of one of the most important aspects of the Second World War, lucidly told, and compellingly acted – we really enjoyed it. It also gives you a lot to think about secrecy, intelligence, loyalty and justice. This one’s going to be around for a long time – and it’s got to be in line for loads of awards!

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

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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 – Alan Davies, Little Victories, Derngate, Northampton, 28th November 2014

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I always enjoy seeing Alan Davies on TV – whether it’s on panel shows (not that we watch them much), doing a bit of stand-up, or appearing in Jonathan Creek, which we used to watch avidly in the early days, but then kind of went off it after a few years. Nothing wrong with Mr Davies’ performance in it though – I just thought the storylines were a bit duff.

We’d never seen him live however, and I was confident that he would be able to fill the Derngate auditorium with laughter and merriment for a good two and a half hours on a Friday night. And that, indeed, is what he does, although I was expecting him to have a little more bite and attack. It’s more like an evening spent continuously smiling dotted with healthy amounts of laughter rather than the other way round.

He has a very relaxed approach to his art, with very un-showbizzy entrances and exits, and pacing around the stage as though it were a leisurely stroll with lots of stop and sit opportunities. There was some gentle mocking of the few latecomers, but nothing too savage, and nor were their cards marked for later in the evening. He seems to value the audience as company more than anything else. I really enjoyed his warm-up device, which was to ascertain the age range of the audience – I’ve not seen that done before. Firstly, he identified who was the youngest in the audience – it was someone born in 2000. Then he started calling out all the decades going back in time and if he called out the decade in which you were born you shouted out a big “hurrah”. The Eighties were quite popular, the seventies very popular, the sixties pretty popular too (Mrs Chrisparkle and I both shouted out our hurrahs – and he welcomed all the Sixties Kids as “my people”); then fifties – much smaller shout out, forties – very few and far between; and finally we identified the oldest person in the audience, born in 1935. A simple device, but very effective – you all know where you stand as far as your fellow audience members are concerned – you almost establish a pecking order amongst you – and you got an opportunity to do a shout out for fun too.

The show is called “Little Victories”, but it’s a title and topic that’s only very lightly touched upon. When Alan (and Mrs) Davies finally had kids, Mr Davies’ not-very-warm father had a somewhat aloof relationship with his new grandkids, and it obviously still irks Mr Davies (Jnr) that his father didn’t seem to care much about them. He tells a story about how his father once dismissed the grandkids with some ill-chosen words, and then, sometime later he gets his own back on his dad by tricking him into agreeing that he likes blackcurrant jam – I know it sounds like a non-sequitur, but it works. And this is what Mr Davies describes as a “little victory”. Not sure that I could identify many other little victories in the rest of his material though – but I expect they’re there if you look.

Two things stood out for me about Mr Davies’ act. The first is that his supremely confident delivery means he is not remotely scared of silence – he will use pauses in the flow of material constructively to emphasise elements of what he is saying; in other words, I guess, great timing. The other is that while some comics would spend their two and a half hours encompassing a wide range of scenarios, Alan Davies only discussed about four topics the whole night long. You could interpret that as a strength – going really in depth about situations and examining them thoroughly; or as a weakness, if those topics don’t particularly tickle your funny bone you might have quite a long wait until the next belly laugh.

Much of his material concerns the trials and tribulations of having two young children, which is probably going to appeal to parents more than non-parents. I very much liked the observation that anyone seen apparently mistreating children – giving them a clip round the ear, bawling the riot act them – is definitely going to be their parent and not some “stranger danger” character. Dotted throughout the evening are stories which end up with his daughter shouting out “you’re hurting me” because she knows it gets attention and is a potential minefield in public. A common problem – I remember my young cousin in Toronto at the age of three having sudden tantrums in shopping malls for no apparent reason other than sheer mischief, crying out “Don’t Beat me Daddy” much to his surprised daddy’s enormous embarrassment. There is also a very entertaining extended routine about Mr Davies getting stuck in a children’s soft play zone as he accompanies his rather scaredy-cat daughter through the padded climbing frame ups and downs, negotiating the seas of soft balls and unexpectedly scary slides.

But as a non-parent I rather preferred his material about things with which I could more easily identify. He did some great material about the horrendous things that boys do at school, including brewing and nurturing farts so that they can be released at a time and place where they could wreak maximum havoc; and how school trips abroad simply turned into (apologies, gentle reader) wanking contests. He has a very funny sequence about how, in changing rooms, men hardly ever seem concerned that they’ve omitted to put on their pants although they’re perfectly happy to bend over to reach lockers for hours on end; and there’s a really funny (albeit not overly original) routine about the aches and pains of sexual intercourse when you reach more mature years. This is very much geared towards a man’s-eye view of life – I’m not quite so certain if it appeals equally to the ladies in the audience.

So, all in all, an entertaining night’s comedy, looking at the domestic side of life that will particularly appeal if you’ve ever had (or indeed currently have) a young family. Alan Davies is a shrewd comic who paces his material perfectly and creates a very enjoyable rapport with the audience – without your ever being scared he might pick on you too much. He’s got a few more dates in December and then comes back with a bang next March. Well worth a punt!