SENIOR MOMENTS

SENIOR MOMENTS
The Greville Players at the Three Horseshoes
29.0.11


This wonderful old-fashioned pub, with its glorious garden, was the setting for an enjoyable evening's entertainment on the topic of growing old.
First, two monologues by Ned Hopkins. “Ted”, a sentimental story with a twist of the sort you used to be able to sell to women's magazines, with Rodney Foster as a retirement home resident who keeps his secrets in a trunk. And “Maggy”, a much more engaging piece about a prim Scottish widow who ventures into Jenner's looking for Heather Honey and finds more than she expected. Beautifully played by Jenny Francis; although we do meet Drummond Braithwaite, “glorious nut sundae” Tino is more successfully left to the imagination …

After the interval [home-made cakes and Saffron Ale] we had an opened-out version of Joyce Grenfell's classic A Terrible Worrier [the one about the rabbit], performed with impeccable comic timing by Rita Vango. And finally, to the obvious delight of the audience [all of us chuckling away in recognition], a delicious selection box of one-liners, aphorisms and inbox memes, delivered from the dayroom of the Dr Watson Retirement Holme, punctuated by tea, physical jerks and Renée & Renato, and all put together by the director [and “Vera”] Jan Ford.

HAMLET - Globe on tour

HAMLET
Shakespeare's Globe at Corpus Christi, Cambridge
27.07.11


We know that Hamlet toured to a Cambridge college in Shakespeare's own day. It was usual for the text to shrink as the players moved further from the capital and the playwright – European tours sometimes gave little more than comic highlights and dumbshows.
Dominic Dromgoole's production – a brisk three hours including interval – includes more of the quartos than usual, and it was good to hear some less familiar moments – Polonius packing Reynaldo off to Paris, for instance. Not to mention the clown's catchphrases ... And the ambience of the Master's garden in Corpus, pigeons calling, distant revellers in Silver Street, St Botolph's tower in the background, was wonderfully timeless. This play especially is full of references to strolling players, and this background is emphasised by the start – the song “A-begging I will go” and the actors wandering on, changing into costume. 'Two planks and a passion' is evoked, too.
Just eight actors [who also play the music] for all these characters – the Mousetrap is particularly brilliantly imagined – only the Prince himself escapes doubling duty.

Polonius apart [an excellently wordy – and occasionally amnesiac – John Bett, who was also the Gravedigger], they all took the text at a gallop, but with no lack of clarity - “trippingly on the tongue” indeed. Amanda Hadingue's Gertrude was hard to hear at times, but I loved Jade Anouka's feisty, fun-loving Ophelia – and she was great as the Player Apprentice who's “nearer heaven”.
 Simon Armstrong was Claudius [and of course the Ghost and the Player King].
In the title role, Joshua McGuire was constantly on the move, and often very witty - I thought I caught a flash of Frankie Howerd at one point. But there was little sense that this young student's "noble mind" was tackling some of the greatest themes in theatre.
Ripon next for this fit-up, then Buxton, Worcester and eventually Helsingør, better known to us as Elsinore …

JOURNEY'S END

JOURNEY’S END

Duke of York's Theatre

25.07.11

for The Public Reviews

Taking a break from its UK tour, this critically acclaimed 2007 Journey's End has set up its dug-out in the Duke of York's for the summer.

Kitchener on the safety curtain, Vaughan Williams for the incoming, but then just the rumble of guns for the scene changes, and Jonathan Fensom's cramped, candlelit set as background to this classic exploration of heroism and the desperate domesticity of life in the trenches.

Grindley's flawless production has many strengths. Not least an exploration of the text that allows full weight to what is not said, could never be expressed. The eyes averted, the awkward pause were just as eloquent as Sherriff's undeniably superb dialogue. Dominic Mafham's avuncular Osborne, for instance, recalling life at home, finds a raw nostalgic nerve caught as he mentions his wife. The cheery Trotter [Christian Patterson] lets his merry mask slip just for a moment.

And the lighting, impressively replicating the candles' flickering glow, made the low-ceilinged makeshift living room, with camp beds and a dining table jostling for space, look like an Old Master, especially at key moments – like the first meeting between raw recruit Raleigh [Graham Butler] and his schoolboy hero [James Norton] – where a strong stage picture was held just long enough to have a little more emotional impact.

