THE VICAR OF DIBLEY

THE VICAR OF DIBLEY

New Venture Players at Brentwood Theatre

06.04.17

It must be a bit like being in a tribute band, doing one of these sitcom spin-offs. Have they come to admire your performance, or to be reminded of the much-loved originals ?

They certainly pull in the punters – New Venture Players' pleasing production playing to very respectable houses.

The action takes place in the village hall and the vicarage, with a couple of jokes in the vestry and the climactic wedding in St Barnabas itself. As so often, the adaptation has lots of short scenes and set-pieces – twenty+ here – with the familiar pattern of punch-line [or not- “Let's go and have a cup of tea!” not the easiest exit line] and black-out for the scene change, accompanied by Howard Goodall's familiar psalm.

NVP have fielded an excellent cast of parishioners. All the dearly beloved “characters” are present – pedantic Frank Pickle [Melvyn Freake] taking the minutes, lusty lard-haired Farmer Hewitt [David Lintin], dim, dotty Jim Trott [Dicky P Stallard] and the toxic Mrs Cropley [Paula Harris Brett]. All given the full OTT broad farce treatment. Villain of the piece Chairman Horton is played with relish by Vernon Keeble-Watson, with Tim Murphy as his twittish son Hugo, and Lucy Mason as his prospective daughter-in-law, the cabbage-patch doll Alice. And there are a couple of appearances by some young guest stars: children of the parish and nuptial teletubbies !

The voice of reason and Christian charity amongst all the gurning grotesques is the Rev Grainger, back in the day when lady vicars were rare birds, the “babe with a bob-cut and a magnificent bosom”. She's played with wonderful warmth and perfect comic timing by Julia Stallard.

Though there are some slow patches, Joan Scarsbrook-Bird's production is a faithful recreation of a fondly remembered programme, much enjoyed by the audience, with some memorable comedy moments – chocolate for lent, the litre of gin and the kiss that lasts the whole interval ...

FEMALE TRANSPORT

FEMALE TRANSPORT

New Venture Players at the Brentwood Theatre

12.05.2016

Steve Gooch's documentary play – first staged over forty years ago at the Half Moon Theatre – takes a realistic look at the lives of women deported to Australia in the early 1800s.

It's a strong premise for drama – think Our Country's Good – with six very different women confined below decks in a cramped cell. Foul air, foul language and brutal floggings.

As Nance [Lin Pollitt] caustically remarks: “... marvellous, the pairin' off in 'ere. There's Madam Lesbos and the late Prime Minister in one corner, Elizabeth Fry an' the vomitin' soldier in the other, an' I'm stuck with labourin' 'Ercules here. 'Oo shuffled this pack? “

Sometimes the historical detail impedes the dramatic impact, but there are some violent clashes, and just enough development to keep the audience interested. And the central image is clear – women exploited by the corrupt men above them.

Neatly underlined by the excellent setting, the captain's quarters aloft, and Cell 17 in the hold [there are over one hundred women on board – three of them will never see land again]. Effective lighting, with oil lamps overhead. And convincing character studies from the company, including Pollitt's potato-stealing radical, and Sara Thompson's fiery, brash Charlotte.

Sophie Howlett brings a tender pathos to Pitty, clutching her rag doll, protected by Laura Fava's intense Madge. Hilary Andrews plays Win, “matron” of the cell; Lorna Fassenfelt is the sea-sick Sarah, who develops a touching relationship with the boy Tommy [Danny Hemmings].

Two ruthless, grasping men, both convincingly played here, make life difficult for the convicts: Barry Howlett's brutal Sarge and Melvyn Freake's callous Captain, refusing to take on fresh supplies at Cape Town because it would dent his profits.

These women – petty criminals, prostitutes, political agitators - find strength and support in their enforced companionship. They've a kettle for a brew-up in their quarters, a library and a surgeon [Tim Murphy] on board. And at the end, fashioning sun hats from pillow-cases, they walk down the gang-plank singing, with something approaching optimism.

Vernon Keeble-Watson's impressively imaginative production opens a window onto a barbaric, shameful episode in our not-too-distant past. 

IT COULD BE ANY ONE OF US

IT COULD BE ANY ONE OF US

New Venture Players at Brentwood Theatre

26.03.15

“Comedy thriller” - two words of foreboding. “Alan Ayckbourn” - two words of promise.

But this rare flop from the playwright of Middle England disappoints on both counts. A few good laughs, one or two chilling moments. Otherwise a run-of-the-mill play, not pointed enough to be a proper spoof, not cleverly enough plotted to be a classic country house murder mystery.

