A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Romford Summer Theatre at the Rockery, Raphael's Park
29.06.2017


This year is Romford Summer Theatre's 55^th season; it's no criticism to say that this production could have graced the Rockery at any point in that impressive history.
Chrissie O'Connor gives us a traditional take on the dream – Greco-Roman frocks, Mendelssohn's music – with a strong cast and a clear, positively-paced narrative. Not to mention an infectious sense of fun. No gimmicks, but the show does boast a child – Lucas Outram playing the all-important Indian Boy – and two canine characters: an elegant hound for the hunt, and a dog for Starveling's Moonshine.
It's the Shakespearean comedy best suited to this unique theatre space, perhaps, and excellent use is made of the “brakes” in the shrubbery, dotted with little lanterns as night falls, and the trees magically lit as the fairies lurk within the wood to watch the mischief play out.
Much of it concerning the hapless quartet of lovers; good work here from the young actors – the four-way tiff, the foggy fight with Puck, the lively dialogue between the girls – Eleanor Burgess and Amy Hollingsworth – Andrew Spong's eager Lysander and Jake Portsmouth's hilarious awakening.
The Court – the Duke and his Hippolyta well spoken by Colin Richardson and Emily Catlin – is graced by two experienced character players: Vernon Keeble-Watson's grumpy Egeus and Elliott Porte's pompous Philostrate, vainly trying to spare the wedding guests the ordeal of watching a bunch of amateur actors …
Those rude mechanicals – organised, if that's the word, by Paul Hollingsworth's Quince – stars Paul Sparrowham's Bottom. His ass-head is furry; his triumph in the role of Pyramus marred by paralysing stage-fright, alleviated by a handy flagon. His increasingly inebriated performance is pure genius, slurring his lines and relieving himself against Pete Farenden's Wall. Lots of clever detail here – the beards in the props basket, Mark Griffith's Snug conning the Lion's part, though it be nothing but roaring ...
The immortals are led by excellent fairy monarchs – Lindsay Hollingsworth's stunning Titania in her star-spangled gown, and Matt Jones's regal Oberon, with a touch of Herne the Hunter, his verse-speaking exemplary in I Know A Bank, for example. Four Fairies – we see them first in the overture – their dresses, colour-coded, reminiscent of fantastical festival-goers – included Chrissie LeFranc's Moth, with some magical flute-playing, and Kathryn Waters' white-wigged Cobweb; she's also the first fairy, doing a little light gardening before being ambushed by Richard Spong's Puck. He's a very mischievous hobgoblin, got up like a faun, searching the audience for Athenians, perching for a moment in Titania's woodland bower, freezing the mechanicals in mid-rehearsal.
This is not Athens, but Havering's Edwardian Raphael Park. Lucky to have no wind, or rain, a comfortable temperature and only the occasional waterfowl and birdsong to punctuate Shakespeare's sylvan comedy. A very pleasant evening; as Theseus says, “ never anything can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it ...”

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Romford Summer Theatre in Raphael Park

21.06.13

for Remote Goat

Lively, unsubtle and short, Shakespeare's early farce is a good choice for the open air.

Kevin O'Connor's stylish production is set in the Roaring Twenties, with appropriate snatches of song to bridge the scenes. [Was that Jay Whidden's Louisiana as I took my seat in the Rockery ?]

A casting luxury Shakespeare must have dreamt of – the Spong brothers as the two Dromios. Their cleft-apple looks add hugely to the mirror moment at the end, the hand-clasp exit, and the ingenious scene with the two slaves either side of the "guilty doors".

Andrew and Richard had much of the physical comedy, too, well-timed and never over-played, and Dromio of Syracuse [Richard, I think] gets some of the best laughs from his riff about his kitchen-drudge "wife".

Their two twin masters, Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their boaters and Oxford bags, are Mark Griffiths and Paul Sparrowham, hilarious in his confusion, especially in the "old rope" sequence.

In fox fur, pearls and gorgeous flapper dress Natalie Sant makes an elegant, eloquent Adriana, with Lindsay Hollingsworth a nice contrast as her bookish sister.

Plenty of enjoyment to be had from the smaller roles, too: Jim Rimel telling "sad stories of his own mishap", Vernon Keeble-Watson the very model of a major-general as the Duke, Chrissie O'Connor as the devil's dam, John Lester as the wronged goldsmith, Bob Etherton as a corny stage conjurer. And Louise O'Connor is the Abbess, who engineers a happy ending as none other than Aegeon's long-lost wife, mother of the twin Antipholi.

The sylvan setting works well here; our imaginary forces can easily convince us that the Centaur, the Phoenix and the Porpentine lie just over the lake, beyond the trees …

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE

Romford Summer Theatre at Raphael Park

22.06.12

for Remote Goat

For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a "winter's tale" was a story of spooks and goblins, best told around a roaring fire.

As the Romford wind whipped up from the lake, rustling the shrubbery and snatching the words from the actors' mouths, I dreamed wistfully of that Tudor hearth.

This Winter's Tale was the 51^st production for the RST; it was an introduction to Shakespeare, and to acting al fresco, for some of the large cast. Must have been chilly for them, too, and picking up cues was clearly a problem. There seemed to be a feast toward in the musicians' tent, but their lovely music was too often stolen by "each wind that blows".

But the show, directed by Wendi Sheard, is an assured, dynamic telling of this often dark comedy, helped by the atmospheric sylvan setting – comparable with Regent's Park, I thought – "where God paints the scenery", as the old song goes. [One bonus is that we can see background action, almost off-stage.] And immeasurably enhanced by bold, nuanced performances in the key roles.

Victoria Abery is a radiantly smiling Hermione at the start, excellent in the courtroom, convincing even as the statue, in a gorgeous gown. Her advocate, Paulina, is beautifully characterized by Lorraine Ely; her jealous king, Leontes [Simon Drake], who "too much believes his own suspicions", is resplendent in brown and gold, confident, and always clearly audible in his soliloquies. And moving, when, a broken man, he collapses like a child on the rockery steps. His "brother" Bohemia is a blunt Rob Morley.

The young lovers, in the sunnier second half, are Jake Portsmouth, speaking the verse very persuasively, with Melany Dantes-Mortimer as his pretty Perdita.

Amongst the score or so other characters, mention must be made of Roy Hobson as the cupbearer Camillo, Morgan Simmonds as the "gallant child", Nick Lupton as a cheeky wide-boy Autolycus, and Jim Rimell's entertaining double as a fantastical Father Time, with his hourglass, and a voluble Steward, surely some kin of Malvolio. The lighter people – a pair of fleece-clad clownish shepherds – are cleverly contrasted: David Lintin's rustic father and Solomon Akano's streetwise son.

By the time Leontes found the painted statue "warm", we were so frozen as to be almost past caring, but we sat stoically till the curtain call, the whole cast, almost outnumbering the audience, stretched across the Raphael Park rockery, with a witty final nod to the famous Bear, fatal pursuer of John Lester's Antigonus.