Tag Archives: Northampton

Review – Holes, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 1st February 2020

Posted on by

Holes didn’t ring any bells with either Mrs Chrisparkle or me. As is often the case, we had neither heard of, nor read, nor seen either the book or the film that apparently the rest of the world knows about intimately. I’m sure you already know, gentle reader, that Louis Sachar’s 1998 book received wide acclaim, and, according to Wikipedia, so it must be true, has been ranked sixth in a survey to choose the all-time best children’s novels. To which I can only say: Gosh.

It’s the relatively complex story of young Stanley Yelnats who was sent away to a kind of correction camp (it isn’t really a correction camp) for stealing a pair of sneakers (he didn’t steal them) that belonged to a famous baseball player. Stanley believes he comes from a cursed family, because one of his ancestors didn’t keep a promise to an old lady in Latvia. (Stay with me on this). The daily punishment at the camp is to dig holes, five feet wide by five feet deep. According to the mean Mr Sir who supervises the digging, it’s meant to build character. But, in reality, he and his boss The Warden are using the young offenders to dig for treasure that was stolen over a hundred years earlier by Kissin’ Kate Barlow, a sweet lady turned outlaw. Confused? There’s more. In a swipe of coincidence that would make Agatha Christie blush at its outrageousness, our hero Stanley is descended from the man whose briefcase containing title deeds was stolen. NO! Yes. I could go on, but that’s enough for now.

For a young person’s book/film/play, the story grapples with some very difficult and mature themes, from legal injustice to the harsh realities of labour camps, to racially motivated murder and being outcast for having a mixed race relationship – and I can’t argue with the fact that its heart is clearly in the right place. It’s also rather nicely moral – the good guys find wealth and happiness (not that the two necessarily go together of course) and the bad guys get apprehended. Also in its favour is that it tells its story clearly, with its three time threads (today, 1880s Green Lake, early 1800s Latvia) weaving intricately together to make sense of it all.

However, for me, this play commits the worst crime that you should never, ever commit in the theatre. It’s boring. Sorry, there’s no other way of saying it. It starts reasonably promisingly, and the last ten minutes of the first Act perk up a little, and then last ten minutes of the entire play provide an enjoyable denouement. But everything else in between is as dull as ditchwater. With a full audience peppered very liberally with, I would guess, 8 to 12 year olds, at whom this play would be targeted, and who normally whoop and cheer a lot in the theatre, you would not believe the muted response applause as the curtain came down at the end of the first Act.

Even the set and sound design are like a game of two halves. Simon Kenny’s backdrop – a wooden fence that splits into two to reveal a rugged skyline is a thing of beauty; and the wooden barrels that represent the holes are a clever touch that solve what is otherwise a tricky problem for a designer. But the rest of the props, furniture and, I felt, the puppets, are meagre and unimaginative, rather crudely constructed and, for me, lacking in that special magical animation that brings a puppet to life. There are a couple of scenes – at the beginning of both Acts – where the cast play instruments and dance, which gives you hope for plenty of live music distractions. But whenever music is deployed in the play outside of those scenes, it is recorded, slightly too loud and artificial-sounding, and doesn’t really add much to the production.

I think the main issue – for us at least – is that there wasn’t a moment early on in the play where we connected with it. I can only assume that we the audience should be raging at the injustice of Stanley’s being apprehended and found guilty of a crime he didn’t commit, so that we firmly take his side in all the subsequent experiences at the camp. But it’s not as simple as that. The trouble is, Stanley himself doesn’t seem remotely concerned by his incarceration; he simply blames it on his ancestors. And through much of the first Act he is bullied and doesn’t stand up for himself – and rather than feel sorry for him, I found him irritatingly spineless for constantly taking the blame for things that others did. I didn’t sympathise or empathise; he just annoyed me. And if Stanley doesn’t care about what’s happening to him, well, frankly, why should we?

So, with a main character who is a bit of a weed and a surrounding cast of bullies, there is no one with whom we can identify. True, the stage does brighten up whenever Rhona Croker’s Warden comes on, with her scarcely veiled cruelty and threatening use of excuse me? – and when she gets her come-uppance at the end, it’s very satisfying. Leona Allen’s Zero is the only character to provoke any real interest; the only one to make some kind of a journey, the only one whose kind streak makes them appealing. The growing friendship between Zero and Stanley could have been interesting if there had been more opportunity to develop it – but they don’t make the most of it. The other performances are all very competent and proficient, but, at the end of the day, they couldn’t breathe much life into this rather stale and sterile text.

I just couldn’t connect with this play. Perhaps it was due to the structure; whenever the story progressed a stage, we went either forward or back to another time thread where we had to pick up the tale where we had previously left it; as a result, although the structure is clever, it kills dramatic tension. I had to screw my courage to the sticking post and resist the temptation to leave at the interval – and I’m glad I stayed because the last ten minutes, when all the threads come together, are by far the most entertaining. But it needs more – a whole lot more – to elevate it out of a general sense of meh.

The tour continues to Nottingham, Coventry, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Plymouth, Liverpool, High Wycombe, Blackpool, Wolverhampton and Canterbury. But it wasn’t for me.

Two stars are better than one

Review – Coppelia, Russian State Ballet of Siberia, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 28th January 2020

Posted on by

It’s a happy welcome back to the Russian State Ballet of Siberia, who graced us with their presence last year when we enjoyed their Snow Maiden. For 2020 they have returned with productions of Sleeping Beauty on Monday and Swan Lake on Wednesday, but we plumped for Coppelia on Tuesday, because we’ve only seen it once before and I did feel like I needed a refresher.

