Tag Archives: Curve

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 – Oh What A Lovely War! Curve Theatre, Leicester, 18th April 2015

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The words “Oh What a Lovely War”, “Theatre Royal Stratford East” and “Joan Littlewood” are inextricably linked, and have had almost legendary status within British 20th century drama ever since the show first appeared in 1963. It was originally a radio play by Charles Chilton, which was then developed by Joan Littlewood in conjunction with the whole of the original Theatre Workshop cast, to create this iconic, epic musical, telling the story of World War One through song and dance. The show was another on my bucket list of Still haven’t seen it after all these years and it’s about time I did. There is a film, that I also haven’t seen, directed by Richard Attenborough, that Joan Littlewood, apparently, hated. I’m not surprised – he ruined A Chorus Line too.

The highly stylised production gets as far away from the typical depiction of war as possible – Joan Littlewood didn’t want it to be horrific in any way. Instead the notion of war and the hard facts of fatalities are juxtaposed with a music hall and commedia dell’arte presentation to create its own, telling, anti-war story. Every barrier is broken down in this production. It starts off with the actors mingling with the audience, chatting about the performance they are about to see. Sadly no one mingled with us, but I overheard one performer explaining that he was wearing a pierrot costume as was traditionally worn in early 20th century revue shows, and as was used in the original Stratford East production. I saw another talking to an audience member and pointing out which one he was in the programme. So you’re starting with a great sense of equality between the cast and the audience, a level playing field where we’re all sharing the same experience, no matter whether we be audience member or performer.

There is a main MC who addresses the audience throughout the entire show apart from when he takes on a few different characters. He introduces us to the different songs and sketches as though this were some Edwardian end of the pier show – hence the suitability of the pierrot costumes. He encourages us to sing along with the songs if we know them. The majority of the under-lubricated matinee audience weren’t up for that, apart from the man two to my right who bellowed his way solo throughout much of the afternoon. You would have thought self-consciousness would kick in at some point, wouldn’t you? Cast members rush on and off the stage at odd moments and 90% of the material is extremely light-hearted. Act One takes us to the beginning of the war, with actors assuming the roles of nations having agreements and arguments in the lead-up to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It reminded me of a rather trendy history teacher getting the kids up in front of the class to act out war campaigns. I almost expected to see a blackboard rubber representing the Treaty of Versailles. We then see the early stages of the war, and the expectation it would all be over by Christmas. The act culminates in the famous 1914 Christmas trench scene, with the Germans singing Stille Nacht and Tommy and Fritz playing football in No Man’s Land – simply but very effectively staged.

Act Two takes us further into the war, where the innocent pleasure of enjoying light-hearted entertainment is constantly shattered by an electronic newsreel across the back of the stage, recounting the numbers dead or injured on individual days or at particular battlefields. Every so often you take your eyes of the performers just to read the horrendous casualty statistics. They bring the simple lightness of the stagey songs and dances into perspective. The audience questions itself as to how it reacts. How can we fritter away our time whilst they’re dying on the Somme? But there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And, actually, isn’t having fun what life really should be all about? Guilt, resignation, and powerlessness are just some of the emotions that overcome the audience. And, as the MC points out at the end, that this doesn’t only apply to World War One. When will the massacre of innocent people in war end? Will it ever end? Sadly the evidence suggests otherwise. The show is still a really forceful weapon in the argument against war, and Littlewood’s and Theatre Workshop’s left-wing bias stands out (refreshingly, in my opinion).

Ever since the BBC dropped The Good Old Days, you don’t get to hear these old songs as often as we used to – in the good old days, in fact. Songs like It’s A Long Way to Tipperary, Pack Up Your Troubles and Keep the Home Fires Burning remain wartime standards; whilst Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts and I’ll Make a Man of You recollect the best music-hall traditions. A couple – Here Comes a Whizzbang, and Bells of Hell stop you dead in your tracks with the sheer horror of what they convey, and one, I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier, brings a lump to your throat with the soldier’s simple plea for the return of his old life. On a personal note, it was lovely to hear Roses in Picardy again, as it was a favourite of the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle, and I used to enjoy playing it on the piano when I were a lad.

It’s an excellent cast who work together really well as an ensemble, both as pierrot entertainers and in their individual character sketches. Ian Reddington takes on the role of the MC with a likeable blend of cheek and cheese, plenty of knowing looks to the audience, but also full of portent when it comes to the gloomy prospects for the future. I really enjoyed him in the stupid but very funny sketch about the unintelligible sergeant barking garbled waffle at his troops. Taking the lead female role is Wendi Peters, larger than life and with a belter of a voice. In fact, if anything, her voice was a little too loud in comparison with everyone else. She’s one of these performers who simply doesn’t need amplifying. She brought out all the naughty music hall double entendres in her songs and has a wonderful stage presence. But all the cast are excellent; if you come to see the show, watch out for William Oxborrow struggling with an umbrella as a rifle and Alex Giannini’s hilarious “stage fright” moment.

The show is still to visit Aylesbury, Birmingham, Truro, Hull and Wimbledon on its tour, and I’d recommend it for its emotionally strong anti-war vibe as well as its unusual and entertaining no fourth wall qualities. You come away with a sense of true gratitude and humility for the lives lost in war. Despite the preponderance of WW1 songs and clichés, its message is as relevant today as ever.

Review – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ The Musical, Curve Theatre Leicester, 21st March 2015

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I don’t think there can be many lives who haven’t been affected by the character of Adrian Mole in one way or another. I can remember when the original book came out, and the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle bought it for me as part of my Christmas Present Package. I thought it was brilliant, and over the subsequent years bought and read all of young Mr Mole’s diarised works. The TV series with Julie Walters and Stephen Moore was great too. Moley was one of the author Sue Townsend’s greatest creations, and definitely her most successful. Sue Townsend herself was from Leicester, as is Adrian Mole, and she based his school environment and council estate home on the places where she was educated and lived. So it’s entirely appropriate that The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ The Musical should start life at the Curve in Leicester. Young Adrian would have been so impressed by the artistic and cultural hub that is the Curve.

