FRIEND OR FOE

FRIEND OR FOE

Made In Colchester at the Mercury Theatre Colchester

03.09.2014

for The Public Reviews

Seventy-five years to the day since Britain went to war with Germany. When Chamberlain spoke and the first sirens wailed, Operation Pied Piper was already underway, relocating thousands of evacuee children to the relative safety of the countryside.

Michael Morpurgo's novel, of 1977, tells of two such London lads, and their idyllic time in Devon – an idyll which is shattered by the enemy, testing their friendship and their moral fibre.

This is not the first time Davey and Tucky have taken to the stage – there is a musical version out there, and this adaptation, by Daniel Buckroyd, toured a few years ago in a shorter, simpler incarnation.

It captures wonderfully the sense of a Boy's Own adventure, and the anguish, holding the audience rapt as the story unfolds.

Matthew Cullum's production uses a simple set, with two inclines, suggesting a bombed-out house, transformed into the moors, the farmhouse kitchen or Paddington station. Lighting alone creates a sunny breakfast, or looming shadows. The soundscape is evocative, too: the ticking clock, the sheepdog and his flock.

The style is lean, inventive and very physical. The play begins with David blowing the dust off his scale-model Dornier before all five actors recreate the dogfight and the ditching. Journeys are key: the Tube, the steam train, the cart, the army truck. Suitcases, symbols of transience, are a constant presence.

The two evacuees are strongly drawn – the thoughtful, quieter David [Jake Davies], his young life blighted by his father's death, and the cheeky, outgoing Tucky [Séan Aydon]. They both convince totally as the 11-year-olds caught up in a war they struggle to understand, and as their slightly older selves looking back on those distant days in Devon. Their recollections form a narrative framework, as they bicker about the best way to tell it as it really was.

Janet Greaves, a survivor from the 2011 tour, plays the boys' formidable chain-smoking Headmistress as well as David's mother and the lovely, motherly farmer's wife, who welcomes her young visitors as the family she never had. More reluctant is Nicholas Tizzard's sympathetically drawn Reynolds, the farmer – a superb characterization, with the closing scene especially moving. Tizzard also plays Dieter, the good German [the Foe of the title], who is the lads' own Magwitch, surviving on the marshes thanks to their generosity.

Chris Porter, who also toured in 2011, plays an impressive roster of smaller roles, including the wounded airman and a wonderful bus driver.

This is a magical piece of theatre – the stylistic river scene is superbly realised with sound, light and kitchen furniture – which combines a rattling good yarn with reflections on friendship, patriotism and the waste of war. It speaks directly to us all – from the young children in the front row to the real-life evacuee in our midst, who has vivid memories of her own journey to Devon, seventy-five years ago …

production photograph: Robert Day

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

THE BIRTHDAY OF THE INFANTA

Trestle Unmasked
Trestle Theatre Company

at the Mercury Studio, Colchester

02.04.11

for The Public Reviews

Oscar Wilde's short story – a spoilt Spanish princess breaks the heart of a simple child – is reworked by Trestle into a rich, mythic experience, full of the magic that only theatre can work.

It takes its inspiration, and much of its design, from the Velasquez painting of Las Meninas. Our storyteller, black clad like a stern tutor, is wandering through the auditorium as we enter, making sporadic small-talk with the gathering listeners. “The longer the name, the more status you have ...”, a sentiment with which Wilde would certainly concur.

The mirror and the fan dominate Jean Chan's evocative design, based around a fragment of a richly ornamented picture frame. The fans will become flowers, butterflies, the horns of a bull … The detail achieves deep significance: the pearl, the rose. This is collaborative play-making. We fashion flowers from tissue paper, trumpet the arrival of the Infanta, two children dance, one removes yards of the dead Queen's innards as part of a gruesome disquisition on the art of the embalmer. But mostly it is Georgina Roberts' energetically enchanting performance which makes this such a memorable hour. She assumes every character, from the delicate, charming Princess to the pathetic mis-shapen boy who is plucked from the forest to make her laugh on her twelfth birthday. She becomes courtiers, gypsies, a French funambulist – his moustaches made from more fans – the bullfighter and the bull.

Music, light and sleight-of-hand are used to keep the momentum moving, and as we approach the dark dénouement – the moral lesson of Wilde's tale – delight and wonder are replaced by regret and despair. A kaleidoscope of marvellous moments remain in the memory long after we emerge into the spring sunshine. The ape heralded by a sudden banana, the philosophical lizards, the distorting mirror, the sundial and the snake.