Based in Krasnoyarsk they bring an enticing whiff of the Steppes to our shores, blending innate elegance with technical expertise and a delightful observance of all the conventions of the Grand Russian Ballet. These conventions tend to get unrecognised by us Britishers, but I’m always amused and impressed by the performers’ ability to break off from a dance to take a spontaneous round of applause (always received with utmost humility) and I love the way they walk a wide circuit of the stage to receive gracious acknowledgement gestures from the dancers clinging to the edges. During the next week I shall wave graciously at Mrs Chrisparkle when she comes out of the shower. If it’s good enough for the Siberians, it’s good enough for us.

It was good to be reminded of the content of Coppelia, because it’s a charming and surprisingly funny ballet, with the age-old simple story of boy meets girl meets automated doll. Girl gets jealous but when she discovers her rival is no more than some painted wood, she tricks boy into believing that she is the doll. Truth is revealed, they flee from the ire of the Doctor who has made the doll, there’s a long wedding sequence and they all live happily ever after. No dying swans here. A university friend once pointed out the similarities between the choreography in the video that accompanied Toni Basil’s Mickey and Coppelia. How we scoffed and mocked him for his pretentiousness. But, on reflection, he’s completely right.

Scenery-wise, it would be fair to say the Russian State Ballet of Siberia travel light, but they make up for it with some wonderfully stunning costumes. The ladies are resplendent in beautiful dresses, a mix of bold and subtle colours and styles that bring their own vivacity to the stage. Similarly, the gentlemen are bedecked in smart tunics and strongly coloured shirts; Egor Osokin’s fantastic red military suit as the Burgomeister stood out, as did Ivan Karnaukhov’s Doctor Coppelius’ bright blue cloak creation. The whole thing genuinely is a treat for the eyes, and that’s even without considering the dancing.

The evening started curiously; the lights went down and then there was a long pause before anything happened. Some desultory applause started at the back of the auditorium and at first I thought it was a few disgruntled punters taking the mick. But no, they could see from their vantage point that Maestro Anatoliy Chepurnoy had mounted his podium, although in the front stalls we couldn’t see him. Suddenly his little head popped up over the railing, and with some encouraging hand gestures exhorted us into a rousing round of applause. More! More! his wavy hands were saying, so a few pantomime-style whoops and cheers came from somewhere behind me. Satisfied that we’d greeted the audience with the fervour they deserved, he decided to get on with the conducting.

Delibes’ score is crammed with luscious tunes all the way through, none more luscious than its opening number, the famous Mazurka which gets your feet tapping and your legs entrechatting. They’ve played about with the sequence of the music a little bit; nevertheless, it sounds great, despite the couple of duff notes played by the horn towards the end of the first Act. They’ve also removed some of the spookier aspects to the story, making Coppelius less of a Doctor Evil and more of a crotchety old fop. No matter, it works well with Alexander Gorsky and Gennady Malkhasiants’ revised choreography.

In the lead role of Swanhilda, Elena Svinko is outstanding. She was a magnificent Kupava in last year’s Snow Maiden and once again she brings elegance, skill and a terrific presence to the stage. She uses her expressions to tell the story so well that we completely understand the character and motivations of Swanhilda. She also always looks like she’s having a really wonderful time on stage, which is always a bonus for the Russian ballet. She is matched by Marcello Pelizzoni as Franz, a fresh-faced youth with impressive agility and style, who’s also a superb storyteller. Was he really only born in 1999? That’s amazing – this young man is truly going places. Together the two leads created an excellent partnership.

I enjoyed Ivan Karnaukhov’s semi-villainous Coppelius, flouncing theatrically around the stage; Mariami Kuloshvili didn’t have a large role to dance as the Coppelia Doll but when she brought it to life it was very entertaining. Miryam Roca created a very vivacious Town Celebrity character, and she was nicely accompanied by Egor Osokin’s dignified Burgomeister. The Fairy was danced by Anastasia Osokina with all the grace and charm that we saw last year, and I particularly enjoyed the trio danced by Nerea Astorga, Sofya Eremina and Arianna Guastaferro. The six Corps de Ballet dancers who played Swanhilda’s friends were totally enchanting, particularly bringing out the character and humour in the scene where they break into the Doctor’s toyroom.

There were one or two slightly dicey moments; a male member of the Corps had a worried look on his face throughout the whole of one dance and when it came to an end he wore that relieved expression you see on a pensioner when they’ve reached the top of an escalator and congratulate themselves on having got that far. It may have been the same chap who in the second Act dropped his hat early on and then kept giggling about it with his friends. There was also a moment when I had to stop Mrs C laughing when Mr Karnaukhov got the hem of this cloak caught under the door to the Doctor’s studio, and you could see frantic shiftings of material from the other side in an attempt to liberate the offending garment, whilst dancers battled on regardless. Inevitable, when a company only plays one performance of a dance at a theatre, that these little issues will emerge. But, on the whole, it was a high-quality performance and everyone seemed happy with how it all went, especially once they’d found Mr Chepurnoy to join them for the final curtain. After their visit to Northampton the company continues its tour to Wolverhampton, High Wycombe, Wimbledon, Southend, Canterbury, Brighton, Halifax, Oxford, Leicester, Basingstoke, Swindon, Ipswich, Bournemouth and Sheffield. I always enjoy seeing these dancers – and I’m sure you would too.

