WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Kytes Theatre Group
Brentwood Theatre
17.05.2014

Mary Redman was in the audience for Orton ...

Joe Orton, an outsider from an early age, was the enfant terrible of British theatre in the 1960s. His chief delight was to upset the apple cart of the Establishment with his plays and his behaviour. In this play he chose the straitjacket form and rules of farce, plus his wicked humour backed by his deadly accurate observations of human nature in all its weakness. Thus blowing sky high the pretensions of the comfortable middle classes with their entrenched views of how society should behave, contrasting with the hopeless helplessness of the lower classes.
Set in a private psychiatric clinic, this gives Orton an opportunity to use madness to examine the madness of the world around him.
This production directed by Bob Thompson started relatively quietly with an innocent and very proper young lady arriving for an interview as potential secretary to Justin Cartledge's twitchy Dr Prentice. As his demands grew more and more ludicrous Laura Leigh Newton's eyes became more and more saucer-like. Her understanding of how to play this ingénue role was superb and she would have made a wonderful member of any early Carry On cast in the Barbara Windsor kind of role.
Intruding into this hothouse of masculine desire comes Nina Jarram's totally OTT Mrs Prentice, a flourishing, whisky-swilling nymphomaniac ready to chase anything in trousers. She's closely followed by the apparently innocent hotel pageboy of Jake Portsmouth who is used to living on his wits.
The recipe gets stirred up further with increasingly preposterous excuses and events. 
To add to the seasoning Alan Ablewhite's Dr Rance's seemingly calm approach hiding his rampant sexuality as the inspector from the government. The two doctors collude to declare the would-be secretary non compos mentis and pump her full of drugs.
The final touch is the arrival of Mark Griffiths's Sergeant Match, the perfect PC Plod.
How much views have changed in the years since this play was written is reflected in Conchita Wurst: a man appearing as a woman and singing in a woman's voice but complete with a bearded face won an international competition by a country mile. And what was once considered pornographic is now mainstream in various forms of media.
Farce does impose rules on both director and cast. You have to play it absolutely straight to get the maximum humour across to your audience. In this production the hysteria began too soon leaving the actors nowhere else to go. As the doyen of theatrical critics Michael Billington once commented on an earlier, professional production "...Orton's subversive wit gets buried under an avalanche..."

KATHERINE HOWARD
Little Baddow Drama Club
November 20 2010

Jim Hutchon was at the opening night for the Chelmsford Weekly News:

Ken Rolf’s moving production of Katherine Howard’s eventful two-year royal career succeeding Anne of Cleves was shot through with real scholarship and drama, the well-dressed cast working seamlessly to recreate the dangerous path of Royal entanglements.

Katherine Howard was played with a nice mix of modesty and honesty by Sara Thompson, the devious Cranmer by Paul Randall as a satisfyingly slimy schemer, and Norfolk by John Peregrine, able to turn his coat with the speed of light when necks were on the line. Dan Ford was convincing as Katherine’s previous lover Culpeper to whom she lost her heart then her head.

Memorable moments included the anatomy lesson from a tactful Lady Jane Rochford (played with style and drama by Vicki Tropman) to the naïve dumpling Anne of Cleves (Catherine Bailey), where she likens little boys’ tassels to a seed drill… “When they can become very fierce!”

In a series of beautifully-modulated soliloquies, Michael Gray gradually unpeeled the human being in love behind the picture we have of the spiteful, bad-tempered, tyrant Henry VIII.

The set was dominated by an enormous curtained box taking up most of the stage, which doubled as a chapel, wedding four-poster and execution chamber, and was simply in the way for the rest of the play. The action, which should have taken place in spacious and sumptuous state rooms, seemed confined to surreptitious meetings in dark corridors in the spaces round the box.