New Venture Players, directed by Joan Scarsbrook-Bird made a good fist of it. An excellent box set, often difficult to achieve at this address, with a stout wooden door and fine furnishings.

And a reliable roster of character actors: David Pitchford strong as the frustrated fruitcake of a composer, Barry Howlett as his petulant brother the painter, James Biddles as the clueless detective, Janet Oliver as his long-suffering wife. And a perfect characterization of a stroppy teenager from Candy Lillywhite-Taylor: her conversation with her mother – in another Ayckbourn register altogether – was one of the better moments. Vikki Luck was the down-to-earth outsider, the object of the family's murderous intentions.

We heard the prompter too often; slow cues hampered the pace. And, since music was such an integral part of the piece, it might have been nice to have some to cover the long, dark scene changes.

But it was good to see New Venture tackle a [deservedly?] forgotten Ayckbourn, which has defeated even the best professionals on Scarborough's home turf...

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

New Venture Players at Brentwood Theatre

11.10.2014

Lin Pollitt's staging of the Anne Frank story begins with an atmospheric epilogue, as Otto Frank, survivor of the camps, discovers his daughter's diary; it will be her immortality – her tragedy will stand for the suffering of millions.

She is played here by Claire Hilder, who neatly captures her bright-eyed innocence, her showing off, her teasing, tender relationship with Peter [Richard Spong]. He's excellent as the shy teenager, acutely aware of his fate: “Who's going out?” he asks as he cuts the Star of David off his coat.

David Lintin brings a simple sincerity to Otto Frank; there's a nice dramatic contrast between the homely, nervous Edith Frank [Debbie Ann Shears] and the silly, flirtatious Petronella van Daan [Laura Fava].

The open-plan achterhuis brings fluidity to the action, but is less successful at suggesting the claustrophobia of the secret annexe. But the fraught atmosphere, everyone on edge, is well suggested, with sounds of soldiers on the street, aircraft overhead. Nicely crafted dramatic moments, too: the sisters staring as Van Daan [Peter Baker] is caught stealing food, Anne's thoughtful Hanukkah gifts, and the stark coda, replacing the original final scene, in which each character's fate is impassively revealed. A sombre, sobering ending, with tears shed on both sides of the fourth wall.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

New Venture Players at Brentwood Theatre

26.10.13

Among the shows I was sorry to miss this year was a revival of the legendary Gielgud/Rattigan adaptation of Dickens' epic masterpiece A Tale of Two Cities. So I was particularly glad to try this home-grown version done for the New Venture Players by their secretary, Janet Oliver.

No fewer than thirty-three scenes, and sixteen named characters, plus as many anonymous guards, lawyers, drinkers and tricoteuses …

The sweep of the novel is reflected in the staging, with an uncluttered multi-level acting area, and some lovely pen-and-ink slides [Dennis Foster] to keep the audience clued up.

Dickens himself appears to tell the tale [Vernon Keeble-Watson obscured by a beard and wig] and the author's spirit was alive in several characterizations – James Biddles as Jarvis Lorry, Ian Russell's Stryver, Janet Oliver's doughty Miss Pross, Alex Muckersie's Defarges, Lin Pollitt very strong as his fanatical wife, and in one of the few comedy roles in this story, Dennis Foster as Jerry Cruncher, looking for all the world like a caricature from Phiz. He had the best boots, too.

The two young men at the heart of the intrigue were Richard Spong's anguished aristocrat and Neil Gray's lawyer's clerk, who made a fine job of the famous closing lines.

Two problems have to be solved for a convincing adaptation of this work – how the French should speak [Dickens himself struggled here, but Allo Allo is probably better avoided] and how to handle the scene changes. We needed more pace, more music, fewer slow fades to black, and more energy from the actors. The tavern, and the trial, could have been set much earlier, for example.

But the journey from Shooters' Hill to the guillotine, the struggles of the revolutionaries, Carton's sacrifice and the tragic fate of the Manettes are the very stuff of drama, even if this production fell somewhat short of Dickens' vision.

LA RONDE

LA RONDE

New Venture Players in Fairkytes, Hornchurch

06.07.13

In one of the most audacious stagings I've ever seen in the non-professional sector, New Venture take us right inside the hypocritical world of fin-de-siècle Vienna, rubbing shoulders with the deceiving and the deceived - a never-ending circle of desire.

Arthur Schnitzler knew his play could never be staged; he would surely have approved the startling, sometimes disturbing intimacy of this version – eight actors guide us from one scene to the next in the round dance of casual sexual encounters, played out in the Georgian rooms of Fairkytes.