Four they’re jolly good fellows

Review – Mame, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 11th January 2020

Posted on by

It was with high expectation that Mrs Chrisparkle and I, together with our friend, the Wizard of Warwick, took our seats in the Royal theatre for the Saturday matinee of Mame. It has come from the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester, which is rapidly garnering a reputation for top quality work, and critics and friends alike have heaped high praise on it. And it would be a welcome return to the Royal for Tracie Bennett, who started the fantastic journey of End of the Rainbow here back in 2010, one of the Made in Northampton productions that became a great success, with a West End and Broadway transfer.

It’s been fifty years since Mame coaxed the blues right out of the horn on the West End stage, so a revival was more than due. With curious but useful timing, those nice people at Lost Musicals produced a staged reading of the original source play, Patrick Dennis’ Auntie Mame, last year, and a thoroughly enjoyable play it is too. In fact – I’m going to be bold here – I think it’s probably better as a play than as a musical, with no insult intended to the late great Jerry Herman, or the creative team from the Hope Mill. I was fascinated to realise that the musical is 100% faithful to the play. I’m sure that even the same lines are spoken in both the play and the musical; it’s like Jerry Herman took the play, wrote some songs, and simply dropped them into place whilst keeping most of the original as the framework. As a result, most of the songs commit what I think is the cardinal sin of musicals, they don’t move the story along. It’s plot development – song – plot development – song in a very start-stop manner so that the plot doesn’t really grow organically.

And that plot is very much a game of two halves. If you don’t want to know what happens, skip the rest of this paragraph. On Side One, young Patrick Dennis is brought to New York to live with his only relative, his Auntie Mame, who lives a swell, party existence and knows how to have a good time. She introduces him to her slightly outré lifestyle, and he reacts rather well to it. But the Wall Street Crash decimates Mame’s bank balance and it’s whilst she’s out attempting to earn a meagre living (never having had to work, she’s useless at it) that she meets Southern Gentleman and Plantation Owner, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. Beau is smitten with Mame, and she’s smitten with his income. They wed and go on an extended honeymoon, during which time Patrick starts to grow up, and Beau comes to a sticky end by falling off a mountain. Side Two sees an older Patrick fall in love with the ultra-twee Gloria Upson, who’s blessed by an enormously bigoted family and Mame realises they’re all quite unsuitable for Patrick, although he can’t see it. However, after a dreadful dinner party where home truths are revealed, and a “chance” (it was no chance) meeting with Mame’s new assistant, Pegeen Ryan, Patrick comes back into the bosom of his family and he and Pegeen live happily ever after.

Despite the fact that the music holds back the plot rather than pushes it forward, it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable show, with one famous showstopper number (the eponymous Mame) and a few other good songs; but I was surprised at how Jerry Hermanesque the whole show is. The stand-alone song Mame is the younger sister of the stand-alone, two years later, song Hello Dolly, in that it’s a full-on peaen to the wonderfulness of its title character. The well-known We Need a Little Christmas is a tweak away from Horace Vandergelder’s It Takes A Woman from Hello Dolly; Bosom Buddies is clearly the first version of I Am What I Am from La Cage aux Folles. Plot structure too; the story climax of Mame is the disastrous get-together with Patrick’s intended’s ghastly family. The climax of La Cage aux Folles comes with Georges’ and Albin’s son’s fiancé’s equally ghastly family having to be rushed out of the club in disguise; very similar plot devices involving ghastly prospective in-laws in disastrous social occasions. And I sense this is the tip of the iceberg where it comes to similarities between Mame and Herman’s other works.

Nick Winston’s carefree and joyous production does the near-impossible by cramming athletic and dynamic choreography into the teensiest of acting spaces. Frankly, it’s a miracle that no one collides with each other because (it seemed to me) there was no quarter given as to the choreographic content and the skill of the dancers in the cast, whilst the Royal offers little in the way of extensive acting areas. To be fair, Philip Whitcomb’s set includes two doorways to the left and right of the stage that intrude considerably into the main area and make the centre stage dancing seem even more compact. I’ve never felt such a feeling of claustrophobia with the Royal stage as I did whilst watching that large cast work their way through the show’s big ensemble numbers. But they did it; and they did it magnificently.

In addition to the choreography, the show looks and sounds as decadent and sybaritic as you would expect, with glamorous, showbiz cocktail parties, and a wealthy fox-hunt gathering (it’s ok, Mame saves the fox from being killed, phew). Alex Parker’s musicians are semi-hidden at the bottom of the big sweeping staircase at the back of the stage, as though Mame has a permanent house-band on hand (and why wouldn’t she?) The costumes are all superb – a great mix of classical refinement and showbiz indulgence – and there’s an exhilarating lighting design by Tim Mitchell.

Tracie Bennett is every bit as fantastic as you might expect. Although she’s a petite lady, she doth bestride that stage like a Colossus, as Steven Berkoff once almost wrote. She slips from comedy routine to dramatic Torch Song with effortless ease and fully deserved the instant standing ovation that erupted on her curtain call. Just as she was Judy Garland ten years ago, she is now Mame Dennis. She inhabits those larger than life characters so minutely and so intimately that she takes your breath away.

Harriet Thorpe gives an enormously entertaining performance as Mame’s acting friend Vera, a cross between a Grande Dame of Thespis and a tipsy old sot. There’s excellent support from Lewis Rae as Lindsay, Mame’s legal adviser, and Hugh Osborne as Babcock, the grumpy manager of her late brother’s estate. Jessie May makes a great transformation as Agnes Gooch, portraying her as the dowdy drudge to which she naturally defaults and as the swinging sexpot that Mame and Vera create out of her – a very good comedy performance. Darren Day took the part of Beau, and looked and sounded every inch the Southern Gentleman, although he did seem to falter at times; having been brought quite recently into the cast I wondered if he was a trifle under-rehearsed.