The original book runs from New Year’s Day 1981 to April 1982 (Mole’s 15th birthday), but the show just takes the full year from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Eve. In that time Adrian charts a painful course as an adolescent falling in love with the blessed Pandora, watching his parents’ marriage fall apart and coping with their new loves, visiting and being used as a slave by old Bert Baxter, getting on with some schoolmates and being bullied by others, habitually writing to the BBC and generally being a typical, angst-ridden teenager. But this isn’t a simple dramatization of the novel – it’s a musical, with book and lyrics by Jake Brunger and music and lyrics by Pippa Cleary, two Bristol University graduates who are starting to carve out a career in the genre. Director Luke Sheppard has brought together a talented team to tell the story of Moley’s early adolescence, and the result is a bright and breezy show with many enjoyable aspects, plenty of drama and some extremely humorous scenes.

Tom Rogers has designed a wonderful set, full of quirky corners and jagged angles, with pencils that pierce the sky like chimneys and with ink blots all over the floor. Tantalising glimpses of Adrian’s diary pages frame the stage and everything appears bright in satisfyingly child-like primary colours. Congratulations, by the way, to the props department for sourcing all those old Skol cans and the Woolworth’s carrier bag. It’s effectively staged with the Moles’ kitchen at the front and their living area/bedroom to the side – that area also doubles up as Bert’s Stalinist living room and the school room is towards the back of the stage. There’s plenty of useful space for acting as well as singing and dancing. A small thing, but I really enjoyed the way the child actors opened the side doors for the rest of the cast to come out on stage for their curtain calls. It looked very stylish and showed that the kids were in charge.

I’d been looking forward to this show for ages, as I was really curious to see whether this story would actually work as a musical. The answer is Almost. The songs do fit very neatly into the plot and they’re tuneful and entertaining if not over-memorable. In the schoolroom scenes, I liked the way the adult actors joined forces with the child actors to create a whole classroom of the little blighters, which gave rise to some very amusing moments where age was juxtaposed with behaviour. The climax scene – so to speak – when Adrian and the other kids stage an alternative School Nativity play, was full of bravado, delightfully outrageous and very funny.

But there was something about the whole show that just didn’t quite click for me. It didn’t really engage me. I didn’t feel much sympathy for many of the characters, which never helps when you’re trying to identify with a show. It hadn’t properly occurred to me before just how unpleasant a character Adrian’s mum Pauline is. I thought Kirsty Hoiles showed just the right amount of sentimental detachment and lack of empathy to make the character of Pauline very credible. As Adrian’s dad George, Neil Ditt turned in a nicely downtrodden and “victim” performance, and I thought his scenes with Adrian, the two guys home alone, were often quite moving. I really enjoyed Cameron Blakely’s creepy seduction techniques as the slimy Mr Lucas from next door, and his scenes where he’s wooing Pauline with his Latin moves were hilarious. You just don’t expect that kind of thing in Leicester.

So it wasn’t the performances (for the most part) that caused (for me) the show not to soar. I think the main problem is that in order to condense the book into a two and a half hour show – with songs – they had to omit so much that you only have the barebones of the story to work with and not a lot of depth of character. Doubling up roles also caused its own problems. Amy Booth-Steel is excellent as Miss Elf and Mrs Lucas, but as Doreen Slater she presents a completely different character from that in the book. Miss Booth-Steel is a fine comely woman, but Adrian always referred to Doreen as “stick-insect” in his diaries, and, with the best will in the world, Miss Booth-Steel is never going to achieve that epithet. There’s also no Queenie for Bert to settle down with, no Singh family, no parents for Pandora, and the story stops before Argentina invades the Falklands.

Adrian himself, in the book, as far as I can remember, wavers between nervous enfant terrible and neurotic sidekick. He’s hypochondriac, hyper-sensitive, self-deludingly confident about his own intellect; he’s patronising, he’s hideously class-oriented; basically, he’s an insufferable little prig. But we recognise our own adolescence in him, so forgive him and laugh along at his mistakes, his foibles and anxieties, as we know that life will iron them all out in the fullness of time. The Brunger and Cleary version of Adrian struck me as being simply far too nice. That’s no criticism of Sebastian Croft, who played Adrian in our performance, who’s an amazing little song and dance man, has wonderful stage presence for someone so young, who enunciated beautifully (it’s a skill, and one to be appreciated), fitted in to the rest of the cast like a dream, and absolutely deserved his very enthusiastic curtain call.

His Pandora was played by Lulu-Mae Pears, splendidly mature compared to Adrian, delicately fluttering into his world and very credibly being the target of the Optimum Girlfriend Award. I’d say Adrian was boxing way above his weight here. The rest of the cast all give very good support; although, unfortunately, there was one actor who, for whatever reason, was considerably below par for our performance. Maybe they weren’t feeling well or maybe they were under-rehearsed; but it’s probably not very fair to make further comment.

So, for some reason, for me this all added up to something less than the sum of its parts. However, the audience enjoyed it and gave it a very good reception, and there was certainly something for everyone to enjoy. Maybe not for purist aficionados of the book, but if you want to see teenage angst set to music, this is a good place to start!

P.S. There’s been a creeping trend (and I don’t mind it) that the programme on sale to accompany the show of your choice is basically the printed text of the play but with some biographical details of the cast. Now I like reading plays, and giving you the text to take home with you can only add to your knowledge and appreciation of what you have seen; plus it works as an excellent memory aid should you wish to revisit it in sometime in the future. However, I did think it was a bit cheeky that the programme for this show is an adapted version – not of the book/libretto of the show as such, but of Sue Townsend’s original novel. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least half the households whose families come to see this show already have a copy. I know that at £5 it’s not an unreasonable price, but I think if you’re going to combine the programme and text into one book, it should at least contain the words of the show you’re seeing!