Mary Redman was at the last night:

William Nicholson's play about the April-September marriage of both convenience and love between the oh-so-honest Katherine Howard and King Henry VIII came to me as a big surprise in many senses.
First I was surprised by the black and bleak humour of the piece as well as the tragedy of this hastily arranged marriage propelled forward by Katherine's weaselly uncle Thomas and his cohorts of plotters for control of the King/state religion. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
Then there was the honesty. From Sara Thompson's utterly delightful Kate whose truth both captivated the King and condemned her to the lonely executioner's block. Honesty too, from the playwright and Michael Gray as a Henry revealing the extent of his mortality and humanity combined with the burdens of state. The wedding night scene between the grumpy Henry and Catherine Bailey's dimly stolid Anne of Cleves with her cackling sense of humour, was a prizewinner for the tongue-in-cheek comedy of its direction and acting. I shan't easily forget the image of the two of them sitting bolt upright and poker faced in bed as the officials fussed around them.
Honesty also tore Katherine and Dan Ford's Thomas Culpeper apart and the scene when the two physically tortured characters appeared was moving and a sharp reminder that some things never change in many hundreds of years. We are constantly shown things in the news nowadays that speak of unchanging brutality and violence against the person, by using "instruments" as William, Cranmer's secretary, describes them and Henry bitterly spits out.
John Peregrine's Duke of Norfolk, Paul Randall's oily Cranmer and Trevor Edwards' cowardly Wriothesley made a fine trio of baddies. Life on stage for the other cast members would have been very much easier if Cranmer hadn't needed so many prompts. It really does put a strain on the others when they cannot rely on someone else's being strong on the words.
Vicky Tropman was smoothly splendid as the self-serving Lady Jane Rochford, easily used by Cranmer and co for their own ends, and shown up by her cry of desperation at her sentence of death.
Brian Greatrex's team including the highly-experienced Pam Brider came up with a splendid piece of ultra-heavyweight, oat-coloured cloth (normally used as an altar cloth I would have thought) to surround the bed of state. The executioner's block was a masterpiece of lighting and impact. Tony Brett's costumes, especially for Henry, could not be faulted for their magnificent impression, but in the small hall and with bright lighting some gaudy thin modern fabrics were all too obvious. We all know the economic reasons for this.
As to the whole of Ken's production it was the second highly impressive show I've seen this week. To combine seeing 84 Charing Cross Road [Hutton Players at Brentwood Theatre] and Katherine Howard was too much to expect. As critics we often sit through non-professional productions where good enough is good enough. To be privileged to sit through a production which has unfathomable depths of integrity, thought, careful attention to details including background music, and above all tender loving care is something rare.

Thank you Ken, cast and crew.

production photographs by Trevor Edwards and Matthew Adams

84 CHARING CROSS ROAD
The Hutton Players, Brentwood Theatre
November 19 2010

Mary Redman was at the opening night:


The unmistakeably riotous, raucous, wake-up and look at me opening clarinet swoops of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue shook the audience to attention for Act I of Roy Howes' production of James Roose-Evans's adaptation of the true life, transatlantic relationship by letter between two people who never actually met. Act II opened with an equally brash excerpt from Bernstein's On The Town.
Multi talented director Roy Howes was responsible for the soundtrack which played an important role in adding appropriate atmosphere such as NYPD sirens and barrel organs. Also for the spacious but cluttered set with the London and New York areas clearly defined yet hugger mugger and cheek by jowl with each other.
Period details and props for the austerity period immediately following World War II when second hand booksellers shops dominated Charing Cross Road were edited by Sue Grandison.
For those unfamiliar with this soothingly quiet, introspective story Helene Hanff was a New Yorker who by chance contacted Frank Doel's employers to supply much-wanted books. Author and playwright Hanff finds she can obtain the rare books that she adores direct by post from Marks and Doel in particular is the employee who deals with her requests and finds her treasures. Their unique friendship survived across the decades to 1971.
Two of arguably Brentwood's best non-professional actors occupied the contrasting characters of sharply-edged Helene and mild mannered Frank. William Wells utterly at home in his totally unflashy role and Lindsey Crutchett edgily nestled up in her American hidey holes, a fine critic of other writers.
Everyone of the supporting roles played by Claire Hilder, Chrissie O'Connor, Martin Goldstone, Andrew Lee, Margaret Goldstone and Margaret Corry added to the believable bookshop routines as warm characters in their own right. My only quibble - Andrew desperately needed a short back and sides haircut for authenticity.
Cast, backstage team and director made us care about every one of the onstage characters as the years did their best and worst with them from 1947-1971.
I cried like a baby all through the second act of Shadowlands at Chelmsford Theatre Workshop some years ago. Equally, for the first time in 15 years' reviewing and adjudicating at Brentwood Theatre I couldn't hold back the tears at the quiet dignity and anguish of the writing and acting at the end of this beautifully detailed and controlled production. I know I wasn't alone.