Talking of swapping roles, hats off to Mark Faith, who gave nifty performances as Mr Upson and Uncle Jeff without making them into caricatures, as he had just one between this week’s run and last week playing Baron Hardup in Cinderella in Sheffield. There’s a busy guy! The rest of the cast also all give great support and I was very impressed with the dancing of the ensemble performers, especially Jabari Braham who stood out as exceptional. And of course, there’s a tremendous performance by young Lochlan White, who played Young Patrick in our matinee. Great work – and a great acting future for him I’m sure.

A curiously old-fashioned show; compared with Guys and Dolls, say, currently on in Sheffield, Mame feels like almost a museum piece, even though it’s more than ten years younger. However, the show is given a great treatment by Nick Winston and his cast and provides terrific all round entertainment. Mame returns for one more week at the Salisbury Playhouse starting 21st January. Recommended!

In a nutshell: Fun, flamboyant but strangely old-fashioned, this old musical gets a ravishing revival and Tracie Bennett is outstanding.

Four they’re jolly good fellows

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 10th January 2020

Posted on by

With the New Year properly bedding in, it’s time our thoughts turned to comedy and the return of Screaming Blue Murder! A packed house (yay!) a new seating arrangement (boo!) a change of start time (someone needs to tell Dan) the occasional Saturday night show (see earlier parentheses) and a slight increase in price (tsk! But the first in four years) but it’s still a great night out with an endless and always unpredictable variety of comics and audiences.

Our host was the genial Dan Evans who got us all nicely warmed up by investigating the social interactions of the front rows. It turns out that nearly everyone was friends with Paul who was celebrating his 52nd birthday. Julia, his wife, is an art teacher at a posh school, a fact noted by the first act, see below… Meanwhile, Dan also had good banter with Sarah the Restaurant Inspector after she’d dissed his favourite eatery, and the good burghers of Northampton fooled him by swapping seats at the intervals – it’s the only way to keep these MCs on their toes.

First up was Paul Thorne, whom we saw here a couple of years ago when he did a fantastic gig largely reacting to one of the punters in the audience noisily puking up. We always like to extend a warm welcome here in Northampton. He has confident, assured delivery and is blessed with a comedic face, which he uses to his advantage. I enjoyed all his material about the pitfalls of manscaping, and the act was going fine. But then…. Paul told Julia she was only a teacher because she wasn’t good enough to be an artist herself. Hilarious for the rest of us, but Paul is now firmly off Julia’s Christmas Card list. Frost fell, but Paul managed to get it back by utilising his brilliant material about life on a Taliban Gap Year which he delivered last time we saw him. Always a good laugh, if treading a dicey line between being cheeky and downright rude!

Our middle act, and someone we’d never seen before, was Evelyn Mok. I’d read reviews about her style and I had an awful feeling that she might not fit in with our rumbustious environment, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. She has a slow, languorous but strangely seductive delivery and I was instantly taken into her world of Chinese/Swedish prejudices and conventions. She teased birthday boy Paul with facts about her vagina, which included the funniest joke I’ve ever heard that involved Wolverhampton. Delightfully self-deprecating, incredibly funny and splendidly different, I’d love to see her do a longer gig.

Last up was Alfie Moore, whom we’ve seen several times, the Scunthorpe copper-turned-comic who has brilliant material relating to his experiences in the Force – and you can only imagine the things that the police see. However, he started off with a routine about how people’s names might reflect their personalities, and, truth be told, it didn’t quite come off. He then redressed the balance with many enjoyable anecdotes and observations, but it was a rather stop-start delivery, as you sensed he was drawing material from a number of his previous shows, so that it didn’t really flow. Very good as always, but sometimes he can be super-fantastic.

Next Screaming Blue is on Saturday 25th January; we can’t go, so you’ll have to tell us how it went.

P. S. New Year’s Resolution hits in from today: I’m finally joining the rest of the review crowd and giving star ratings for each show I see!

In a nutshell: Return of Screaming Blue Murder to the Derngate with three excellent acts and two super intervals as always. Star performer this week – Evelyn Mok

Four they’re jolly good fellows

 

 

Review – Susie Dent, The Secret Life of Words, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 3rd January 2020

Posted on by

Countdown must rank as one of TV’s big successes, having been the first ever programme on Channel 4 back in 1982 and still broadcasting today. Over the years the format and the cast of characters have changed very little, and in 2012 8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown was added to the schedules. Sitting in Dictionary Corner since 1992 (which is a jolly long time, if you think about it) has been lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent, and she brought her The Secret Life of Words show to the Royal and Derngate last week.

Anyone who knows me IRL (as the young people of today like to say) will know that I am fascinated by the derivation of words. Get me drunk and I will tell you about the fourteen ways of making a new word in the English Language without borrowing from foreign languages – I always was a wow at parties. Thus, I was keen to book for this show, as clearly were a large number of the good burghers of Northampton as there wasn’t a spare seat in the house.

Ms Dent takes us on a very entertaining linguistic lecture tour of her favourite aspects of the English language. It’s the most flexible and useful language in the world, which is why it is so prominent internationally. But it’s hard for foreign people to learn, with our unpredictable pronunciations (consider: though, through, cough, bough, enough) and our word order, which is instinctive to native speakers but has to be taught to students. That quick brown fox who jumps over the lazy dog is never a brown quick fox, even though in reality it’s the identical four-legged fiend. When Hylda Baker answered the phone in her sitcom Not on Your Nellie she would always say “This is the Old Brown Cow speaking” rather than the other way around.

