BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Chichester Youth Theatre at Chichester Festival Theatre

16.12.2017

No compromises in this year’s Youth Theatre offering. The deeper themes and complex emotions are fearlessly explored. And all the professional support – music, design, choreography and more – that makes Chichester musicals so special is devoted to the service of these talented young performers.

This is a poignant re-imagining of the fairy tale – scripted by Anna Ledwich, with songs by Richard Taylor. As the lyrics say in the final scene, “not at all at all what we expected”.

The core story is framed, and shaped, by evacuees, leaving London for the Sussex countryside, and billeted in a creepy old country house. Sinister rumblings, an off-limits South Wing, a strict housekeeper all make the displaced youngsters nervous – they devise a scenario, which they share with newcomers, and with us, the audience. And a game of hide and seek leads us in to some dark places and the fairytale proper.

The two title characters are superbly imagined, and confidently portrayed. Beauty [Mia Cunningham-Stockdale] is named less for her looks than for her virtue; she’s a feisty horticulturalist, the Cordelia who rejects a ball-gown for a gold lamé trouser suit. And eventually saves the Beast with a wonderful love duet.

He’s played by Hal Darling, inside an amazing exoskeleton puppet, magnifying his every move as his voice is manipulated. He’s genuinely scary but believably human, powerful but vulnerable.

There are many other memorable characters – Mr Villeneuve [George Bailey], tea merchant and Beauty’s father, his ugly-sister daughters and his dim twittish sons, Winston the pack-horse puppet, Dot D’Otter the messenger, Kiki the outrageously camp stylist [Crispin Glancy], Reg the Racoon. Not forgetting the refugee children themselves, who carry much of the narrative.

The show is packed with magic and marvellous stagecraft – big production numbers like the feast and the London sequence, and a wonderful library with avian volumes flapping overhead. Exemplary ensemble work, with every performer given a distinct character.

Beauty and the Beast is directed by Dale Rooks, with designer Simon Higlett, costume designer Ryan Dawson Laight, movement director Lizzi Gee and puppetry specialist Nick Barnes. How fortunate these youngsters are to gain experience in this professional environment, and how lucky Chichester is to have such a fantastic Christmas show … pantos, after all, are two-a-penny …

many of the roles are double-cast – the names here are those appearing on Press Night

production photograph: Pete Jones

ADMISSION ONE SHILLING

ADMISSION ONE SHILLING

Patricia Routledge and Piers Lane 

at the Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre

26.11.2017

As another memorable Chichester season ends, we are reminded of the opening show – 40 Years On. Like that show, which includes a specific reference to “lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery”, this exquisite entertainment includes Chamberlain’s broadcast, and a cheiromant giving a surprising reading on the eve of war.

It’s the simplest of formats, devised back in 2009 by Nigel Hess, great-nephew of Dame Myra Hess, the concert pianist whose wartime concerts, now the stuff of legend, did so much for the morale of Londoners in the darkest days of the Blitz.

Faced with the “cultural blackout” after the declaration of war in 1939 – theatre organist Sandy McPherson the only live musical offering on the BBC - she used her contacts and her steely determination to ensure that there would be music every day in the octagonal room. The concerts lasted throughout the war; many musicians performed, all for a flat rate token fee. Hess was helped by Kenneth Clark, the National Gallery’s Director, and by countless volunteers, such as her friend Joyce Grenfell, glimpsed spreading cottage cheese “like one possessed”.

In Patricia Routledge’s compelling performance, Hess emerges as a strong woman, but modest, with a gentle sense of humour. She’s joined on the stage by Piers Lane. Seated, like Dame Myra, at a Steinway, he intersperses the recollections with some of the music those wartime audiences might have heard - Beethoven, Brahms, with a surprise crescendo to cover the whine of a doodlebug, Chopin, her trademark Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.