As director Sara Thompson points out, the thing about a circle is that you can start anywhere, and you will always end up where you first began. So I find myself first in the company of a young wife [Victoria Abery], in the matrimonial bedroom, reading Stendhal On Love, and later reliving her honeymoon and "revisiting Venice" with her boring, brilliantined husband [Matthew Jones]. And ends with her in a love nest with Alfred [Craig Whitney], and Stendhal again.

On the way round, we look in on a cottage in the country, a bordello, a writer's studio and a chambre séparée. In each, the audience is formed of two groups of voyeurs, one invited by him, the other by her. Each group will be party to knowledge denied the other. Occasionally we hear distant quarrels and climaxes from other scenes. We witness love made on a Persian rug, up against a wall, atop a fire escape, behind a bush. These erotic encounters are brief, and, especially for the woman, deeply unsatisfying. The tinkling bell tells us it's time to move on, and all the while the sound of Strauss to carry us round the corridors.

Madame Lise [Lisa Matthews] is our lubricious hostess; the anteroom to her "Audience House" has chilled wine, erotic prints and a sound-track of Wiener Bonbons. [The real, edible bonbons will have to wait till that last encounter …].

All eight actors seem to cope magnificently with the challenges – chatting to their charges, asking for help, improvising ["I had that Renoir the other day," muses Léocadia] to ensure smooth transitions. Every one of them gave an excellent performance, assured even in these intimate surroundings. Special mention for Darren Matthews' study in literary lasciviousness as the poet/pianist/playwright, Neil Gray's bewhiskered Count and Lin Pollitt as the exotically accented actress.

This superbly realised production, and its inspired concept, are a triumph of theatricality and psychological insight. The audience is entertained, but also involved in the seductive structure: like the inevitable infections for which the play is often seen as a metaphor, we are transmitted from one partner to the next, in a never-ending round of bodily pleasure – shallow, shameful, superficial. Just as relevant in our enlightened society as it was in the buttoned-up world of Freud, Klimt and Mahler.

CASH ON DELIVERY

CASH ON DELIVERY

The New Venture Players at Brentwood Theatre

24.11.12

An everyday story of death, benefit fraud and cross-dressing by Michael Cooney, son of the more famous Ray.

Not a new play – we have a mobile and a trimphone in uneasy coexistence – but seems much older, with Carry On jokes and the sort of farce Orton, Bennett and Frayn had mocked years earlier.

A perky brass theme, torrential rain, and ten minutes of solid plot-laying before we're into a morass of mistaken identity, improbable twists and manufactured mayhem typical of the genre.

I've never seen this professionally done. But it seems to me you need two things to make it work, to have the audience helpless with laughter. "Solid oak doors", rather than passageways, and a frantic pace, built and sustained through the set pieces. It only takes a moment's hesitation or stumbling to kill a scene.

There were some strong performances in Fred Sampson's uninspired production: Roy Hobson's fussy little Mr Jenkins understood his character and its function, as did Phil Foster as Dr Chapman. Richard Spong, as the young lodger who's the unwitting centre of the scam, had commendable energy, and Chris Wilkins did what she could with the one-dimensional wife. And Vernon Keeble-Watson, as the "sweet old man" Uncle George, gave an outrageous performance, and got the biggest laugh with his perfectly placed pocket handkerchief.

Butter for the fish, it's called in Dutch ...

At Brentwood this week, Arsenic and Old Lace - with the all-important window seat under the actual window, this time ...

SITTING PRETTY

New Venture Players at the Brentwood Theatre

25.11.10

It must be ten years now since Maureen Lipman starred in her daughter's bitter-sweet piece about new life and liberation.

Fred Sampson's production caught some of the poignancy and most of the humour of the play. And it boasted several excellent character studies. Linda Beaney was Nancy, redundant and depressed, who stumbles into a “project” which involves disrobing for an art class run by ageing, cynical Philip [Gerry Finnegan]. We shared her improbable journey from inertia and pickled onions to bright optimism and a new beginning with “bloodhound” Max, nicely played by James Biddles, especially in the early “Job's Comforter” scene, and the moving, if wordy, dénouement. A lovely natural performance too from Sophie Howlett as Zelda, Philip's previous life model.

The “weird and wonderful” grotesques who make up the class were less convincing, depicted with too broad a brush, perhaps. The duologues were much more effective – Zelda and Nancy, Max and Nina, Nancy's long-suffering sister [Chris Wilkins].

Difficult to shoe-horn the National Gallery Café [terrible chairs], Philip's teaching studio and the sisters' suburban flat [a corridor, basically] onto the Brentwood stage, but there was some good lighting, especially the nude scene, and impressive sound effects [Bob Gedge].