Tag Archives: Pete Ashmore

Review – The Circle, Festival Theatre, Chichester, 1st February 2024

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It was 47 years ago that I saw a production of The Circle at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I remember thinking at the time that it was a rather stately old play, not very relevant to the theatregoing public of the time and very old-fashioned for a 16-year-old know-all like me. Surely, in 2024, 103 years after its first performance, isn’t it a play that should be consigned to the archives?

In brief, absolutely not. This is a smart, intelligent, beautifully written and constructed play, packed full of insights, with three superb roles in which older actors can revel and another three challenging younger roles that give the actors a great opportunity to stick their teeth into. It’s no surprise that productions of this play have always attracted top quality casts. The original 1921 production boasted Victorian comedy legend LottieVenne as Kitty and Fay Compton as Elizabeth; a 1931 revival starred Athene Seyler as Kitty and a young Celia Johnson as Elizabeth, whilst a further revival in 1945 starred Yvonne Arnaud as Kitty and a youngish John Gielgud as Arnold. Even the production I remember from my younger days starred Googie Withers as Kitty, Bill Fraser as Porteous, Susan Hampshire as Elizabeth and Martin Jarvis as Arnold.

Here’s the set up: thirty years ago, the seemingly happy Lady Kitty Champion-Cheney left her husband Clive and five-year-old son Arnold to run off with the up-and-coming politician Lord Hughie Porteous. Since then, Clive and Kitty have never seen each other. However, Arnold’s wife Elizabeth is so curious to meet her mother-in-law that she invites Kitty and Hughie to their house – and Clive has unexpectedly turned up too. Will they let bygones be bygones or will the sparks fly? And might the experience of the older generation have an unforeseen influence on the younger generation? I’m not going to tell you – you’ll have to see the play for yourself; mind you, it’s been around since 1921 – where on earth have you been?

Somerset Maugham fits perfectly in the middle of the sequence of great English/Irish dramatists that started with Wilde and Shaw and went on to produce Coward and Rattigan. And whilst The Circle doesn’t quite sparkle with the same effervescent wit of say, Importance of Being Earnest or Private Lives, it truly holds its own in comparison to all those authors’ more thoughtful and searching comedies. And it’s a story as old as time how a family muddles through marriage separation, changes of partners and that familiar mantra of do as I say, don’t do as I do. Each of the main characters is given equal weight to express how they feel about the situation they face, and there are several excellent speeches and thought-provoking themes that linger on in the mind, long after curtain down.

The play has been elegantly adapted from its original cast of nine to a snappier seven, without disrupting any flow of language, plot or conversation. In fact, it’s an undoubted pleasure to see a play set in 1920 performed exactly as it would have been originally staged, with no attempt of modernisation. And whilst today we might smile a little indulgently at the “scandalous” social situation it presents with the benefit of a hundred years’ hindsight, when it was first produced it would have felt rippingly contemporary. Kitty left Clive thirty years earlier than when the play is set, so that would have been around 1890. Just imagine how shocked Queen Victoria would have been!

Louie Whitemore’s set is the epitome of simplicity, concentrating on the minimum requirement to suggest chez Champion-Cheney; some French Windows, and a few tables and chairs, one of which is almost certainly not a Sheraton. There’s terrific attention to detail with her costume design too, with Lady Kitty bedecked in haute couture, traditional British reserve for Clive and Hughie, and spiffing tennis flannels for Teddie.

Jane Asher is perfectly cast as Lady Kitty – a petite, diminutive presence on stage but with a vivid personality that bursts out from beneath that elegant exterior. You can just imagine the brash determined younger woman who left Clive for Hughie, running roughshod over all society’s accepted norms of the time; and she conveys that spirit of independence balanced with the wisdom of experience beautifully. Nicholas le Prevost captures the once-roguish charm of Porteous that has been shrunk by years of disappointment and bitterness and gives us a splendid portrayal of grumpy self-centredness and domestic resentment.Pete Ashmore encapsulates Arnold’s passionless prissiness with a well observed coolness and barely concealed anger. Olivia Vinall’s Elizabeth is an excellent study of someone trapped in a loveless marriage but with the curiosity to attempt to do something about it, and Daniel Burke’s Teddie comes across as a decent enough chap, with the sense to know that nothing’s perfect, but he’s happy to settle for that.