And on a screen behind the performers, a glimpse of those original audiences – a weary civil servant, eyes closed, his attaché case in the aisle beside him, and a young woman, seated on the floor, hair pinned up, cheap print frock. Was she, we wonder, one of the thousands who wandered into the Gallery by chance, to have a love of chamber music kindled that would last a lifetime ? “Never,” wrote Clark, “had people seemed so transformed by music.”

QUIZ

QUIZ

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

23.11.2017

“What is truth and what is lies, what is fact and what is fable ?” ponders the Headmaster in Daniel Evans’ first play of the season, Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On.

The same philosophical puzzles are posed in his last, a new piece by James [This House] Graham.

He gets the meta-theatricals in early, as one cast member hesitates before taking the oath in court. The whole truth ? Nothing but the truth ? Is truth really in the eye of the beholder ? There is much musing on the media, the image not the message, Psy-Ops, confirmation bias, the nature of memory and the very British tendency to build someone up only to knock them down. The issues raised run much deeper than popular television.

It’s a remarkable entertainment – funny, thought-provoking, nostalgic, and, famously, interactive. We get a keypad to vote with, as well as a clipboard for the pub quiz questions posed by warm-up man Paul Bazeley.

In the more light-hearted first half, we get, as well as our pub quiz – TV themes, zodiac signs, brother to York and Wessex – a voting key pad, a potted history of the TV game show from Take Your Pick through Bullseye to Mastermind, and an introduction to the incestuous “community” of WWTBAM, including Diana Ingram, her husband Major Charles and her nerdy brother Adrian.

The narrative, and the courtroom snippets, here are skewed to the Production Company’s prosecution case, and the audience vote at the commercial break is 90/10 against the Ingrams. But after the interval, we see the “facts” from the defendants’ perspective. We’re being manipulated again, of course, but less blatantly – the shooting of family pet Buffy the cat – and there’s a wonderful speech by the Portia for the defence [Sarah Woodward]. This time, the vote clears the trio by 57 to 43 – conspiracy theorists might note that, in 20 shows, this is the fifth time these exact percentages were recorded.

It’s given a glossy production almost in the round. “Just like the telly,” with shiny black studio floor and a neon cube centre stage. The intimate family moments work well, and less naturalistically, the choreographed coughing as the couple are hounded on the tube, the talk-back whispers, the invention of the Machine, rising like Frankenstein’s monster to the sound of Handel. As the Major is coached in the closed book of popular culture, there’s a brief glimpse of Coronation Street, and several excruciating visits to a Karaoke in Daventry.

Uniformly excellent performances – Bazely is the prosecution’s QC as well as the pub quiz man, Henry Pettigrew the pathetic brother, Jay Villiers the Judge as well as ITV boss Liddiment, a witness, and an unsympathetic police officer.

Mark Meadows plays Tecwen Whittock who allegedly did most of the coughing, as well as the Major’s commanding officer - a lovely moment where they share a love of G&S “I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical” ...

Stephanie Street gives us a likeable, though quiz-fixated and determined, Diana – Gavin Spokes squirms and sweats in the hot seat, a man out of his depth and his league. And Keir Charles plays not only Tarrant, all his mannerisms magnified on the huge monitors, but, his quick changes done at the edge of the stage, all the other smiling, smarmy quiz inquisitors [no, not Michael Miles, [who now remembers him?] but Des O’Connor, who took over Take Your Pick in the 90s], even briefly Brucie on VT.

As the show’s sales pitch has it:

Is Quiz:

A) The world premiere of a new play by acclaimed writer James Graham?

B) A provocative re-examination of the conviction of Charles Ingram, ‘the coughing Major’, for cheating, following his appearance on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

C) A hilarious celebration of the great tradition of the British quiz show?

D) A razor-sharp analysis of the 21st century’s dangerous new attitude to truth and lies?