There are no star names here, just an excellent ensemble, who brilliantly suggest the camaraderie and the conflicts of enforced proximity, with the horrors of war just yards away up the dug-out steps. Food and drink [rustled up by Tony Turner's drily stoical Private Mason – a distant ancestor of the beloved Baldrick] are a key theme, giving comfort and a structure to life on the front line, as well as making a desperately needed distraction from the tragic inevitability of death in action.

All the performances were superb. As the boy straight from school, “keen” to join his hero Stanhope, Butler was achingly naïve and vulnerable; his return from a suicidal raid on the enemy trenches was shockingly powerful; he realises at last that war is not rugger or cricket, and Denis is no longer the captain of games he worshipped only three years ago back at school.

Norton's subtly characterized Stanhope, drinking too much to liven up the dull routine, and as we realise in his heart-to-heart with Hibbert [Simon Harrison] to ward off the demons of doubt and despair that threaten to impair his effectiveness as a leader of men, veered unnervingly from affability to rage as the whisky kicked in. His rages were frighteningly intense, but his moments of introspection were tellingly done, too, such as his explaining to Osborne how he could see through the wall of their dug-out to the mud and the worms.

We know the play, we know the history of 1918. So the end is inevitable. But Grindley has one more stroke of genius in reserve. After hurried arrangements for lunch on their return, the men with whom we have shared a couple of hours of banter and soul-baring, go over the top, and we're out with Stanhope into the deafening hell of the guns, to find a peace of a kind in the company of those men unnumbered whose name liveth for evermore ...

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

EAST LYNNE

EAST LYNNE

Writtle Cards

22.07.11

Jim Hutchon was at the Village Hall

Director Daniel Curley’s version of this Victorian melodrama relies on a sense of carefully contrived claustrophobia for its mood. A destitute gentlewoman marries for security but, unhappy at home, is seduced by a charming cad and decamps with him. Deserted and again destitute, she returns to her marital home in the guise of a servant. It is not a bundle of laughs; the genre has been so parodied over the years that it was never going to be a tear-jerker, but it still needs a real sense of the gentry brought low for its effect.

The gentlewoman, Laura Bennett, didn’t get into character much, so her spiralling downfall wasn’t too effective. The baddies always have it best in these pieces, and a spiteful sister in law – played convincingly by Liz Curley, and an equally unsympathetic cousin – Josephine Curley, did a lot to point up the lady’s misery. The cad was Ben Fraser who sleazed his way throughout with unctuous oiliness. The boring, safe husband was Andy Millward, who had impeccable timing in his delivery.

The set was unimaginative – a well-decorated provincial drawing room which doubled unconvincingly as the Boulogne sea front and public gardens in Grenoble, but the style of the production was shot through with imaginative touches, good use of period music and stylised tableaux which added strength to the plotlines.

And despite an, at times, almost inaudible delivery, Laura Bennett deserves my undying admiration for delivering the line - “Gone, and never called me mother!” without missing a beat.

THE TEMPEST Blitzed

THE TEMPEST

Blitzed Theatre Company at Brentwood Theatre

23.07.11

Big Brother eyes watching from a video screen, mask, mime and ambient music for Prospero's island – Neil Gray's Tempest teemed with ideas.

Making some key characters women was only partly successful – the stranded nobles in their wedding finery strained credibility, and it was just silly to address each other as “Miss” – but I think Shakespeare would have appreciated the mannish Antonia and Sebastienne [Laura Hughes and Helen Castle]. It's only quite recently that we've felt the need to revere the Bard's text – 200 years ago the cuts and changes we heard at Brentwood would have seemed trivial. Though it seemed perverse to butcher two of the best speeches whilst preserving pages of dull dialogue. And “stranger bedfellows” and “the island is full of noises” just seemed careless.

Among the inspired moments were the boat breaking, and the feast vanishing, before our eyes, the black nymphs, the death of the wonderful Sycorax puppet. I admired the stripped-back staging, and the “thousand twangling instruments” played by the actors. However, even if you are motionless and silent in the wings, your body language will still speak volumes.

Darren Matthews was a gentle, beguiling Prospero; his faithful Ariel was impressively played by Emma Feeney, physically and vocally comfortable in this crucial role. Caliban was a suitably brutish Nicola Stacey. Not everyone managed the verse as successfully as Matthews and Feeney, but I did enjoy the comic duo of Will Fox's Trinculo [with glove puppet] and Matthew Jones's Stephano, who for some reason was allowed a period costume.

The pacey two-hour production was rounded off with a lively jig, worthy of the great Globe itself …