So there’s loads of material for Susie Dent with which to amuse and educate us. One of her examples of folk etymology is forlorn hope (always one of my favourite derivations) – originally the Dutch Boer verloren hoop, the sacrificial troop of soldiers sent out in the front to get killed whilst the war was won by the backroom boys. New to me, and totally delightful, was the derivation of to “steal one’s thunder” – the annoyed retort of a theatre director in the early 18th century who had discovered that the next production in the same theatre had stolen his newly invented thunder-sound-making-machine used in his previous, less successful, play.

Ms Dent has a very relaxed and comfortable style; there’s little sense of academia in her presentation, it’s much more about the fun of language and things to spot for yourself. Perhaps surprisingly, she likes and encourages Americanisms; and above all recognises that language is a constantly evolving entity and the one thing you cannot do (like Samuel Johnson attempted in his dictionary) is to tie it down for all eternity. She doesn’t shy away from swear words; in fact we learn that the majority of swear words that we use today that concern sex were actually perfectly decent words century ago, because the big no-no in those days was profanity. There’s quite a lengthy exposé in the show about just how useful and flexible f*ck is as a go-to word for all sorts of situations, so don’t take the youngsters!

In an unofficial survey, we were all asked to confirm whether we said mischievous or mischievious; being well-educated types by far the majority plumped for the former, which surprised Ms Dent as her belief is that in twenty years’ time the latter will be the standard pronunciation, as we try to associate it with the word devious. On the pronunciation of scones and scones (you’ll know which is your personal default) we were pretty evenly split. And some audience members were still ridiculing each other on the way out at the end of the show for getting it wrong. (It’s scones, of course.)

The last fifteen minutes or so consist of a Q&A session where members of the audience can ask for Susie’s opinion on burning issues of grammar and etymology. We learned that she has no time for the old adage I before E except after C, and also that she likes one of my favourite forms of new-word-making, metanalysis, where a letter transfers from one word to another to create a new word, such as when a napperon became an apron, a norange became an orange and so on. Tawdry is my favourite example of this.* There was a terrifically phrased question about whether you should say less or fewer, which Susie rather glossed over as being largely unimportant. Surely it’s simply a question of singular and plural nouns? Less stuff but fewer things! No one mentioned split infinitives – I wish I’d asked about that one now, as I’m a stickler for tradition in that department. Save it for another day.

A fascinating evening of wordplay which informed and entertained. If she’s coming to a theatre near you, I’d definitely recommend it!

*Centuries ago, poor people used to buy their clothes from the equivalent of a church bring-and-buy sale in Ely. The church was dedicated to…? St Audrey, naturally!

Review – Pippi Longstocking, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 18th December 2019

Posted on by

There’s a fine tradition at the Royal and Derngate of producing top quality children’s Christmas plays in the old Royal theatre, whilst the more glitzy pantomimes are running in the Derngate auditorium. Over the years they’ve produced some absolute crackers – I think Alice in Wonderland was my favourite – although last year’s effort, The Worst Witch, left Mrs Chrisparkle and me totally cold and we didn’t go back for the second Act – ironically, it went on to have a successful tour and even a West End run. What do I know?

I had, of course, heard about the character of Pippi Longstocking, but I’ve never read the books (because I’ve never been a nine-year-old girl), nor seen the TV or film adaptations. She’s the creation of Astrid Lindgren, whose tall stories about the mighty Pippi entertained her daughter during the Second World War and were an instant hit when published in 1945. And it’s not hard to see why. After the turmoil and grief of the war, the cheeky but selfless girl who finds her own way in life but is essentially kind and friendly would make a welcome change from the daily misery everyone had experienced for the previous six years. Pippi is strong and fearless, blindly optimistic, doesn’t care to follow unnecessary rules or restrictive practices, but will do anything to help anyone in trouble, and just wants to spread joy. She’d be perfect as the new leader of the Labour Party.

Mike Akers has taken Lindgren’s characters and setting, and mixed up a few of the stories to create this charming musical play that starts with Pippi being shipwrecked, her father being blown overboard, and then her moving into the Villa Villakula where her next door neighbours are the straight-laced Mayor and Mrs Settegren and their dutiful but repressed children Tommy and Annika. The three children become friends, which is where the trouble starts. Pippi causes mayhem at school, at a coffee morning, and, worst of all at Mayor Settegren’s annual fete (worse than death) that he’s been planning meticulously for months. The authorities insist that Pippi be taken away to a recognised children’s home where she will be properly brought up. But do you think Pippi will take that lying down?  Me neither.

I love small productions that are modestly staged with more emphasis on the audience’s imagination than on lavish but obvious props and scenery. Katie Sykes’ design includes a circular platform raised to create a space for the musicians to sit inside the “O”, a big wooden triangle that represents Little Town’s one three-storey skyscraper, and a big set of ladders (which can represent anything from hills, hidden lookouts, a ship’s topmast, a tree, or even a big set of ladders). When Act Two opens to the sight of Pippi and her friends relaxing on a South Sea island, with lobsters, gulls and a hilarious seahorse for company, it’s our imagination that fills in all those gaps. In reality, we discover that they’ve encamped at the bottom of the garden, and in fact our imagination has played a trick on us. Very nicely done.