Review – The Sound of Music, Curve Theatre Leicester, 17th January 2015

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Everybody loves The Sound of Music, don’t they? It was a natural choice for us to take our nieces Secret Agent Code November and Special Agent Code Sierra to see a show completely suitable for children. As indeed did the majority of the citizens of Leicester, judging from the number of children who were in Saturday’s matinee audience. All eager for a stage presentation of that sweet, wholesome musical film that generations have grown up with. Of course, the original stage version preceded the film by six years, but we don’t often think about that.

You can smell that crisp, unpolluted Austrian countryside air. The delectable, yet innocent, Julie Andrews teaching children to sing Do-re-Mi. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. High on a hill stood a lonely goatherd. Larks that are learning to pray. It’s the full package. Yes, of course there are Nazis, but you never really get the sense that they’re anything but plastic baddies creating a bit of an exciting chase towards the end of the film.

That used to be my opinion. Then on 9th April 2007 we saw the Palladium production starring Connie How do you solve a problem like Maria Fisher – except that it was one of the performances where Maria was played by Sophie Bould who normally played Liesl – and extremely good she was too. But the most memorable thing about that production was how, about three-quarters of the way through, the Palladium transformed itself into a Nazi rally, with huge swastika banners hurling down from the ceiling throughout the auditorium; and that simple device just took my breath away. It was really scary.

So there is definitely a blend of the sweet and the sour in this show. Mrs Chrisparkle and I once dressed up for a performance of Sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music at the Wycombe Swan. That experience certainly emphasised the sweet side of the story. Mrs C became a less than demure nun and I was a redoubtable, fully-kitted-out German Officer. The best dressed competition was tough for the ladies as the place was awash with nuns of all shapes and sizes. However, us German Officer lads were fewer and farther in between. Only half a dozen or so of us actually got on the stage to be voted on, and I think I was the only one who assumed any sort of character. I based my performance on Bernard Hepton in Colditz, only a bit more vicious. I got loads of boos and hisses. and won a rather lousy CD of cover versions of Sound of Music songs for my pains.

The new production of The Sound of Music at the Leicester Curve – which ended its season on the 17th January – repeated the dream team of the previous year’s Chicago, being directed by Paul Kerryson (his swansong before standing down as Curve Artistic Director) and choreographed by up-and-coming dance genius Drew McOnie. It was a beautiful production, and I’m glad we managed to see it on its final day. Al Parkinson’s sets were stunning, on a grand scale. The severe looking bars that dropped down to represent the hallowed gated cloisters of the Abbey, with coloured lighting coming from imaginary stained glass windows; and the huge painting that appeared to suggest the Reverend Mother’s office gave it a real sense of substance and occasion. The surprisingly natural looking green mountain where Maria first appears, with its big strong trees descending into place made you want to go for a hike; the grandeur of the inside of Captain von Trapp’s villa made you feel like you were worth a million dollars. The Nazi element was also effectively portrayed, with the subtle regular introduction of swastikas on armbands as the show proceeds, and when the von Trapp children are performing at the Kaltzberg Festival there was no escaping our row (E of the stalls) as we had two Nazi “heavies” at either end, observing us closely and making sure we weren’t going to assist in any escape attempt. As if.

Recently a number of otherwise really good musicals have been spoiled by the sound amplification. In some – Calamity Jane, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – it was really hard to hear the words at all because of the over-amplification. Well, all praise to the people twiddling the technical knobs at the Curve because the sound quality in this show was just perfect. The star roles were sung with impeccable exquisiteness anyway; but the overall clarity and purity of the sound throughout the performance was amazing.

Maria was played by Laura Pitt-Pulford, who was a magnificent Irene in the Curve’s Hello Dolly a couple of years ago. It was a faultless performance; the singing, the humour, the warmth, the anguish, were all perfect. Seeing her Maria was like meeting an old friend – there’s a lot you remember from when you last met but since then they’ve got a few new tricks up their sleeve too. By the time she’d finished singing the opening “Sound of Music” theme I had goosebumps everywhere. I loved her relationship with the children – especially Emma Harrold’s Liesl (so much better in this show than in the awful Happy Days) – and her growing relationship with the Captain was very delicately portrayed. Her Ländler dance with him, after which one of the children, Brigitta, tells her that she’s obviously in love her dad, was one of those deep down, genuinely lovely moments.

In the performance we saw, the Captain was played by Mark Inscoe (who normally plays Max, and who we last saw as a villainous Claudius in Hamlet the Musical). His was a very different Captain from any other I’d seen, in that he didn’t come across as particularly tyrannical at first. He didn’t raise his voice in belligerence or strictness; he just liked households to run like a well-oiled machine. In fact he was like one of those very quiet level-headed bosses who you know will handle a crisis well – firmly but fairly. In many respects it’s a much more believable presentation, but it does also mean that his leaving the dark side and becoming nice again isn’t quite so dramatic. This Captain definitely reserves his tough side for dealing with the Nazi sympathisers rather than disobedient children. I very much enjoyed his performance though, including how he doesn’t have much time for his reprehensible pal Max (played on this occasion by Matt Harrop, who warmed into the role during the course of the show) and having a lot of flirtatiousness with the glamorous Frau Schräder, (she’s just a Frau here, she’s a Baroness in the film), played with style and vivacity by Emma Clifford (although Mrs C wasn’t convinced by her accent).