All four, of course, is the correct answer, though I might have voted for B – based on the book Bad Show: The Quiz, the Cough, the Millionaire Major – the play shines an unflattering light on the media, the police, the production company and makes a cogent case, if not for exoneration, then at least for a re-examination of this curious affair.

production photograph: Johan Persson

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS

Chichester Festival Theatre

30.09.2017

A rare chance to see the three parts of this classic trilogy in one day – fortunately, in this Chichester production, the plays are relatively brief, leaving plenty of time for refreshment and reflection.

Three plays, twelve scenes, one disastrous weekend. Simon Higlet’s design captures the old Vicarage and its garden – the table, the rug, a small water feature. A good sense of period, too – the play is set in the early 70s, when it was written: Woman’s Weekly, Mario Lanza on the HMV portable.

The six characters thrown together for two eventful days, are very recogniazable; they will recur in various permutations and elaborations throughout the playwrights career. Jemima Rooper is Annie, who spends her life tending to her valetudinarian mother – whom we never see – and wondering if the nice but dim vet Tom [John Hollingworth] will ever make a move.

She’s easy prey for her brother-in-law Norman, whose mission in life is to make people happy. A virtuosic, charismatic performance by a bearded Trystan Gravelle, though I struggled to see him as the weedy librarian.

His long-suffering spouse, the short-sighted Ruth is given a nicely rounded characterization by Hattie Ladbury. Brother Reg [a brilliant Jonathan Broadbent], who invents complicated board games that no-one plays, arrives with his wife Sarah to mother-sit while Annie [and Norman] has a dirty weekend in East Grinstead. Sarah is played to perfection by Sarah Hadland - fussing over Annie, a fixed, brisk smile, obsessively polishing the table.

Blanche McIntyre’s production is excellent in the set-pieces – the supper, the romps in the garden, but not at the expense of depth of characterization and social interaction. All the more eloquent for being given, in a first for Chichester, in the round, with extra seats behind the circular stage.

production photograph: Manuel Harlen

KING LEAR

KING LEAR

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

28.09.2017

A visceral, intimate Lear: a unique staging with McKellen's tragic king at its centre, and the audience on the edge of the torrential storm.

As director Jonathan Munby has it, this is conversation, not declaration, in the shared air of a room.

It's set in Britain, in a recognisable land, at a time which still feels like the familiar recent past. It opens with pomp and circumstance, a Latin anthem, and speeches from a dais with microphones. A formal Lear divides his kingdom by taking a pair of scissors to a map. The daughters make their pitch, and in the first sign of his true affections, the king sketches a couple of dance steps with her as he helps Cordelia to the lectern.

But there are signs of the dementia to come, a moment of temper brandishing a chair.

There are many such dramatic outbursts: Lear's knights – got up as hooray henrys or Young Farmers – and the volleys of bread at the feast, the suspended cage for the stocks, the stark abattoir for the blinding, and the Fool confronting Edmund to end Part One. And much later, Goneril, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, walking along the wall of Dover chalk at the back of the stage.

McKellen is magnificent. Not only as the ailing, failing King, feeble in mind and body, but also in the stronger man, fighting his own battles almost to the end, doggedly carrying the body of Cordelia slung across his back. To see him rage against the storm, or realise the perfidy of his flinty-hearted daughters, at such close quarters is an unforgettable theatrical experience.

He heads an impressive cast. His fool is Phil Daniels, a comedian with comedy glasses and a banjolele; imagined here as a kind of aide-de-camp, he is perhaps most at ease in the earlier scenes.

The scene with Gloucester, movingly done by Danny Webb, has echoes of Godot as the two old men sit and talk – later there’s even a leafless tree …

Webb is especially strong in his scenes with Jonathan Bailey as Edgar [aka Poor Tom], the other wronged child in this tragedy – his madness never overplayed, his empathy with Cordelia helping to meld together these two parallel plotlines.

This production has much in common with Nancy Meckler’s version running concurrently at Shakespeare’s Globe – the contemporary parallels, and especially an outstanding Countess of Kent – at Chichester it is Sinead Cusack, excellent both as courtier and as Caius, disguised in exile.

