MACBETH IN PITCH BLACK

MACBETH IN PITCH BLACK

London Contemporary Theatre at Brentwood Theatre

24.05.13

The Scottish play for voices in the darkness ?

A commendably innovative, if not always convincing, take on Macbeth from London Contemporary, no strangers to radio. An hour and a quarter, the gloom pierced only by the emergency exit lights, with raw ambition and bloody murder going on in the darkness around us.

Kevin Williams' production has no shortage of inventive ideas – there are smartphones and iPods in this medieval realm – the feast, and the sleepwalk, both have faintly glowing red balloons, the dagger before him is just a line of light. The porter is heard only on the entry-phone; Birnam's moving grove is signalled over the battlefield radio set.

Occasionally the shadowy forms become clearer; candles, a brazier, a cigarette lighter draw the eye. The clearest face is Banquo's [Craig Morgan] as he returns to haunt his murderer. The prophecies are projected onto Macbeth's naked torso.

The voice which consistently compels our attention is that of the Thane himself, played with an impressive range of vocal expression by Noel Harron. Shakespeare's text, considerably abridged, is embroidered by bells, screams, cackles, thunder and ominous footsteps.

Macbeth in Pitch Black is directed by Kevin Williams, composed by Philip Ryder and designed by Jonathan Ashby-Rock.

THE HISTORY BOYS

THE HISTORY BOYS

at Colchester Mercury

23.05.13

The sixth show of the Made In Colchester season, and it's a superbly realised production of Alan Bennett's unlikely hit of 2004.

That improbable Sheffield Grammar now has an improbable Latin song, though the backdrop photograph suggests an institution founded, like the real King Ted's, in 1905.

Ignatius Anthony is entirely believable as the geographer from Hull, the Head obsessed with league tables and scholarships, who twice savagely dismisses art, literature, history and other such silliness. Mind you, he clearly has staffing problems.

Mrs Lintott [Liza Sadovy] is a traditionalist, thorough but dull, prone to cynical outbursts. The callow supply teacher he drafts in to help coach the Oxbridge hopefuls of the title is keen but woefully inexperienced. And law-unto-himself Hector is a liability, his lessons "not curriculum-directed at all …".

As young Irwin, Freddie Machin catches the social ineptitude behind the academic carapace. He is less convincing, perhaps, later in life, as the spin doctor or the TV historian, based, it is surmised, on Niall Ferguson.

Stephen Ley's Hector is a shambling figure, given to florid histrionics, but clearly a much-loved inspiration to the boys, despite his lack of focus and his predatory fumblings. The subtext, as elsewhere, is elegantly suggested: his Drummer Hodge dialogue with Posner, a hand proffered and almost taken, suggests a deeper "diffidence or shyness" [The Mikado, as Hector might have pointed out in different circumstances]. His numbness when arraigned by Armstrong is deeply moving.

Daniel Buckroyd's staging has no pounding Eighties score, no fancy filmed inserts. Instead we have Scripps vamping till ready, and just the two slides: the school and Rievaulx. Buckroyd himself plays the Director in the film, though as a voice off. There is a simple revolve, smoothly revealing the classroom, its walls distressed with names from desktops, and, as necessary, the Head's study, the staffroom, a corridor with pigeon-holes.

The music is excellently done. Supervised by Richard Reeday, the segues reference the songs and the artistes from the script. Scripps [Max Gallagher], a pale, earnest Anglican, plays the piano, notably for Posner, the odd boy out, denizen of dictionary corner, Hector's greatest fan, the only loser in the game of life, brilliantly played by Philip Labey. His "love and understand me" is laden with longing, his Sing As We Go was greeted on the first night with awed silence.

All the boys inhabit their roles with sincerity and enthusiasm – Oliver Llewellyn-Jenkins' rugger-mad Rudge, Scott Arthur's cocky Dakin, James Dryden – in his professional début – as the life-and-soul Timms.

And the classroom scenes feel natural and improvised. The "tosh", the old movies, the French class, the shared passions. Bennett's school is a strange mixture of the modern and the Secondary Modern – the Headmaster would surely be harder on uniform infringements than Hector – and the wide cultural sweep is symbolised by Timms' Nike bag and Posner's satchel. The original play is very long, but I still miss many of those lost lines [Mrs Lintott particularly pruned], the Seventh Veil and the knock at the door …

But this is an affectionate production, faithful to the spirit of the piece, and unusually respectful of the playwright's words and intentions – the sexual connotations of Poland, the handwriting compared, the subjunctive mood, history rattling over the points ...

THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND

THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND

Brentwood Operatic Society at Brentwood Theatre

22.05.13

Not just a best-of concert. Indeed one of the joys of this Kander & Ebb compendium, first produced in 1991, is discovering their lesser known work, often just as catchy, just as well crafted as the hits from Cabaret and Chicago. My favourite find ? Perhaps the love song to Sara Lee – all about layer cake, with a tap routine the icing on top.

BOS's version, directed by Sam Cousins with MD Jonathan Sands, is an almost sinful pleasure, with inventive choreography on the tiny stage, helped by creative lighting [Guy Lee]. The frenetic caffeine-fuelled Cardboard Cup, the ukulele babies, Ring Them Bells, complete with standard lamp, the hardships of the dancer in Pain, the skaters frozen on The Rink, the jazz-hand white gloves in Cabaret, the polyglot tour bus in the New York, New York finale.

Among the many impressive solos and duets, Juliet Thomas's title number, her tipsy thoughts on Class with Mandi Threadgold-Smith, Sian Hopwood's illicit longing for a touch of Arthur in the Afternoon, housewife and superstar Amy Newland and Nina Jarram's mutual envy – "That's wonderful!" - in The Grass Is Always Greener, and Martin Harris's beautifully judged Mr Cellophane.

Polished and professional, like the close harmonies, the excellently disciplined chorus and the quartet in the pit, much of this would not look amiss on any stage. Brentwood - "How Lucky Can You Get ?"

SHAKERS

SHAKERS

Chelmsford Theatre Workshop at the Old Court

21.05.13

Fun. Some Nights. Pink. Raise Your Glass. A fresh new look for Shakers in Joe Kennedy's production, with dance routines to set the mood and the ambience, all devised by the girls - Catherine Hitchins, Gemma Robinson, Helen Quigley and Caroline Wright.

Like the better known [and, frankly, better] Bouncers, Godber's 1985 piece has its four actors play not only the jaded waitresses in the glitzy cocktail bar, but also their lairy customers – lads on the pull, telly folk, couples dining, shopgirls celebrating a birthday. As well as the bar, the dance floor and the kitchens, we peek into the changing rooms at River Island, and eavesdrop on a fraught auditions. And, in soberer moments, soliloquies sharing the secret thoughts of the Shakers girls.

Look out for the Weekly News review, coming shortly to this page …

OPUS ANGLICANUM

OPUS ANGLICANUM – THE SONG OF ANGELS

at All Saints' Church, Writtle

18.05.13

How then can mortal tongue hope to express

The image of such endless perfectness?

This brand new sequence from Opus Anglicanum looked at those heavenly messengers, warriors, healers and guardians - the angels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and a myriad others. 

The ethereal blend of five male voices, with readings from the King James Bible, Spencer, Eliot, Wesley and more, made a deeply spiritual experience.

The music included the Russian tradition, with its solemn, resonant cadences, as well as Gibbons, Victoria and Byrd. Much of it was based on plainchant, the standard unaccompanied melody of the liturgy, which seemed very much at home within these thirteenth century walls, the sounds these stones absorbed when they were newly laid.

The tale of Dunstan, Anglo-Saxon saint and confessor, visited by angel choirs in the Mendips, was followed by the Respond from his own Night Office.

But there was new music too, commissioned by Opus Anglicanum: Patrick Larley's Antiphon, setting words by George Herbert, and, the talk of the interval, Howard Skempton's amazing And There Was War In Heaven, of 2005, a meditative texture of drone and bells disturbed by conflict.

The final reading, a Celtic prayer - Lead thou me to the land of angels ... to the peace of heaven – was followed by a simple chant, May Angels Lead Thee To Paradise, to end a memorable programme, superbly devised and performed.

O world invisible, we view thee, 
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 
Does the fish soar to find the ocean, 
The eagle plunge to find the air-- 
That we ask of the stars in motion 
If they have rumor of thee there? 
Not where the wheeling systems darken, 
And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- 
The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 
The angels keep their ancient places-- 
Turn but a stone and start a wing! 
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces, 
That miss the many-splendored thing. 
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 
Cry - and upon thy so sore loss 
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, 
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems; 
And lo, Christ walking on the water, 
Not of Genesareth, but Thames! 

In No Strange Land, Francis Thompson

title photograph: Hugh Homan