The other outstanding performance was by Susannah van den Berg as the Mother Abbess. Previously we’d seen her in a relatively minor role in Fiddler on the Roof where she was clearly hiding her light under a bushel. Her Mother Abbess is a fantastic creation – balanced, witty and not afraid to be cruel to be kind. When she sang Climb Every Mountain before the interval, those goosebumps came back in droves. A total musical treat. There was also excellent support from Hannah Grace, Rebecca Ridout and Kate Manley as the Sisters with opposing views of how you solve a problem like Maria; an intelligent performance by Jack Wilcox as Rolf who seems kindly enough to Liesl in the superbly staged Sixteen Going on Seventeen, but proves himself a turncoat at the end; and an excellently nasty portrayal of Nazi enthusiast Herr Zeller by Patrick Moy.

And then, of course, there are the children. A captain with seven children…. what’s so fearsome about that? I always enjoy that line. The programme lists a choice of two or three names against each child character but with no photos so I’m afraid I don’t know which particular actors we saw in our performance. Suffice to say they were all excellent. I do think they were probably considerably older than the children they were playing – especially the character of seven-year-old Marta who seemed very mature – but they never put a foot or a vocal chord wrong throughout. You’re not meant to have favourites with kids, but little Gretl was outstandingly cute, and Kurt was impishly decent in his dancing with Maria. Their So Long Farewell was definitely a highlight of the show.

All in all, a superb production that looked and sounded absolutely great throughout. A very fitting send-off for Paul Kerryson, and a tribute to the wonderful theatre that he has steered artistically over the past few years. We all loved the show, and have been singing the songs with irritating regularity ever since!

Review – Chicago, Curve Theatre, Leicester, 31st December 2013

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Confession time: I have a problem with the show Chicago. I first saw it on 14th April 1979 (look, there’s my programme and ticket stub in the picture below! Such a trend-setting teenager I was, just four days after opening night), and three weeks after the original production of A Chorus Line closed at Drury Lane, a show I’d seen eight times by that stage and which was, and remains, my favourite show of all time. To put it in context, I was missing my Chorus Line, and I hoped Chicago might fill its void.But I was wrong. Chicago is no Chorus Line. Chorus Line is highly moral; good gets rewarded, respect is given to everyone, and everyone is special, there are no celebrities. The songs and book are about talent, personal development, and being true to yourself. The costumes are either work-functional or showbiz pizazz. Michael Bennett’s choreography was optimistic, cheeky and bright.

Chicago, on the other hand, is highly amoral. Murderers and corrupt officials get rewarded, celebrity status is king, the good get downtrodden. The songs and book are about crime, cynicism and putting on an act. The costumes are sleazy. The Bob Fosse-inspired choreography was flashy, sexual and lurid. Why did I want to see this Leicester revival then? In fact I very nearly didn’t book for this show, but in the end I decided to “keep the faith” with the recent London A Chorus Line, as three impressive members of its cast are in it. History repeating itself in fact; the original London cast of Chicago featured five members of the Chorus Line cast who had lost their jobs three weeks earlier.

As a Chorus Line fan, I was always a Michael Bennett boy, never a Bob Fosse boy. But now, after seeing the Curve’s new production of Chicago, I think I could become a Drew McOnie boy. For one of this show’s chief highlights is the completely new set of routines by this young choreographer who we enjoyed watching a few years back on “So You Think You Can Dance”. You can’t classify his style by any one term, as every song,every routine has its own different flavour. I had no sense of repetition, but I did get a great sense of inventiveness, showbiz, sexiness and some mystery too. I particularly loved the transformation of “Razzle Dazzle” into a circus presentation. Above all, the choreography throughout was enjoyable and communicative, and I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.

In case you don’t know, but may have surmised from my first paragraph anyway, Chicago is set in the 1920s and is based on the true stories of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner who got away with the murders of their lovers through their courtroom glamour and pretend vulnerability that made their all-male juries go weak at the knees. On stage in this show they become Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who live a celebrity lifestyle whilst on remand and are represented by the dashing lawyerBilly Flynn, whose interest in solely financial. The structure of the show is key to how the audience reacts to it, as each scene is introduced by a member of the cast addressing the audience directly and telling them what to expect in 100% Bertolt Brecht style. Brecht’s original vision was deliberately to distance the audience from the action, and it’s absolutely true, it’s an incredibly effective device to take you one step further away in each scene from either identifying with the characters or from getting lost and involved in the action. I think that’s one of the reasons I have reservations about the show. It’s intriguing without being all-involving.

I also found the some of the costumes rather off-putting too. With the original Fosse choreography, a sense of sleaziness felt very appropriate, but in this production I don’t think the choreography requires it. In fact I thought some of the “boys-in-a-basque” costumes bordered on the Rocky Horror instead, which I’m sure is not what was intended. After all, I follow some of these chaps on twitter, it doesn’t feel entirely decent to see them clad so dubiously. I’m also not entirely sure I like the “unveiling” of the character of Mary Sunshine at the end either; in the other productions I’ve seen, the performer’s details in the programme feature an androgynous face and their first name is in initials so you can’t be entirely sure if it’s a man or a woman; but at the Curve, we know straight away that the character is played by Adam Bailey, so revealing his bare chest at the end is I feel both prurient and redundant.

However, what is beyond doubt is that Paul Kerryson has assembled a cast of great talent who work together fantastically well, and who sing and dance with superb skill. The double act of Verity Rushworth and Gemma Sutton as the wicked Velma and Roxie works brilliantly. Miss Sutton’s Roxie is a harsh heartless bitch who transforms herself into a glamourpuss-de-luxe at the flash of an instamatic; and Miss Rushworth’s Velma is a world-weary siren who can knock out a song with ultimate conviction and appeal. Sandra Marvin is un-take-your-eyes-off-able as the devious Mama Morton, the “matron” of the convicts who will look after her girls as long as they look after Mama.That Curve stage always strikes me as being massive but she completely fills it with her show-stopping performance. David Leonard is a superb sleazebag as the arrogant Billy Flynn, and Matthew Barrow turns in a great performance as Roxie’s ineffectual husband Amos. His “Mister Cellophane” number was terrific stuff – again with clever use of circus elements – and his so-called “exit music” drew a huge sigh of sympathy from the audience. The chorus who fill the minor roles are all excellent; I would expect no less from Harry Francis, Simon Hardwick and Katy Hards (the ex-Chorus Line contingent) but also Zizi Strallen was a beguiling Mona and Anabel Kutay a tragic Hunyak.