Kirsty Bushell’s Regan is brutally sensual, gleefully relishing the blinding of Gloucester (in the abattoir, with a meat hook); Dervla Kirwan’s changing moods as Goneril make her the more interesting of the sinister sisters, while Tamara Lawrance’s youthful Cordelia has a strong, sympathetic presence. Damien Molloy is a striking Edmund, while among the lesser characters I especially enjoyed Michael Matus as a pompous footman, casually combing his brilliantined hair.

A privilege to see this great Shakespearean at the height of his powers – and, at 78, still carrying his Cordelia, and getting drenched to the skin every night. A privilege to share his air, and the relentless torrential rain of the storm …

THE STEPMOTHER

THE STEPMOTHER

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

09.09.2017

As seems to be the fashion on both sides of the road here, the stage is stygian as we walk in. This time, Tim Hatley's set – walled-off from the audience to dado height - is concealed in a black gauze box, which serves as an Act Curtain for this traditional well-made play.

The space inside becomes, with neatly choreographed changes of furniture and props, the house in Surrey, an office and a gentleman's flat in Albany.

It's the world of Galsworthy, Shaw or Somerset Maugham.

And also the world of Githa Sowerby; the difficult “second play” which followed her successful Rutherford and Sons.

It has scarcely been seen since its première in 1924. Too old-fashioned, melodramatic even, for the big boys, too difficult for the amateur stage. Also to blame, perhaps, is the very misogyny that this powerful drama exposes.

Miss Relph, Lois, is left a fortune by the woman whose companion she's been. Nineteen and naïve, still grieving, she's easy prey for the woman's brother, who believes the inheritance should have been his. “Fanny never liked me,” he whinges. He prevents the solicitor from seeing her, and welcomes the girl into the house, at first as governess to his two little girls.

Ten years pass.

Lois is now a successful businesswoman, using her skills as a seamstress to run the Ginevra couture house. But the repellent Eustace has lost all her money in risky investments, and it becomes clear that there is nothing left, save the income from the dress shop.

All the men involved, it seems, have conspired to keep the truth from her. “I hate talking business with a woman,” complains the family solicitor [Simon Chandler]; he will try his utmost to prevent his son [Samuel Valentine, resplendent in full dress uniform] from wedding Eustace's elder daughter [an excellent Eve Ponsonby].

As the monstrously manipulative Eustace, Will Keen gives a memorably reptilian performance, trembling with barely repressed violent rages, but managing to “smile and smile and be a villain”. His opposite in almost every way is kind dependable Peter, neighbour and financier, played with a fine sense of period by David Bark-Jones.

Ophelia Lovibond is Lois, movingly progressing from naïve, tearful teenager to capable business-woman to bruised, broken victim.

There's strong support from an outstanding company, including Joanna David as the aged Aunt Charlotte, Sharon Wattis as a moody maid, and Macy Nyman contributing a touching study of the dumpy younger daughter who goes to pieces as she learns of her stepmother's plight, her father's wickedness and Lois's infidelity.

Richard Eyre's immaculate production is probably more physical than the original of almost a century ago; it is shockingly brutal in its portrayal of the masculine mores of its time, by no means irrelevant in our own era.

Act One ends with a tender moment of love-making by the embers of the drawing room hearth. Act Two with tea for three, and countless questions unanswered: will the awful Eustace use Lois's £200 to start anew in the Antipodes – like Abel Magwitch ? Will Monica marry her Cyril, and will Lois find happiness with Peter, her rock, whose last awkward telephone call sends his love only as an afterthought …

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

Chichester Festival Theatre

15.07.2017

This is a show that celebrates tradition – it's the opening number, and the setting is a Jewish community in which culture and religion are the cornerstones of the life of poverty lived out in rural Russia.