One of the strengths of this production is its very enjoyable music, played with versatility and pizazz by the members of the company as they blend from character to character. Stu Barker’s songs all capture the spirit of adventure and optimism, and you can see that the cast have enormous fun performing them. The music integrates beautifully into the text and, as in any good musical, each song drives the story along so that you get a better understanding of the characters and plot development, and we don’t come out of a song in the same place that we went in.

Leading the cast as Pippi is Emily-Mae who creates a giant impression on the audience with her effervescent sense of fun, innocent determination and tremendous song-and-dance skills. Those high kicks are pretty amazing! Alex Parry’s Settegren is a hilarious portrayal of a pompous killjoy whose response to things going wrong is to go into a great big sulk. Matthew Churcher and Philippa Hogg give great support as the posh kids Tommy and Annika, who are bored with being good children and are desperate to have adventures (providing they’re not too extreme). Scott Brooks is excellent in all his roles, but I particularly enjoyed his partnership with Hanora Kamen as the two inept police officers. Ms Kamen is also an excellent bossy teacher who’s not afraid to tell off any kids in the audience – so you’d better behave! But the entire cast work as a great ensemble and give everything they’ve got to make it a fun night.

At our performance, we were surrounded by many, many incredibly excited children who were absolutely bowled over by the show; their energy fed back to the cast who, in turn, rose to the challenge and fed excitement back to the kids. A real two-way experience! When Pippi leaves Northampton on New Year’s Eve, I see this isn’t the end of her adventures as she’s coming to the Theatre Royal York for a summer show in 2020. Charming, funny, beautifully performed, a truly feelgood show that it would be impossible not to like. Hip hip, Pippi!

Review – Cinderella, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 14th December 2019

Posted on by

One of the highlights of all my Christmases is always to go to the panto. I’m a massive fan, and I don’t care who knows it. A year with no panto is a year wasted. This season we’ve got four pantos lined up and the first was our nearest – the QDos production of Cinderella, at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton. We missed last year’s R&D panto, and I’m told it was a cracker, so I was really looking forward to seeing this year’s effort.

As I get older, though, I realise I have become something of a pantomime purist. And I slightly bridle against the way some pantos have been restructured to take account of the star performers involved. When I were a lad – cue Hovis music – if you went to the panto you’d have a principal boy (who was a girl) and a Dame (who was a fella). Cinderella in the 60s would have, in the star role, probably Buttons or maybe Prince Charming, then Cinderella herself, and then the Ugly Sisters. The Fairy Godmother would get a look-in on the poster, and Dandini and Baron Hardup would virtually be extras. Not anymore. Today, for example, top of the bill at the Royal and Derngate is Anita Dobson as Baroness Angelique, a role that doesn’t usually exist at all. Supporting are Bernie Clifton as Baron Hardup and Sid Sloane as Dandini. So what used to be two of the least important characters (plus one that never existed) are now the most important characters by virtue of the casting. For me, that has the effect of upending the balance of the production somewhat.

Also – call me a prude – I felt that the usual level of innuendo in panto that entertains the parents and frustrates the kids (because they know it’s funny but they don’t know why) lacked subtlety in this production. Frankly, the Baroness is a randy old thing who chases after anyone in trousers, and at one point is escorted off the stage by a couple of guys dressed as BDSM Joy Boys. The Ugly Sisters come on stage looking for a man out of the audience; in a One Man Two Guvnors moment, they pick on a stooge who is brought up on stage looking all embarrassed and innocent – and they call for him to be stripped! Fortunately they stop when he gets to his vest. Both these incidents would never pass the what would it be like if the genders were reversed test. Yes, I like a dirty snigger at a panto as much as anyone, but to me these two examples of sexualisation just felt wrong.

There are some parts of this production which are very entertaining – more of which later. There are some others that simply didn’t do it for me. Technically, it’s superb, with colourful sets, great costumes, a fab little band, and kudos to Chris Barrett’s lighting design which really stands out. However, although ostensibly it has all the elements you’d look for, it was deficient in the humour department – the script is, sadly, pretty weak – and they made up for it with a general vulgarity. Whilst Martyn James may indeed be an experienced comic/magician/panto performer, I’m afraid his Buttons was so downbeat, so dour, so drab, that I found it very hard to warm to him. It felt underwritten, underplayed and underwhelming. For example, when he asks us to greet him every time he comes on stage, it sounds more like a chore than wanting us to be in his gang. To be fair, in the second act he does three magic tricks that are absolutely superb – more of that, please!

As for the rest of the cast, it was one of those strange experiences where the sum of the parts didn’t quite add up to its whole. Anita Dobson absolutely works her socks off to bring her character to life but the trouble is you could never quite tell whether she was meant to be evil or not; after all, Baroness Angelique doesn’t have a known history, so we had to work it out for ourselves. I concluded that, on the whole, the Baroness was nasty but Ms Dobson is so enthusiastic and positive on stage that you couldn’t always tell. And she does front the best five minutes in the show with a cracking Don’t Stop Me Now together with the Ugly Sisters – energetic, fun-loving and superbly sung – Ms Dobson’s voice is still as terrific as it was when she sang the Eastenders theme. As far as musical moments go, Bernie Clifton carries off a very affectionate and rather moving performance of Love Changes Everything with sincere gusto, but the ostrich It’s Behind You scene didn’t work terribly well as the audience didn’t realise what was happening until the scene was almost over.