Ben Atkinson’s band were sensational and brought the best out of John Kander’s jazzy and exciting tunes. Al Parkinson’s set is cunningly gloomy for the prison scenes – the low hung light bulbs over the front few rows of the stalls at the beginning almost makes us feel part of the set – but then is minimalist enough accurately to suggest all the locations without getting in the way of the dancing. It’s very rewarding to see such a committed performance from everyone involved and I’m pretty sure (from memory) that this is a more fulfilling production than the original London one or the touring show we saw at Milton Keynes in 2007. The combination of vocal and dance skills with the new choreography and fabulous band make this a really excellent show. It’s still on for a couple more weeks so if you prefer your murderesses sassy, you’ve come to the right place!

Review – Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Curve Theatre, Leicester, 9th November 2013

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It’s incredible to think it, but it is now 18 years since Matthew Bourne’s original production of his sensational revitalisation of Swan Lake first hit our stages. At the age of 18, it’s now come of age. It can vote, get married and go to war. By definition then, it can no longer be an enfant terrible, more a pillar of the community. But even if the audience knows full well what to expect, each performance is an assault on the senses. You still get those frissons of witnessing the avant-garde, being challenged by the sight of an all-male troupe of swans, observing the veiled (or not so veiled) hints of homoeroticism, gratefully appreciating the first act humour, powerlessly suffering the desperate tragedy of the final act.

This is one of those shows that we always see every time it comes around, and this was probably our ninth or tenth visit. We last saw it three years ago and appreciated then that there had been a few minor changes to keep it moving and contemporary. Today there are more changes; nothing drastic, just a few embellishments and emphasis changes, and some re-shaped choreography in Acts Three and Four. These make the swans more menacing as a group (although perhaps less menacing individually), and make the Prince even more tortured. This may well be due also to the amazing performance ofSam Archer as the Prince, who actually played the Prince when we saw it in 2010 but who I think has now really got into the role in a much greater depth. I found Act Four more moving than usual and I admit I had to brush away a tear when the Prince finally collapses dead on the bed (sorry if I’ve ruined the ending for you). One of the swans (Tom Cummings maybe – a little hard to tell without a full cast list) picked up the dying Prince and held him in his arms in mockery of the Act Two position that the Prince had adopted when he was being entranced by the Swan. It was a stunning visual image.

Some other subtle changes include having recognisable celebrities in the Act Two bar scene – it always did include the thick-set tweedy woman who visibly warmed to the charms of the younger girls – but I see she is now characterised as June Buckridge (from Frank Marcus’ Killing of Sister George). We now also have the appearances of Quentin Crisp and Joe Orton turning up too, so I think it’s fair to say that bar has become a little more metrosexual (at least) in its nature. The girlfriend character is now even more badly behaved during the gala ballet scene – in addition to all the little transgressions she used to do she now beats out therhythm of the music like a tattoo on the front ledge of the box, to the disgust, naturally, of the Queen. The choreography for the Act Three waltz seems to have become even more lascivious, with a lot of appropriately raunchy hip-swivelling, which made it all the more entertaining as a result. However, Mrs Chrisparkle thought the end to the third act looked a little messier in comparison with previous performances. Perhaps clarity of storytelling got sacrificed for the whirlwind of activity that takes place in those final few very important seconds; she didn’t think that was quite up to scratch.

It’s still a sensational show though. Sam Archer is superb as the Prince (even though for me Scott Ambler remains the best) and for the performance we saw, his Swan was danced by Glenn Graham. I think that’s a lucky role for a cover to perform. Our first Swan was Will Kemp, understudying Adam Cooper I believe, and he was mesmeric. The Swan/Stranger role is one where you can absolutely show off and stun your audience. Mr Graham was enthrallingly brilliant. As the Swan he was so intense; his incredible ability to hold a fixed gaze really heightened the tension between him and the Prince. His dancing was immaculate too.As the Act Three Stranger, that same steely glare helps him dominate proceedings and I absolutely loved the way he led the Allegro Molto Vivace coda (that Tchaikovsky originally put in Act One) – full of brilliant attack with all the boys stage right lunging their way into the coquettish girls’ stage left area and back again; superbly entertaining.

In the performance we saw, the Queen was danced by Michela Meazza and she was superb. Sometimes the Queen can be a little static – so aloof and over-starchy that she barely moves. This Queen danced magnificently, whilst still bringing all the cruelty and horror of the unloving parent to the role and nicely enhancing the humour of her selecting escorts from the talent on offer. To be honest, if I may be so bold, and if you would kindly forgive my directness, gentle reader, she’s the original QUILF. Anjali Mehra played the Girlfriend with huge enthusiasm and a great sense of fun; you got a sense that this girlfriend truly regretted her involvement in any underworld plot to discredit the Prince. From the ensemble, I really enjoyed the partnership of Chantelle Gotobed and Luke Jackson as the Italian Princess and escort – he the know-it-all but ineffectual celebrity, she the girlfriend from Hell, encouraging the Stranger to be as naughty with her as you could decently show on a Saturday matinee. But everyone put their heart and soul into the show and it was a fantastic performance.

It was a sell-out, so if you want to see it on its current tour, don’t hang about booking tickets, get them bought now! It’s touring through till May 2014 including trips to Belgium and Israel. Go on, you won’t regret it.

PS. The audience were disappointingly chatty; because the music is recorded, I wondered if that signalled to people that it’s perfectly ok to talk over it in a way that you wouldn’t if it was live. In case you were wondering, it isn’t.