So Daniel Evans is wise to embrace the traditional in his staging. The costumes, the dances emphasise the Jewish roots of these villagers, whose lives are overturned not only by revolutionary progress, but by the pogroms which will send them on their travels – the fortunate to the US, the less so to Warsaw. There's even a small Klezmer band for the inevitable Jewish wedding.

Lez Brotherston's striking design uses an empty stage, peopled from the back by the displaced and the dispossessed, with their suitcases, symbols of their search for a home, which become the bar, or the stove, the tables and the chairs.

The ensemble pieces are superbly done – three families at sabbath prayers, the rumour-mill scene, the wedding and its violent end, and most impressive of all, the nightmare sequence with the noisy ghost of Fruma-Sarah [Laura Tebbutt] swooping over the bed as the fires of hell surround the stage. The detail is often delightful, too; in Miracle of Miracles, for instance, the Red Sea is parted, manna falls from heaven. The final tableau has Anatevka's refugees standing behind a curtain of rain, on which are projected newsreel images of persecutions yet to come. A profoundly moving, though not over-stated, reminder that intolerance and insecurity remain real threats to many communities.

The loquacious milkman Tevye and his wife Golde are the big names here. Omid Djalili makes a very likeable Tevye, confidently appealing to his Maker and to the audience. Tracy-Ann Oberman brings a no-nonsence Jewish matriarch convincingly, and affectingly, to life – the gestures, the body language all perfectly observed. They're neither of them great singers, and numbers like Sunrise, Sunset suffer a little for it.

The younger generation, on the other hand, are superb musical theatre vocalists – Matchmaker, Matchmaker excellently done – though, perhaps deliberately, the three girls are much less ethnically defined. Emma Kingston's Hodel is very strong, as is Rose Shalloo's bookworm Chava, who defies tradition and family ties by eloping with a Russian soldier.

Louis Maskell stands out as the radical teacher Perchik, bringing a breath of revolution to the shtetel.

This is perhaps the classic, definitive Fiddler, harnessing state of the art staging to recreate a lost world suspended somewhere between history and nostalgia.

THE HOUSE THEY GREW UP IN

THE HOUSE THEY GREW UP IN

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

15.07.2017

“What has happened to us?”, the siblings ruefully wonder.

They're stuck in confused, reclusive routine, existing among the clutter of a lifetime in their childhood home, their parents dead. The sister seems to dominate, mothering her brother, feeding him on the fish prepared for Charlie Brown their elusive cat. He takes refuge in his headphones.

Deborah Bruce's new play – inspired by a couple she observed in an art gallery café – manages to be amusing and uplifting as well as deeply sad.

Daniel and Peppy's lives are turned around by a predictable incident, which makes a crime scene of their squalid home, searched by sinister officers in blue overalls. But just as things seem at their most desperate, there comes salvation and a new start of sorts.

Jeremy Herrin's production is perfectly judged. The design [Max Jones] is magnificent, with a stunning scene change just before the interval.

The dramatic structure is powerfully precise. Symbols are tellingly deployed. We see the kitchen tap run free once more, the child's smashed Harry Potter mug [magic destroyed] is restored, the walnut spice cake is baked at last, as Daniel realises that it's nice outside, and that there are other buses he could take. Peppy bangs on Charlie Brown's dish one last time, his name heading a roll-call of the dead.

The two main characters are compelling brought to life by Daniel Ryan as the big, childlike, uncoordinated brother and Samantha Spiro as his fussy, birdlike sister. The other characters drift in and out – and we occasionally move next door to a kitchen that couldn't be more different. There is some doubling – Philip Wright is both the awful, cheery Gareth, who tries to buy the Angelis family home for a fraction of its worth, and the helpful husband of the lovely support worker Karen [Michelle Greenidge]. And perhaps there could have been more – I can envisage a production in which two actors play all the other roles. Except of course for “the next-door child”.

This pivotal character, the eight-year-old Ben, superbly played by Rudi Millard, is in some ways a miniature of Daniel, innocently impressed by his feats of memory, seeking the attention and affection lacking at home.

