THE STONES

THE STONES

Civic Theatre, Chelmsford

06.06.13

Jim Hutchon rocked down to the Civic for the Weekly News ...

Tribute band The Stones, hit the Civic last week in a blast of sound that had the rafters vibrating. While not exactly in the scale of the Rolling Stones extravagant gigs in world venues, this group is no tongue-in-cheek pastiche. They take the music seriously and were well appreciated by the audience of a certain age.

The lead, Ben, bears an extraordinary resemblance to Jagger, though not just there for his looks. The boy can sing, and mimic the full outrageously camp pouting and strutting backed up by the group Richard, Jason, Steve (a spitting image of Bill Wyman), Charlie, and the man who put the group together in 2007, JBlack.

All the old favourites were there, reproduced exactly as they were first staged in the 60s and 70s, including ‘No Satisfaction’, ‘I Wanna be Your Man’, ‘This’ll be the Last Time’ and in a fantastic finale, a spirited rendition of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’.

Although there were comparative youngsters in the audience, who jigged self-consciously at the front of the stage, for most of the audience, there were few signs of the hysteria of bygone years, and the audience seemed more prepared to contemplate past excesses in quiet enjoyment.

Happy Jack

Reform Theatre Company, Cramphorn, 16th October 2009

Jim Hutchon was there ...

Reform Theatre’s Happy Jack follows the Company's long tradition of revisiting John Godber’s plays – especially his earlier ones. Director Keith Hukin has taken a very light and deft touch to this 1982 work, Happy Jack, an evocation of the love and respect Godber felt for his grandparents. In Reform’s best style, the set is a bare stage with a pair of kitchen chairs and two actors, Annie Sawle as Liz, the grandmother, and Roger Butcher as Jack, her husband.

Both have superb sense of timing, especially in the scenes of sharp exchange between any well-worn in couple, and Annie Sawle, especially, creates an enigmatic figure as a wife struggling under great odds and increasing ill-health. Roger Butcher,as Jack, is a typical product of unambitious northern manhood, preferring fists to solve arguments, and seemingly oblivious of any need for anyone. His candid admission of crying himself to sleep following the death of Liz is all the more poignant for this.

The play is structured round a series of pages from a non-existent biography and, revolutionary at the time, starts with the death of the grandmother and works backwards. Playing to a packed Cramphorn audience, it is part of the Jack/Liz trilogy which Godber wrote early in his career, and is Reform’s tenth anniversary production since Keith Hukin set up the company in 1998 with a production of Godber’s April in Paris.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Mike Maran productions, Civic,

13th October 2009

Jim Hutchon had a seat in the stalls ...

Mike Maran has dusted down one of his most successful productions – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – for a new audience and a new, extended tour. Not only dusted down, but honed and polished it, complete with new, highly evocative music and scenes of changed emphasis.

Maran is a natural story-teller, and kept the near-capacity audience on the edge of their seats as he took them through this modern Greek tragedy, telling the age-old story of a star-crossed love between a Greek girl and an enemy soldier, in the midst of war, betrayal, massacres and mistaken perceptions. Mike Maran’s sheer style carries the full weight of an epic tale of generations, accompanied by an enchanting mandolin from Alison Stephens and piano from Anne Evans, both of whom transform many of the set pieces into virtual songs.

This is live theatre at its finest, and draws out the heart of the work in a way the multi-million dollar epic film never could. In fact, the legendary author of the book Louis de Bernieres is quoted as saying, “I’d rather see your show than that film any day.”

THE NATIVITY

Tony Harrison's Mystery Play

Chelmsford Cathedral

Jim Hutchon was in the nave...

Alison Woollard’s truly epic production of Tony Harrison’s adaptation of the medieval mystery plays marks two welcome returns. The return of drama to the Cathedral since the demise of the Festival, and the return, after a 450-year interval, of the Chelmsford Cycle of mystery plays. Staged in the round with the audience on three sides surrounding the nave, Brian Greatrex’s setting was grand and imposing, and utterly in character with the fine old building housing it.

Also in character was a large cast of convincing actors who took us through key scenes from the Old Testament up to the time of the Nativity, from a spectacular Creation, with God creating the angels, then day, night and the animals, before casting out Lucifer. Adam and Eve in Paradise - then banished for succumbing to Lucifer’s temptation - give way to the tale of Cain and Abel. A giant evocation of Noah’s Ark takes centre stage, followed by the heart-rending tale of Abraham and Isaac, before Joseph has his suspicions of his wife’s fidelity allayed by the Annunciation, and Jesus is born.

Successive scenes depict the visits of the shepherds and the kings, and the paranoia of Herod, who, having murdered all the male babies around, is himself visited by death.

The language is simple and direct, and the colour and pageant of these ‘plays within the play’ must have had a truly staggering impact on illiterate medieval peasants, whose only knowledge of the Bible was the dread fire and brimstone of the priest.

Musical Director Eric Witham’s compositions, and the band and choir he created for the occasion provided an evocative accompaniment to this, one of the highlights of Chelmsford's drama this year.

Glyn Paflin's Church Times review

link to my mini-site about the production