PPS. I bumped into Messrs Harry Francis and Simon Hardwick, late of A Chorus Line, who are in Leicester rehearsing the Christmas show, Chicago. It was very nice finally to be able to say a quick hello to them. Mr Francis said he thought Chicago was going to be great (you heard it here first) – had I booked? I hadn’t then, but I have now!

Review – The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Curve Studio, Leicester, 26th October 2013

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Are Martin McDonagh plays like buses? You don’t see any for ages, yet within the space of a few months we’ve seen The Cripple of Inishmaan and now The Beauty Queen of Leenane, currently playing at the atmospheric little Studio theatre at the Curve in Leicester. Like “Inishmaan”, the “Beauty Queen” is a stunningly written, tightly constructed, highly dramatic piece; perhaps not quite a funny as the former, but a whole lot darker too.

It first appeared in the mid-1990s, set in more or less contemporary County Galway, in the impoverished house of 70 year old Mags and her downtrodden and anger-ridden daughter Maureen, who at the age of 40 has just waited on her mother hand and foot, with no thanks for it and no life as a result. You guess that every attempt that Maureen has ever made to gain some independence has been ruthlessly quashed by her vicious, selfish mother. So when Mags discovers that construction worker Pato, currently working in London, is returning to Leenane for the weekend, she does her best to make sure that Maureen doesn’t hear about it. However, that plan goes astray, Maureen meets Pato, and thus starts a chain of events that ends in tragedy. No more plot details – if you haven’t seen the play, the surprises up Mr McDonagh’s sleeve are well worth concealing.

This is a riveting co-production between the Curve and the Mercury Theatre Colchester, (just like the fantastic Hired Man earlier this year), directed by the Curve’s Artistic Director Paul Kerryson with great feeling for both the tenderness and savageness of the plot. Juliet Shillingford’s set conveys the poverty of Galway twenty years ago with great attention to detail – I loved the cooking range at the back of the set, the 70s/80s style kettle and telephone, the miserable television, the basic radio set. To bring the hostile environment outside into firm focus for the audience, when it rains in Leenane, it rains on stage too – Mrs Chrisparkle and I got a little damp in the front row. It’s uncomfortable, disconcerting, and gives you a very acute sense of reality.

The cast of four hold your attention throughout, each of them giving a fantastic performance. Standing out magnificently is Michele Moran as Maureen, whom we really enjoyed earlier in the year in Dancing at Lughnasa, and who conveys all the character’s pent up emotions with incredible force. The angry victim, the downtrodden drudge, the coquettish virgin, the irritating show-off, the unhinged sufferer, the desperate loner are all aspects of the character that Miss Moran absolutely gets and portrays brilliantly. She’s spectacular in the role, and spectacularly terrifying in many ways too.

Nora Connolly is the despicable Mags; one can often feel sympathy for a little old lady eking out her final years in loneliness and sadness – but not this little old lady. Manipulative and cruel, the things she does on stage actually make the audience gasp with horror. Nora Connolly makes her irredeemably unpleasant character completely come alive – no pantomime villain this, she is a very real person, and it’s a superb performance.

We really enjoyed Andrew Macklin as Pato’s brother Ray; short tempered, not overly intelligent, holding a grudge, and nicely conveying the character’s own mental hang-ups. He speaks his words as though each line is a dagger wound. His second act scene with Maureen was very suspenseful – you kept on thinking that one of them was going to murder the other, but who would it be…? And amongst this nervous-making threesome is Stephen Hogan’s Pato, a refreshingly open, normal bloke who gets caught up in the battle between mother and daughter. I loved his Act Two soliloquy; it really explained what the character was all about and you just knew it was going to pave the way for a melodramatic sad ending. My only criticism of his performance is that when he prepares breakfast for Mags, he knows his way around her kitchen far too well for someone who had never been there before.

One very strange experience: there was no applause at the end of the first act. It certainly deserved the traditional pre-interval clapping but you could tell it wasn’t going to materialise so I gamely started it off. I did about fifteen claps but with no one joining in, until Mrs C convinced me I was fighting a losing battle. I think I’ve only experienced that once before, and that was in a very lacklustre play (can’t remember what), but this was an excellent production. I assumed the rather lazy audience just couldn’t be bothered; Mrs C’s opinion was that the audience was so dumbstruck with how horrible the mother was that they couldn’t bring themselves to show any signs of appreciation. Anyway, enthusiastic applause at the end of the play certainly made up for it. It’s a hard-hitting production of a fascinating play that you carry on discussing days afterwards. Not an easy watch – disturbing and shocking in many respects – but horrifically good.

Review – Twelfth Night, Filter Theatre Company, Curve Studio, Leicester 21st September 2013

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Illyria? I think not. This is about as far away from a natural setting of Twelfth Night as you could possibly imagine. No palaces, no sea coasts, no woodland; instead the stage is set up for a rock concert. Guitars, keyboards, drums, speakers, overlapping wires and microphones, all set on a blank black stage. The stage manager is sat at her desk at the back in full view of the audience. The cast come on in dribs and drabs, drinking tea, chatting to themselves, sizing up the audience, offering us Werthers’ Originals (I am of an age where these are becoming de rigueur) and generally warming themselves up in very relaxed way.

As I said only last week I would much sooner see a brave failure of an experimental production rather than a lazy, easy success. We’ve seen Filter once before, a few years ago when they brought their Three Sisters to the Derngate. It was avant-garde, but for me not quite avant-garde enough, and it just didn’t stamp its mark on the play quite as strongly as I would have liked. Not so with Twelfth Night. This is a very, very wacky and way out approach to the play and, I have to say, we both enjoyed it immensely. It’s brave and experimental, and certainly not a failure. The only aspect which I feel doesn’t quite work is if the creative team were hoping you’d go home fully understanding the original Twelfth Night story. If you’ve not seen the play before I think you’d be confused by the doubling up of characters and not quite understanding the changing locations; if you are familiar with the play, that would also help you appreciate some of the extra little nuances they chuck in from time to time. Otherwise, it’s a palpable hit throughout.