His mother - “no smoke without fire” - who turns out to have tragedies of her own – is Mary Stockley; the detective who tries to coax incriminating confidences from Ben and Daniel is Matt Sutton.

Like their real-life inspiration, these two strange characters, and their intriguing past lives, tend to linger in the memory. Like the playwright, we realise how little we know of other people we meet, and hope against hope that, against all odds, redemption and a happy ending may still be possible.

Peppy's mother's Walnut Spice Cake 

[with thanks and apologies to Carol, who made it]

This is a lovely cake that smells like winter - warm walnuts and spices like allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Buttermilk ensures that the cake is wonderfully moist. If you don't have buttermilk, use 1 tablespoon (15ml) of lemon juice or vinegar and 210ml of skimmed milk in place of the 225ml of buttermilk.

Serves: 14

60g finely chopped walnuts

285g cake flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

150g butter

300g dark brown soft sugar

2 eggs

225g buttermilk

Prep:15min › Cook:50min › Extra time:10min cooling › Ready in:1hr15min

Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas 4. Grease a 23cm tube cake tin and dust with flour.

Sift together cake flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt. Cream the butter. Blend in dark brown soft sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs.

Stir dry ingredients into creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Blend in the finely chopped walnuts.

Spoon cake mixture gently into the prepared tin. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until cake springs back when you touch it lightly. Cool in tin for about 10 minutes. Put on cake rack to cool completely. Sprinkle icing sugar over cake before serving, if desired.

THE COUNTRY GIRLS

THE COUNTRY GIRLS

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

07.07.2017

Edna O'Brien's novel, notoriously banned in 1960s Ireland, is now re-shaped by its author into this beautiful drama, getting its UK premiere this year on the Minerva stage.

It's touching tale of innocence lost, in the repressed societyof Ireland in the 50s.

Lisa Blair's production brings those times, those places to life on a sloping, cobbled stage.

The two girls grow up in a rural community, largely untouched by progress, and are educated by nuns, ditto. Grace Molony as Kate and Genevieve Hulme-Beaman as her bosom friend Baba are both excellent, capturing the two country girls at many points along their journey from the sticks to the big city, from cross-strap sandals to scarlet shoes, from naïve, flighty school girls to older, wiser young women.

Colm Gormley is Kate's drunken and abusive father, Malachi, is frighteningly believeable, club in hand, frustrated that he cannot tame his daughter as he breaks his horses.

Jade Yourell gives a moving performance as te young postulant, Sister Mary – some touchingly tender moments, hinting at more than they express, with her star pupil Kate.

She has another enigmatic relationship, much darker and much more dangerous, with Valéry Schatz's Mr Gentleman, the suave but slightly sleazy older man.

The cast play multiple roles – the German landlady and her hen-pecked husband stand out – and Keshini Misha makes an exotic Spanish lady – rebranded Singing Woman in the cast list.

The setting is simple but highly evocative: the quayside suggested by two ropes, the hotel room by a lampshade. And since this is Chichester, there's real Irish rain, too.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester
11.05.2017