Further down the cast list things get brighter. Firstly, the kids from the Mayhew School of Dance are absolutely brilliant! Commanding, confident, cute and charismatic, they did a great job. Dan Partridge, as Prince Charming, has a great stage presence and a fantastic voice, and carries off the snobbish vanity of the part very well. Charlotte Haines’ Cinderella is, quite simply, adorable, with a great voice, a terrific connection to the kids in the audience, and a nice sense of fun. David Dale and Tommy Wallace as Claudia and Tess, the Ugly Sisters, work together extremely well and hit just the right level of almost-believable grotesque. They actually made some very thin material go a very long way! Jacinta Whyte is a charming and kindly Fairy Godmother, and the boys and girls of the ensemble do a neat job of all the singing and dancing. And keeping the whole thing going is the boundless energy and lovable warmth of Sid Sloane as Dandini, on top form throughout. He’s one of those performers where you can’t stop breaking out into a little smile every time he’s onstage.

So, a magical pantomime? Not quite. But things do buck up enormously after the interval. Two stars for the first act and four for the second balances out to a 3 star show overall. It’s on until 29th December – I suspect the kids will enjoy it enough for all the family.

P. S. I forgot the Shetland Ponies! I couldn’t keep in an Ahhhhhhh when they came on!

Review – The Season, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 28th November 2019

Posted on by

What is it about New York that inspires such creativity? If you’ve never been there, you imagine the bright lights, the yellow cabs, the wisecracking cops, the Broadway shows; Macy’s and Bloomingdales; the art deco elegance of the Empire State Building, the upright nobility of Lady Liberty, carriage rides around Central Park. You imagine all the movies, all the TV series, all the plays that have their roots there. You imagine you are part of one giant creative hub. Go to New York and you will make your fortune, become a star, make your dreams reality.

Whereas, of course, if you’ve been there, you know that the truth can be somewhat different. Yes, all those fantasies are possible; but if you’ve not much money, are working unsociable hours in a coffee shop, sleeping on a friend’s sofa, you can put all thoughts about glamour and showbiz out of your head, and like as not you won’t be welcome in Macy’s.

Fantasy meets reality in Jim Barne and Kit Buchan’s new musical, The Season, appearing for a couple more days at the Royal and Derngate, a co-production with the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, where it has already played. Dougal has flown from his home in Northampton (and why not) to New York for a weekend to attend the wedding of his long-lost Dad, who left the matrimonial home months before Dougal was born, to seek his fortune in the Big Apple. Dad is marrying Melissa, decades his junior, the old rascal. Dougal has romanticised the opportunity finally to meet his father to a heart-palpitating extent; he has fantasised about discovering an extended family, being part of somewhere glamorous, and doing all the things that a boy and his dad should do.

He’s met at the airport by Melissa’s sister Robin; she’s been tasked to do this, just as she’s been dogsbodied to get the wedding cake from the bakers, buy her sister’s last-minute wedding stockings, and, one senses, a lot more. But Robin has a busy schedule of her own. Her reality is the Bump and Grind coffee shop; and if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid. Managing the over-enthusiastic puppy that is Dougal is the last thing she needs. But over the course of the weekend life changes for both, in part due to his high-pressure tactics, in part due to her need to escape her doldrums. His fantasy becomes overtaken by reality, and her reality gains a glimpse of fantasy. But in which direction will the future turn? I’ll say no more about the plot, but let’s just say that neither of them could have predicted the outcome.

In many respects The Season reminded me strongly of that old Marvin Hamlisch musical, They’re Playing Our Song. Both have two characters, set in New York, where an incompatible couple find themselves attracted to each other and we see them deal with the consequences. And in both shows, the future for the two people is uncertain. But there is an element of melancholy in The Season, absent from the more showbizzy TPOS, that gives it depth and reflection. You sense there is so much in The Season that is left unsaid; there is eloquence in those gaps that really encourages your imagination to work hard to get a full appreciation of these two people’s lives.

Amy Jane Cook has created a brilliant set, with a centrepiece of New York bright-light signs, a stage strewn with subway signs, and a inventively used revolving stage to help give a sense of progress through the city, but which also subtly tells some stories of its own; the sequence of drinks and food trays that emerge from behind the set, for example, that explain the night at the Plaza, fills in so many details without a word being said. Grant Walsh leads a trio of musicians who provide a fabulous soundtrack to the developing story with a depth that would suggest many more people backstage.

Tori Allen-Martin and Alex Cardall create a perfect onstage partnership, with their characters’ clear, opposing personalities driving the show on with great power and vigour. Ms Allen-Martin’s Robin is a deeply troubled soul but you only get to realise this on a dripfeed basis as the show progresses; and we all get to enjoy her revenge by credit card activity. Mr Cardall is a bright, happy stage presence; an innocent abroad who takes a childlike pleasure in the simplest of activities – in fact, someone we could all learn from. The scene at the beginning of the second Act perfectly portrays the difference between the two characters; one confused, horrified, nauseous and exhausted, the other as though he were auditioning for a Kellogg’s Fruit and Fibre advert. The pair of them are both hilarious and alarming in turn; over the course of two hours you feel you’ve got to know them intimately as friends and, frankly, you worry about them.

Social media is already demanding The Season 2 – will we find out what happens to Robin and Dougal? I rather like the fact that all their experience is contained within one weekend; that it’s one big finite flourish of experience that they can take home with them and use to enhance their separate lives. But a sequel would be good too! Hopefully this isn’t the end of the line for this fascinating couple. A fantastic little nugget of musical delight.