It’s certainly not for purists though. About fifteen minutes in, an older gentleman got up from his seat and walked right across the front of the stage and through the exit in a very obvious “I’ve had enough of this rubbish” mood. He could have been a plant I guess – we saw that done once with DV8 Dance Company many years ago but that looked precisely like the plant it was. This gesture, with its resultant slightly surprised looks and comments from the cast, seemed pretty genuine to me. If you were going to see this production as a student of English literature, I’m not sure it would be hugely beneficial to you. If you were going to see it as a drama student, then you’d find it endlessly fascinating.

The cast all play their various instruments and operate computers with recorded sound throughout the show giving the impression that the music and sound effects arise organically out of the text rather than being an artificial accompaniment. A lot of the setting seems to be derived from Orsino’s first speech, “if music be the food of love, play on” (audience members might have to prompt him to remember it) as the Duke is trying to distinguish the white noise rubbish that’s invading his brain from the clear notes of melodic love that he’s also trying to locate. It’s a clever interpretation of that opening scene, and it works well.

Viola becomes Cesario by borrowing a jacket and a hat from members of the audience – which is a clever touch, because how else would the shipwrecked Viola conveniently come by men’s clothes? Toby Belch first enters uttering Hamlet’s soliloquy and staggering off in a drunken heap – possibly an Elizabethan equivalent of singing “Show me the way to go home.” Sir Toby and Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s noisy revels are inventively portrayed with acrobatics, ball games with the audience, involving a member of the front row (me, actually) in singing their song, and passing pizza around the stalls. When Malvolio puritanically interrupts the revelry with his aghast “is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?” he pointed speechlessly to three ladies sitting in the second row who were scoffing pizza, which really involved the audience in sharing the same guilt due to bad behaviour as Belch and Aguecheek; it was an extremely funny scene. There are loads more examples of inventive staging that I shan’t tell you about – you’ll have to go see the play.

The cast are first rate throughout. Jonathan Broadbent is a classy if music-mad Orsino and doubles up as the foppish but totally believable Andrew Aguecheek. Lizzy Watts is an authoritative Olivia, stiffly respectable and no-nonsense until she starts fancying Cesario, when traces of an amusingly suppressed ladette appear. Polly Frame does a very good job of differentiating Viola (and Cesario) from Sebastian, using a superb deep voice and nicely portraying the latter’s penchant for a punch-up. Sandy Foster is a brilliant Feste, as wise a fool as you could hope to meet; she comes across as a naturally funny person and you sense she is the gel that actually makes much of the production stick together. Geoffrey Lumb is a hilarious Sir Toby, not only because he looks just like Mrs Chrisparkle’s cousin Nick, who is himself in many ways a real life Sir Toby, but also for his superb attention to comic detail, immaculate facial expressions and a performance of total conviction. Fergus O’Donnell’s Malvolio is a brilliant creation – full of waspish bossiness at first, then when he thinks Olivia fancies him he gains rockstar status in his head, with some terrific air guitar work and louche body language; finally his total humiliation is capped by being imprisoned for alleged lunacy – it’s a great performance that really makes you feel sorry for the old steward.

At 90 minutes without an interval, and with long periods in silence or several repetitions of the same song, you can guess that they’ve trimmed a lot of the excess of the text away, removing a few characters and leaving the very bare structure of the plot. They’ve torn up the rule book on how to perform Shakespeare and I was very impressed with the way they all carried it off so well. But the basic story is still all there and you won’t be disappointed at the way they depict Olivia’s falling in love with Cesario and then Sebastian, Malvolio appearing cross-garter’d, Toby Belch being a drunken wreck, and much more besides. Anarchic, inventive but above all, huge fun, this is a great production that’s touring round the country and I would definitely recommend it!

Review – The Hired Man, Studio at the Curve, Leicester, 21st April 2013

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1984. Not the scary Orwellian one but the real one, which was probably even more scary in retrospect. Five years into the late Baroness Thatcher’s regime that changed the nation forever. Two years after the Falklands Conflict; the time of the Miners’ Strike; protests at Greenham Common; ah, happy days. And a little musical opened at the Astoria Theatre (now G-A-Y) with a book by Melvyn Bragg and music by Howard Goodall. I went to see it on 2nd February 1985 according to my ticket stub, and was totally blown away by its intensity, emotion, terrific score and amazing cast. That original production was born at the old Leicester Haymarket theatre, and in a sense, thirty years later, it’s come home.

In the intervening years it hasn’t lost any of its relevance. The subjugation of the hired man to the demands, whims and mercy of his employer (“the day of rest is Man’s invention”, according to the lyrics), means it can be tough to get right that work/life balance, to the detriment of relationships. Workers’ rights, union clashes, young men going off to war and not coming back, plus the trials and tribulations of young love – all human life is here in the not so idyllic Lake District of a hundred years ago.

Normally I try not to give away too much of the plot of plays and shows but in this case I have found it virtually impossible. So if you’re going to see it and you don’t know the story yet, please bookmark this page and come back after the show! Otherwise, carry on…

“The Hired Man” really is the complete package. It has a very convincing and gripping story line, fantastic memorable songs and it’s laden with emotion without ever being mawkish or sensational. I confessed to Mrs Chrisparkle that when I saw it in the 1980s it made me cry. In the interval she smirked, “Have we come to the bit that made you cry yet?” “No”, I replied, summoning up all the masculinity I could muster. Then came the second act. By curtain call she was in floods of tears. Not only her, but I would guess a good half of the audience had reached for the Kleenex. The lady to my left had been solidly weeping for the last half hour. The light caught the bald head of an older man in the second row as he kept on bobbing up and down to the rhythm of his sobs. Few escape this show’s emotional tentacles. That’ll teach Mrs C for being so cocky.