A warmly enthusiastic reception on Press Night for this stunning revival. Tony Kushner's musical, initially commissioned by San Francisco Opera, is an opera in all but name, almost entirely sung through, with just a little underscored dialogue and sprechgesang.
Following its New York première, it had a successful production at the National Theatre in 2006. A decade later, it's certainly due another outing. That NT never transferred; this one could well follow a long line of Chichester musicals into the West End.
On the same day we stood and cheered in the Minerva, confederate statues were being removed, not without protest, in Louisiana. Just such a statue, in that very state, greeted us as we walked in, only to disappear before the action begins. Exactly why, and how, gradually becomes clear as the plot unfolds.
The story succeeds on both the personal and the political level. Caroline is the African-American maid, toiling in the humid heat of a Louisiana basement - “sixteen feet down”. She's employed by a dysfunctional Jewish family, a reserved clarinet-playing father, and his second wife, neither a bassoonist nor a smoker, unlike his dead first wife, mother to the lonely little boy Noah [based loosely on Kushner's own childhood].
This is a very polished revival, with a long stair-case to emphasise the divide between the family and their slave. The costumes are striking, too, for the Radio – three Supremish singers – the Washing Machine, all over bubbles, and the red hot Dryer, who doubles as the Bus - “the orphan ship of state”.
All the performances are superb, led by Sharon D Clarke's powerful Caroline, her nobility and heroic resignation cracking only very rarely, as when she “speaks her hate to a child”. Her great arias are breathtakingly done – Lot's Wife a show-stopping performance. Her daughter, one of the agents of change in this subtly developed story, is a fierce rebel teen, compellingly played by Abiona Omonua. And the young Noah is unbelievably well done by Charlie Gallacher – one of two children to share the role. Because, like all the company, he has a deeply explored character, some complicated choreography and a tricky score to master.
The show, deftly directed by Michel Longhurst, manages to explore epic themes – change is slow to come to this forgotten corner of Lousiana – and the intricate dynamics of the two families. Nigel Lilley, and a splendid pit band above the stage, make the most of Jeanine Tesori's evocative, varied and very melodious score.
Memorable moments galore, including the Act One finale, a wonderful dance fantasy from the four children and the Moon flying overhead. Dollar bills rain down on the stage – change is in the air, we feel, the money Noah “accidentally” leaves in his pants' pocket a symbol of the old patronising relationship between the Gellmans and the Thibodeaux.
production photograph: Marc Brenner

FORTY YEARS ON

FORTY YEARS ON

Chichester Festival Theatre

21.04.2017





For his first show as Artistic Director at Chichester, Daniel Evans has chosen to revive Alan Bennett's Forty Years On, his first West End success back in 1968.
It is an impressive revival, done with loving respect for the original, but opening the piece out for the Chichester stage. The set, by Lez Brotherston no less, is dominated by a huge organ – too mighty for this modest school, perhaps – flanked by war memorial boards which double as screens for the brilliantly devised video support.
The most wonderful aspect of a largely successful revival is the chorus of schoolboys – in they troop, belting out the Old Hundredth [“Him serve with fear”, please!] to take their places for the School Play – Speak for England, Arthur. And play an essential role in the proceedings which follow: singing rugby songs, being a standard lamp, playing the Lost Generation when young. They drift back after the interval, chatting and handing round the ginger nuts. They act out the deaths of famous men and women; they become framed portraits of British Monarchs - an orange here, an arrow there.
If these young players were the most effective performers of the production, then, sadly the oldest, Richard Wilson as the retiring Headmaster of the Old School, was the least effective. He had the character to a T, but not the text. He read everything he possibly could, though even there we had stumblings and hesitations. “Slipshod,” as he might say. My favourite fluff the surreal substitution of “goldsmith” for “blacksmith”. Countless others: copula for cupola, continual for compulsory [games], accessible for acceptable. And elsewhere there were prompts and pauses which did serious harm to the flow of some scenes. Wisely perhaps, his lantern lecture on T E Lawrence was entrusted instead to his successor at the helm, Franklin, played with an easy style by Alan Cox. Jenny Galloway is Matron [playing Moggie in the wartime story, and a terrific inebriated Nanny Gibbins], Lucy Briers Miss Nisbitt. The youngest member of staff, Mr Tempest, is brilliantly done by Danny Lee Winter, playing many parts, including Max Beerbohm and the Wildean Lady Dundown, with more than a hint of Dame Maggie Smith.
Equally impressive are the young actors who play the senior boys – especially Joe Idris-Roberts as the Lectern Reader; full marks to Voice and Dialogue Coach Charmian Hoare for making them sound so authentically in period.
The original musical ideas are expanded and developed [MD Tom Brady]; some of the choruses recall the numbers that punctuate The History Boys. There are handbells for the New Year, and a cheeky tap dance - a Chichester speciality - for Little Sir Echo. "The Breed", done as a motion picture with an underscore.
The bloodied, bruised, anarchic rugger boys actually look as if they've just left the field; the ending of Act One is superbly realised, with photographs of the doomed youth of the Great War appearing on the stage right war memorial as their names are highlighted opposite, and the troops pour from the trapdoor to people the stage with the glorious dead.