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 22nd November 2019

Posted on by

Another packed house at the Underground for our last Screaming Blue Murder of the year. Instead of our usual host, Dan, in the hot seat was Sally-Anne Hayward, whom we’ve seen many times before but never as an MC – and damn fine she was too. I loved her material about the whining office victim, which may seem cruel at first but then develops into a brilliant analysis of that kind of person. As she probed the audience for their interesting facts and jobs, she struck gold by first approaching Jasmine, with whom we all played a guessing game as to what she did for a living. You’d never guess it in a million years, btw. Her boyfriend, Winner, was also an easy target for some audience-ribbing.

In what was always going to be a sensational line-up, our first act was the fantastic Brendan Dempsey, whom we last saw at Screaming Blue five years ago. He has such a commanding manner with the audience, so full of authority yet subtle and engaging. He has a brilliant sequence where he explains the reason why he and his wife can’t have children; plus some delightfully tasteless but extremely funny material on the benefits of having a disabled child. With his polite and well-mannered delivery, he’s able to sneak in some very challenging and often ludicrous material en route, and the act works brilliantly well.

In a change from the advertised programme, next was a welcome return to Diane Spencer, another comic whom we’ve seen several times and who surprises the audience with a delicious balance of posh Sloaney performer and some hard-hitting X-rated material to great comic effect. She offers some insights into the art of keeping stepchildren, and she goes into blow-jobs in great detail (apologies if you’re eating). I really enjoy her style and her unpredictability, and she went down very well with the audience.

Headlining the evening was the magnificent Russell Hicks, who only has to come on to deliver a few lines, then allow himself to be sidetracked by whatever the audience throws at him – which usually results in comedy gold. This time we had a lady called Jo from Canada who had got steadily more inebriated as the evening wore on; and the audible plea from her friend during Mr Hicks’ set – “no, don’t get your tits out, Jo” – was all he needed. Added to this, there was an extraordinary tale from another (rather posh) lady who recounted the tale of her flashing her bosoms at a passing Virgin express train from a canal boat at Watford Gap. No one can weave such bizarre extras into theiract like Mr Hicks, and he gave us half an hour of full-on belly laughs, so much so that we were still laughing (and hurting with it) the next morning.

In a word, classic. Screaming Blue Murders resume on January 10th with a superb line-up; we’ll be there, and so should you.

Review – Jonathan Pie, The Fake News Tour, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 21st November 2019

Posted on by

There was much excitement in the Chrisparkle household at the prospect of seeing Jonathan Pie live on stage. We’ve loved his irascible, foul-mouthed diatribes against politicians of all ilks on his regular short viral videos. In these days, heaven knows we need some decent satire, and Mr Pie goes a long way to fill that gap. Lord and Lady Prosecco were excited too, as were my friends HRH the Crown Prince of Bedford, and the Squire of Sidcup, both of whom had travelled to witness the comic experience.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Mr Pie had a support act, in the form of JoJo Sutherland, a formidable lady with a firm grip on her audience and a string of strong material to back it up. She doesn’t pussyfoot around sensitive subjects; in fact, in order to check on whether her daughter is having sex or not she checks the extent of her downstairs depilation before she allows her out. She delivers with great attack and confidence, and the majority of her stuff is extremely funny. However, and nothing against Ms Sutherland, I wasn’t sure she was the right choice to support Jonathan Pie. Her material concentrates heavily on sex – and by no means in a prudish way – whereas you associate Mr Pie with political commentary, and I felt there was no crossover where an audience revved up for JP would be ready for Ms Sutherland’s down-and-dirty observations of life. And, given the fact that the Derngate auditorium was pretty packed, with at least a thousand people in there, I felt that the audience’s reaction was a trifle on the reserved side.

After a massively confused interval – where the ushers were suggesting we all go back into the auditorium because we didn’t break at the time they were expecting, and as a result no interval drinks were ready and we were all should we stay or should we go in our half-time dithering – we resumed our seats for Jonathan Pie. It’s called The Fake News Tour because – well, obviously really – there’s a lot of it about. However, I’m not sure fake news played that much of a part in his comedy lecture. And yes, it did feel like a lecture, which is no bad thing provided you’re flexible with everything you want to say.

Here’s the scenario: world-renowned political commentator and presenter linkman Jonathan Pie has been sacked by the BBC. Shock, horror. Mr Pie has gone on the road to explain to his faithful followers how it all went wrong. And this is the vehicle he uses to share all the political vitriol that you would expect. And there’s no doubt, the show is packed with horrifyingly accurate political insights and observations that make us all cringe and despair about the quality of our political leaders. It also asks interesting questions on how a public figure can fall from hero to zero with one misplaced quote, one moment where their guard was let down and they reveal an aspect of their personality that is unpalatable to the general public. The current discourse about the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview is a great real life equivalent.

Despite all these good intentions and a strong performance, I must confess, gentle reader, to feeling a little disappointed. What works incredibly well in a four-minute video, when delivered at a frantic pace for over an hour, becomes what Mrs C calls relentless. After a while you start to feel mentally tired, and you find you’re no longer concentrating on what he says. There’s very little light-and-shade to the performance, and Pie’s own personal anger at the world – even occasionally at his family – rather overwhelms the whole show. You also get the sense that the show is scripted to the nth degree, and that nothing would move him from his prearranged routine. That kind of lecture can feel imprisoning rather than enlightening. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this wasn’t quite it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to enjoy and laugh at in this show; but we all were hoping for just a little more. There are four more shows left in his UK tour – in Peterborough, Bournemouth, Bath and Plymouth; go see for yourself and make your own mind up!