This production comes to the Curve as a co-production with the Mercury Theatre Colchester, and is staged in their Studio theatre. This was our first visit to the Studio, and I must say I was well impressed. Comfortable, plenty of legroom, pretty good sightlines and an intimate, experimental vibe, even though it is considerably larger than other “Studio” type theatres I’ve visited. Its layout put me in the mind of the old Mermaid Theatre as it used to be in the “good old days” – a fairly wide stage with just a bank of seats gently escalating up to heaven. The whole Curve complex is quickly becoming one of my favourite venues – the place was packed with people going round craft stalls, watching a gospel choir, meeting for coffee and lunch (delicious food, including gluten-free options in the café), plus it has friendly staff and their ticket prices are delightfully sensible. And I love how you can peek through the offstage area of the main theatre and see all the props and costumes in waiting, as the ASMs go about their business.

Back to the Hired Man. It’s one of those productions where the cast play the instruments, apart from Richard Reeday, the Musical Director, on the piano. That really helps to combine the music into the actors’ performance, which in turn assists and enforces the plot development of a musical. Howard Goodall’s lyrics are both tender and hard hitting and fit his tunes perfectly. The arrangements reflect the rural settings; the use of trumpets gives a sense of country bands, and there’s even a harp to enhance the more romantic aspects. The music is performed beautifully throughout. My favourite song from the show, “What a Fool I’ve been”, which has been for many years a regular in my shower repertoire, has an inventive piano backing of anxious staccato notes that panic up and down the keyboard, reflecting John’s inner turmoil. Terrific stuff. Juliet Shillingford’s deceptively simple set nicely suggests the open countryside, but converts easily to the dinginess of John and Emily’s small cottage, the exposed terror of the French battlefields, and the claustrophobia of the coalface.

There are some superb performances that add to the tugging of the heartstrings. One of my main recollections of the 1980s production was the extraordinary Olivier award winning performance of Paul Clarkson as John, whose steely gaze burnt through the audience’s combined retina as you witnessed his sorrows, his furies, his delights and his ability to take every blow that life dishes out. So I was curious, if not concerned, to find out how David Hunter would take to the role in this production. I’m pleased to say he’s very different and gives you an excellent insight into other aspects that make up the character of John.

David Hunter is a much quieter, calmer John; where Paul Clarkson exploded with resentment and angst, Mr Hunter chooses more to internalise his passions but his expressions and superb singing voice convey the full range of emotions that John experiences. He has an open innocence in the early days of his love with Emily (the wonderful “Say Farewell” was performed with youthful exuberance); and when he performed “What a Fool I’ve been” it really gave me goosebumps up and down my arms. John’s slow realisation that Emily and Jackson have been seeing each other behind his back and which leads into that song was done perfectly. That scene also culminates in the most exciting, technically precise and dramatic stage fight I’ve ever seen. The lady to my left, who was to blub uncontrollably later on, hid her eyes behind her hands as she couldn’t bear to see another punch land – brilliant work by Mr Hunter and Kit Orton as Jackson. In the second half, he ages very convincingly into someone now coping with the different challenges of mining and war, and managing his family. Like the whole cast, Mr Hunter is particularly good at connecting eye to eye with audience members – when he was dealing with his emotional question “What would you say to your son, if you were me” he looked straight at me and I believed absolutely that he was genuinely seeking my advice. At the end of the show, when he finally goes back to the land, he brings a triumphant resilience to the last reprise of the main theme. It’s a really mature performance and offers for big roles ought to be dropping on his doormat on a daily basis.

Equally, if not more, astonishing a performance comes from Julie Atherton as Emily. We’ve seen Miss Atherton a couple of times before and she always gives a great performance – she was excellent as Sister Mary Robert in Sister Act. Her voice is as clear as a bell and as powerful as a rocket and she couldn’t keep her emotions to herself if she tried. She effortlessly provides fantastic harmonies with Mr Hunter, most memorably in “Say Farewell”, and her growing relationship with Jackson is superbly subtle; you can see her desperately trying to put the brakes on too late, and the scene where she skids uncontrollably into his arms was really moving. She has a lightness of touch with the domestic scenes that bring out the, albeit sparse, humour in the role. But it is in the second half that she really comes into her own. When she can’t keep her son from going down the pit or from going to war – you knew the moment that the excellent Jamie Barnard turned up with a packed suitcase there was only ever going to be one sad outcome; when she gets the letter from John with the terrible news; when she starts to weaken through ill health; and when her spirit returns to the land with John in the final scene, she is just tremendous. I reckon she had tears on her cheeks for about 40 minutes in that second half. No grown man could help but tearfully sniff along with her. You can’t stop watching her – a sensational performance.

The whole cast is excellent, but I would commend to you some particularly impressive performances. Mark Stobbart as Isaac, John’s chancer of a brother, irrepressibly looks for easy ways to make a bit of cash but has a heart of gold, and when he comes back from war and his wrestling days are over I felt really sad for the character. Gary Tushaw as John’s more responsible brother Seth, gives a sterling performance of reliability and has great stage presence. Kit Orton’s Jackson is a charismatic chap who you would have no doubt would easily win over any fair lady – and he has a brilliant voice. And Jill Cardo’s May, John and Emily’s nearly grown-up daughter, gives a great performance of a girl on the verge of being a young woman, teasing and daring with her clothes, with an impish sense of humour and a big heart that could break at any minute.

What can I say? It’s an intense, almost draining experience – we slept for hours afterwards due to emotional exhaustion. The music is sensational – Mrs C hasn’t stopped singing “Oh to be a hired man” for the last four days. The performances are skilful and engrossing, and the whole production is magic. Simply brilliant, and you’ll kick yourself if you miss it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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