This heady blend of story-telling and physical theatre, directed by Emily Gray, is a passionate piece, and deserved a larger audience than Colchester could manage. Its message is just as important for today's children [and grown-ups] as it was when Wilde wrote it, or when Velasquez painting his Infanta.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

MURDERED TO DEATH

Ian Dickens Productions at the Mercury Theatre Colchester

for The Public Reviews

06.09.10

The title says it all, even before we meet Miss Maple [sic] and the aptly named Inspector Pratt.

Peter Gordon's 1993 play is an affectionate pastiche of your classic Country House Murder Mystery, with shoals of red herrings and a Cluedo collection of whodunnit suspects and weapons.

A near-capacity house at the Mercury enjoyed it on all kinds of levels, though the riper innuendo sometimes needed pointing. We were kept guessing to the end, as miscreants were unmasked and motives revealed. The script was amusing, with one or two really strong sequences, and Giles Watling's experienced touch helped a battle-hardened cast make the most of it.

Roland Oliver was crusty Colonel Craddock – loads of bluster and the odd touching moment, with Sandra Dickinson magnificent as his mem-sahib – tremendous presence and a voice from the Betty Marsden school of comedy characterization.

Darren Machin had the moustache, the macassar, the froggie accent and the two-tone shoes, all unmistakeable marks of a cad. I liked the way he used his entire body to express his feelings – most amusing. Elizabeth Williams stepped into the sensible shoes of Margaret Rutherford and Joan Hickson as the interfering spinster sleuth. Michelle Hardwick was the acid-tongued Elizabeth, in an unconvincing wig, Chloe Newsome the dowdy Dorothy, with Erin Geraghty as the doomed mistress of the manor. Christopher Elderwood worked hard as the hapless constable, sidekick to the clueless detective.

The two plum parts went to the priceless Victor Spinetti, as the dotty butler Bunting, squiffy on sherry and lurking suspiciously, and Norman Pace as the Inspector, bungling, accident-prone with a way with words John Prescott might envy. It's a gift of a part, and Pace grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, with admirable comic timing, a nice line in slapstick and a huge range of physical expression.

The “quaint room”, unaccountably referred to as The Lounge, was nicely dressed, though the paintings didn't pass muster even as forgeries …

Some would say that the genre is beyond parody. Others might prefer Stoppard's dazzling scalpel. But Gordon's cosy hommage, the first in his Pratt Trilogy, makes for an undemanding couple of hours' entertainment, guaranteed to keep the punters amused by the acting and bemused by the Byzantine plot.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

MIRACLE

[reviewed for The Public Reviews]

Ruby in the Dust

Leicester Square Theatre

07.01.10

Deep in the basement – beneath Notre Dame de France, appropriately - a dusty crypt has been created. Feathers and leafmould litter the floor. “A pigsty”, exclaims Salome as she enters the darkened space.

There's a melancholy accordeon playing in a corner. On the stairs, a fortune-teller is a clue that the circus is in town, a razzmatazz rival to the production of Everyman that Dante Du Pre has brought to this remote country town.

Reza de Wet's play was originally written in Afrikaans, and set in her native South Africa. Linnie Reedman's spare but powerful production, for the enterprising Ruby in the Dust theatre company, has removed some of the African references, though one is still reminded that this is how Afrikaans theatre began, on the dusty road with fit-up tours.

The fictional company, “servants of a sacred art”, is run by Dante and his wife Salome, with stage-struck youngsters whom his charisma has drawn in along the way. Innocence and experience.

And that contrast was evident in the acting company, too. Rowan Schlosberg was a dark, brooding Abel, the Hamlet and the Everyman, though nothing hinted that he would be even adequate in those roles. His Lenie, destined to end like Ophelia in a willow brook, was Kate Colebrook, in a tender, moving performance, especially when she obsessively imagines leaving town by the morning train. Actor musician Christopher Dingli was a significant presence as the idealist Antoine. The two veteran thesps – Sir and Her Ladyship if you like – were in the safe hands of Tim Woodward and Susannah York. They both had superb monologues in Act Two, and their stormy relationship was one of the strengths of the piece. York's lament for her lost frocks, her faith in her faded photograph, were wonderful moments.

De Wet writes another great female role for Anna, the enigmatic Lady Bountiful who comes out of the darkness, seeking to supplant Lenie in the company and in Abel's affections. Lynne Miller caught the mood exactly, and her calm but sinister presence cast a chill over the crypt.

The play, heavy with significance and symbolism, does not always translate well, and the performances sometimes lacked polish. But this revival, which began before Christmas in a less intimate crypt, was an absorbing exploration of the mystery of the drama and the heartless world of the theatre.

this review first appeared on The Public Reviews