PATIENCE

PATIENCE

English Touring Opera at the Theatre Royal, Norwich
03.06.2017

This sparkling G&S ends its tour here in Norwich, with its 21^st performance.
A real treat to see the piece so well revived. The score is one of Sullivan's most musical, and Gilbert's none-too-subtle satire on Aestheticism gives the designer [Florence de Maré] a chance to reference William Morris in a stylish set which incorporates a slightly awkward flight of steps and arcades affording a glimpse of statuary.
The Saturday night audience revel in the comedy, and the excellent singing, especially some of the ensemble work, like the Act Two dragoon trio and the lively quintet which follows it.
Director/Choreographer Liam Steel has a fine young cast to work with, led by Australian soprano Lauren Zolezzi as the innocent milkmaid of the title. She's unaware of her allure, and her strength, carting churns and a stone plinth with practised ease.
For this farewell performance, Susan Moore replaced Valerie Reid as the doughty Lady Jane. Her “rugged old bosom” harbours a splendid traditional contralto, and she makes a great job of her solo, accompanying herself not on a cello, but on a double bass whose generous curves echo her own.
Aled Hall is an amusingly despondent Duke, with Jan Capinski and Andrew Slater as his fellow officers. The rival poets are Bradley Travis (Bunthorne) and Ross Ramgobin  (Grosvenor),  accomplished comedians both, with an outstanding patter duet: "A most intense young man, A soulful-eyed young man, An ultra-poetical, super-æsthetical, Out-of-the-way young man". Travis is a superbly narcissistic, angular, fleshly poet, Ramgobin the picturesque man of property, idyllic poet and rich-timbred baritone, using his Grecian urn for the lottery, and having his flowing Darcy shirt ripped off him by “several” lovesick maidens.
The music is very well served by a pit orchestra under Timothy Burke; the bright, crisp sound lets Gilbert's every word be clearly heard - even the choruses - so that we were left wondering if we really needed the surtitle screens.

PEOPLE

PEOPLE

National Theatre on Tour – Norwich Theatre Royal

05.10.13

Only the two-bar electric fire is visible in front of the tabs – the rest of Bob Crowley's set [a remarkably ambitious touring version of the original] is revealed in its dust-sheeted gloom as the curtain rises.

This affectionate satire is off on its nationwide tour – A Piece of England on the road. With a largely new cast, but all the farce and the barbed wit carefully preserved.

Sian Phillips brings a studied elegance to the role of Dotty [Lady Stacpole] – beautifully spoken, her lines timed to perfection, her bone structure proof of her success as a model in her youth. A lovely relationship with her Cinderella companion [Brigit Forsyth on excellent comic form] as they gang up on the Archdeacon, the younger sister, played by Selina Cadell, a welcome survivor from the South Bank cast.

Their crumbling Yorkshire stately home, perched on a pillar of coal, is constantly invaded. Simon Bubb is the Bond Street barrow-boy, with his iPad and his ox-blood shoes, who has plans to move the whole place down to Wiltshire. Michael Thomas is the man from the National Trust, fruitily enthusing about chamber pots and closet skeletons. And Paul Moriaty, with a touch of Michael Winner is the porn producer from Dotty's past. The nicest surprise, perhaps, is Ieuan Rhys's camp Welsh grip – totally different from the original and, dare I say, much more fun.

This is the fourth time I've seen People, but the first time I've realised that having the same actors play the film crew, and the restoration team, and the paying visitors, might have a significance deeper than simple parsimony …

CINDERELLA

Matthew Bourne's ballet

New Adventures at the Theatre Royal, Norwich

26.03.09

Imposing front cloth with London in the Blitz, and a huge close-up of Cinderella's right glass slipper. Vera Lynn on the sound-track; not ousting Prokofiev, surely … No, here's the familiar ballet score, in glorious surround sound, just one of a number of respectful references to the movies.

At the end, after the curtain calls, showers of VE day confetti, and jiving Pennsylvania 6500 for a slow fade back to the slipper and St Paul's.

In between, a ballet which managed to be both innovative and traditional. This is a grey 1940s austerity world, with a dowdy Cinders and her vampish sisters. Even the flowing ball gowns are grey silk. Matthew Bourne's re-interpretation has many brilliant ideas, many of them realised thanks to Lez Brotherston's wonderful designs. The Embankment scene, the sidecar ride to the Ball after a glorious “Can't black out the moon” waltz sequence, the station tea room, with the clock a reminder of the last midnight, the wheel-chair-bound Father staring into the fire, the knees-up to what is usually Ugly Sisters music, and most impressive of all, the direct hit on the Café de Paris.

Although pure balleticism is not what this show is about, their was some fine dancing from a large company: Harry the Pilot [the Prince of this fairytale], who has most of the work to do, was Sam Archer, his Cinderella, looking as glamorous as Grace Kelly, was danced by Kerry Biggin, Madelaine Brennan played a Joan Crawford evil stepmother, and the Angel, our silver-haired Fairy Godfather, a lithely athletic Christopher Marney.

GOODNIGHT, MR TOM

Children's Touring Partnership at the Theatre Royal Norwich

10.03.09

Douglas Byng [“England's finest cabaret artiste”] came to entertain Norwich in 1941. Not of course the only Londoner uprooted to the Sticks in those unsettled, insecure times, as this marvellous adaptation [by David Wood] of Michele Magorian's novel reminds us.

William Beech is evacuated to rural Dorset, and finds himself billeted with grumpy, reclusive Tom Oakley. Each has demons to battle, and they both emerge stronger from the experience.

Oliver Ford Davies made a wonderful Mr Tom. Though maybe he softened too quickly, his simple kindness and the pain repressed deep inside were both economically suggested. And, the day I saw it, Oliver Tritton Wheeler was a perfect Will – slight, shy, nervous, his body language was always eloquent. A contrast of course with the other Londoner, Max Longmuir's extrovert Zach. Child of actor parents, he is at the centre of the amateur theatricals which, appropriately, loom large in Wood's version.

Michele Magorian started out as an actress, too, and the story was written between jobs, apparently.

I hope she appreciated the ingenious casting that gave Aoife McMahon both the awful mother and the angelic primary school teacher – the key women in Will's young life. Another nice double from Anne Kavanagh as kindly shopkeeper and chain-smoking, mannish doctor – a very recognisable period character this.

Like the novel, the play pulls no punches on the grim realities of war, which even idyllic Weirwold cannot escape. Robert Innes Hopkins' scene design uses two GWR-style posters for London and Dorset, and in an impressive revelation for a touring set, raises its platform to make the Beeches' dingy London basement flat. The costumes were very authentic looking, too. I liked the way Will's green pullover was taken from him as he left the country to be with his sick mother. And Sammy, Will's faithful four-legged friend, who, Lassie-like, leads the rescuers to the grim flat, was brought to vibrant, panting life by Laura Cubitt.

As so often, the language received less care. “There you go ...” and “hopefully” were little heard in the Forties.

And the matinée audience – seniors of Oakley's age [who remembered Virol] and schoolchildren of William's – was not the easiest. Nonetheless, a superb production, directed by Angus Jackson, of an important story.