LOVE'S LABOURS WON

LOVE'S LABOURS WON
RSC/Chichester Festival Theatre

06.10.2016

This joyous double bill is revived here before touring to Manchester and coming into the West End.

Christopher Luscombe sets the two plays in a country house – Charlcote, a stone's throw from Stratford-on-Avon, just before and just after the Great War.

Love's Labour's Lost I reviewed in Stratford, but this time had the enormous pleasure of seeing them both on the same day.

Love's Labours Won may or may not have been an alternative title for Much Ado About Nothing. But the pairing works beautifully, especially since Edward Bennett and Lisa Dillon takes the leading couple in each play.

Like the LLL, LLW is quite heavily cut, which allows for Nigel Hess's gorgeous music [Harry Waller singing Sigh No More] and pacy progress through the complex plots.

Perhaps taking a hint from Biron's “twelve-month in a hospital”, the Big House is, at the start, commandeered for the wounded. And the war is never quite forgotten: Don John [Sam Alexander] is clearly a broken man, and poor old Dogberry [Nick Haverson, a wonderful Costard in the afternoon] is probably shell-shocked. He is left alone and weeping for a moment - “a fellow that hath had losses...”. But still manages to get more laughs than most from the clowning, especially a hilarious physical routine in the cramped prison.

Bennett has his share of pantomime too – not a dirty word, Luscombe made clear in his pre-show interview – eavesdropping on his deceivers from within the tall Christmas tree in Charlecote's imposing parlour.

THIS HOUSE

THIS HOUSE
Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

05.10.2016

The set starts as we leave the Minerva foyer. Wood panelling, and inside “the chamber” realistic – and surprisingly comfortable green benches, ranged either side of the acting area. Not to mention the Strangers' Bar, to the left of the Speaker's Chair, which is pressed into service in the interval – 70s bar snacks, overflowing ashtrays and a nice half of Sussex Prospect.

But in James Graham's taut, desperately hilarious drama, most of the action takes place in the “engine room”, the smoke-filled offices where the Whips and their deputies keep their members in line through the turbulent, traumatic days of the Labour – and briefly Lib-Lab Pact – government of 1974-79.

The big names are mostly kept off stage - Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher – though we do see Hezza brandish the Mace, and Norman St John Stevas fobbed off with the Arts.

For the lobby fodder, it's often a life and death struggle - Doc {Christopher Godwin] and Joe [David Hounslow] amongst those who die in office; a sobering sequence has Phil Daniels singing Bowie's Five Years as they drop one by one.

Daniels plays Bob Mellish, “token Cockney geezer”, sparring with his Tory opposite number Humphrey Atkins, played with laid-back disdain by Malcolm Sinclair. Mellish's successor is the subtler, but just as steely, Michael Cocks, played with increasing weariness by Kevin Doyle.

But the key relationship is between their two deputies, Steffan Rhodri as Walter Harrison, Nathaniel Parker as Jack Weatherill, two men who understand the need for compromise and horse-trading.

Ann Taylor, a feisty new girl in the labour office, who eventually rose, many, many years later to the rank of Chief Whip, is played by Lauren O'Neil, while Sarah Woodward plays all the other women, including wives, widows and the formidable Audrey Wise.

There's a live duo, belting out hits of the era, and changing their costume to reflect the passing years.

Huge changes in the British political scene since those politically incorrect days. And indeed since the piece was first seen at the National just four years ago ...

Photograph by Johan Persson