Tag Archives: Leicester

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?