But it’s Clive Francis who steals every scene as the mischievous Clive Champion-Cheney, hovering with gentle menace over the card table, making extraordinary suggestions feel reasonable, manipulating everyone with the intent of achieving his own aims. His comic delivery is immaculate, his timing impeccable, and the twinkle in his eye irresistible. Together the cast form a superb ensemble and Tom Littler’s production is a winner from start to finish. Will The Circle still be performed in another fifty years’ time? I rather think it might. After it leaves Chichester, the show continues its tour to Oxford, Malvern and Richmond.

P. S. The Circle has literally come full circle for Clive Francis, who played Teddie in the 1977 production!

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Mansfield Park, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 29th October 2013

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Despite having studied English at Oxford University sometime in the last millennium, Jane Austen and I have never really had much to do with each other. I remember being told to read some Austen before crossing through those hallowed portals for my first term, so I chose Northanger Abbey because it was the shortest (no fool me). I can’t say it left much impression though, as my head was filled with drama and I would much sooner have read all the latest offerings by the playwriting movers and shakers of the late 1970s than the elegantly prosaic world of early 19th century Hampshire.

But isn’t it great when you get a crossover? The successful 2012 production of Mansfield Park by the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds is touring again in 2013, and you need no further proof of Jane Austen’s enduring appeal than the sight of a packed Northampton Royal Theatre on a Tuesday night. There were even people in the Upper Circle. Briefly, ten year old Fanny Price is taken from her poor family to live with her richer relatives where she is well provided for but is the victim of condescension and is not allowed equal social standing with the rest of the household. From her lowlyish position she can observe the comings and goings of the youthful members of the family and their romantic attractions to the Crawfords and others. As time goes by, things go more and more Fanny’s way until by the end of the story she legitimately becomes the centre of the household. There’s definitely an element of “Ugly Duckling becomes Swan” in this tale.

This adaptation by Tim Luscombe is nicely structured and keeps the story going at a good pace – I really liked the way that the new characters for the next scene would enter and start talking before the old characters of the previous scene had left the stage, you felt there was no “downtime” at all – although at 2 hours 40 minutes it was perhaps a trifle on the long side. Mr Luscombe gives Lady Bertram a constant headache so she is never seen (an effective running joke) and eliminates a few other characters, including Julia, so that there are only three Bertram children. It’s cleverly constructed so that the actors can double up as both the Bertrams/ Crawfords, and the extended Price family. The simple design by Kit Surrey is effective enough to give an impression of delightful country living (whilst being eminently tourable) but occasionally it was a little confusing as to precisely where we were and precisely who the characters were.

Nevertheless, the production benefits from some very good performances. The heroine Fanny Price is played by Ffion Jolly, who absolutely looks the part and captures Fanny’s meekness and moral uprightness extremely well; her polite distaste for Henry Crawford and growing fondness for Edmund are also very enjoyable to watch. I really liked the performance of Laura Doddington as Mary Crawford; bright, cheery, optimistic and beautifully patronising to Fanny, and aggressively assertive with Edmund over his choice of career. She brought out all the comedy of the role whilst retaining the more serious and manipulative sides of her character too. Mary’s brother Henry is given a subtly smarmy presence by Eddie Eyre, you could pinpoint his voice somewhere between that of Robert Peston and Chris Barrie in The Brittas Empire. He’s nicely devious in his dalliances, although I’m not sure I entirely believed him when he started protesting his genuine new-found love for Miss Price.

Hats off to Geoff Arnold for taking on three roles and making each one very different and completely believable; the self-indulgent waster Tom, the sincere and well-meaning William, and, best of all, the toffee-nosed idiot Mr Rushworth, twitching with disapproval at the follies of youthful exuberance. Leonie Spilsbury is a superbly spoiled Maria with a touch of the Violet Elizabeth about her, and Pete Ashmore very convincing as the wannabe clergyman Edmund, suffering from a permanent bad hair day, who has to temper his affection for Miss Crawford with his deep-seated interest in modest decency. Richard Heap is a splendidly blustery Sir Thomas, laying down the law with stentorian tones, and Julie Teal superb as the viciously patronising Aunt Norris, begrudgingly offering succour to the less fortunate Fanny, figuratively wiping her feet on her as she goes.

It’s a very well put-together production, and makes for a very enjoyable evening. It’s not the best thing since sliced bread, but it absolutely does what it says on the tin.