ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Arpana at Shakespeare's Globe

06.05.2014

One of the hits of the 2012 Globe to Globe season, this unfussy feel-good adaptation returns for a brief run on the bloodied boards of Shakespeare's Globe.

Performed in Gujarati, it shifts the action from Renaissance France to India, 1905, using a popular theatre idiom to tell the basic tale, with plenty of music, song and dance.

Much of the subtlety and the irony is jettisoned with the language, but the salient plot points survive, in a broadly comedic production by Sunil Shanbag. Bertram becomes Bharatram, keen to succeed in business in Bombay – his production number evocation of the big city [with Parbat – Parolles – his chum] is one of many musical highlights. Heli [Shakespeare's Helen] persistently pursues him, curing an amusingly ailing King of France [now Gokuldas] on the way.

All very enjoyable, whether or not you're able to laugh along with the many jokes; a colourful celebration of Shakespeare on the subcontinent.

TITUS ANDRONICUS

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Shakespeare's Globe

06.05.2014

Lucy Bailey's darkly violent production of this early revenge tragedy was a huge success in 2006. Now it's back, in a slightly more light-hearted version, bringing the gory tale to vibrant life, daring the groundlings to stay the blood-stained course from rape to incestuous cannibalism.

It's a staging that involves the audience, with mobile towers careering around the yard, processions and chases. William Dudley's radical design swathes the Globe's colourful columns and frons scaenae in black; there's smoke and incense for atmosphere, and Django Bates' brutal music.

A strong cast – all new to this most challenging of spaces – is headed by William Houston's Titus, powerful, disturbing, but oddly touching in his mad desire for vengeance. Indira Varma is a sardonic Tamora; Obi Abili a strikingly dignified Aaron. Flora Spencer-Longhurst is the tragically mutilated Lavinia, and amongst the viscerally violent villains, a standout performance from Matthew Needham as an instinctively savage Saturninus.

Academics are often unsure of how to approach this, Shakespeare's only stab at the genre. Directors too. And audiences – giggling, texting, drinking wine, eating burgers, fainting. But impossible not to react in some way to all this blood, confusion and casual butchery.

JACK THE RIPPER

JACK THE RIPPER

WAOS at the Public Hall, Witham

03.05.2014

Jack the Ripper a musical ? Why not, when grand opera, and Sweeney Todd happily spin tunes around the most horrific atrocities. And Oliver, that most family-friendly of shows, has its share of true crime and 'orrible murder. In fact Denis de Marne and Ron Pember's piece from the 1970s has many points of similarity with Bart's greatest hit, not least, in Witham's production, the backdrop of St Paul's, not normally visible from Whitechapel.

But the ingenious concept, which works really well here, alternates those mean streets with the escapist warmth of the Steam Packet. A Music Hall, complete with singalongs, melodramas and Master of Ceremonies, though, alas, without his gavel.

The swift transition between the two is one of the strong points of Kerry King's production – dustbins become tables, a violent confrontation morphs into melodrama.

A large cast fills the stage, singing the choruses very impressively. And there are plenty of talented principals to carry the drama and the catchy numbers of Pember's score. David Slater is our Chairman, a strong personality commanding the stage with a fine singing voice. Marie Kelly – a real character, like most of those portrayed here – is beautifully interpreted by Keiley Hall [another fine vocalist], bringing bravado and pathos to the role of the streetwalker and soubrette. Emma Loring confidently takes on the unlikely combination of Queen Victoria and Lizzie. Montague Druitt, a fascinating if enigmatic figure, is strongly done by Stuart Adkins, and amongst the many colourful characters on display I was especially taken with Tom Whelan's Bluenose, doubled with the Duke of Clarence, one of the many names associated with the Ripper over the years.

Various suspects appear briefly in a kind of Gang Show number [I was disappointed that they didn't reprise their ditties in ensemble], one of many delightful touches, the rainy funeral and the graveside monologue another. The coppers in drag – though loved by the audience – could have done with some more ambitious choreography, true of many of the numbers. We longed for a few Consider Yourself moments from the chorus, for example. And not all of the dialogue was as lively and colourful as the music.

But the pastiche score is well served by this enthusiastic company, and by MD James Tovey and his evocative little pit band. This unusual treatment of a popular penny dreadful is very entertainingly revived forty years after its première.

BUILDING BLOCKS

BUILDING BLOCKS

Little Baddow Drama at the Memorial Hall

30.04.2014

Bob Larbey's soft-core sitcom tells a familiar tale of broken promises, missed deadlines and endless tea-breaks – awakening painful memories for anyone who has ever had the builders in.

Ken Rolf's assured production has a splendidly solid set, complete with scaffolding and a cement mixer, as well as a very convincing cast of characters.

Little Baddow veteran John Peregrine plays David, glib boss of the local construction company, erecting a baroque edifice of excuses and placating his frustrated customers with gamebirds, rabbits and oysters. His men – boasting builders' bellies and boots – were excellently done by James Oakley as Mark, the wryly comic John Mabey as Piper, and Mike Gordon as the elusive chippie Brian, using his newly sharpened tools to construct a ham sandwich.

The young couple – who want an extension to welcome their new baby – were Martin Lucas as the wimpish, spineless schoolteacher Jim, and Sara Thompson as his long-suffering wife Mary; the look on her face as she returned triumphant from her pregnancy test was a touching, memorable moment in a piece not long on subtlety.

And I liked the three lads on the garden bench, gently mocking their guvnor, as well as the thoughtful epilogue on the same bench, with the builders gone, the extension complete, and a calmer future as a family to look forward to.

production photograph by Barry Weight

THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY

Cut to the Chase at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch

14.04.2014

for The Public Reviews

A jazz trio in the foyer, and in the road outside, a stunning collection of vintage automobiles to prepare us for the drama within.

In those golden Twenties before the crash and the depression, Jay Gatsby and his charmed circle live out the decadent hedonistic dream in his waterside mansion.

Cut to the Chase are no slouches when it comes to twentieth century classics, and this is a seriously stylish production of what might seem a rather superficial adaptation of a complex many-layered masterpiece. The novel relies on the onlooker/narrator Nick Carraway, sensitively played here by Callum Hughes, and it is through his eyes that we see much of the tragedy unfold. And it is he who reads Scott Fitzgerald's handwritten envoi at the end.

Simon Jessop is a familiar face at the Queen's, but this is his first show as director, and he has certainly seized the opportunity with both hands.

In a bold meta-theatrical prologue, he shows us an empty rehearsal space, bare bricks off-white-washed, fire hose, doors, chairs and staircase all in the same hue. The company wander in, bearing musical instruments and doughnuts, eight characters in search of a read-through.

Introductions over, the “director” gives them a pep talk, demanding of them “conviction and high style”. And boy, do they deliver. Two characters step into the central circle, and the scripts are discarded as we move seamlessly onto that “slender, riotous island”.

Jessop's vision is never realistic, and rarely glamorous. This is Gatsby as Arthur Miller might have told it, drilling down to the raw, deformed emotions at the heart of the piece. The staging is striking: the silent fireworks, the Old Metropole, the lighthouse duologue, the death of Myrtle, Daisy's letter monologue, the “strange enchanted boy” martyred in his swimming pool. The first meeting of Gatsby and Daisy is superbly choreographed as a quartet. There is a see-through cupboard under the stairs for the bedroom scene and the Metropole-dancing.

There is much music, but no production numbers. Instead these actor/musicians provide underscoring, quick cues and snatches of song. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, What Is This Thing Called Love, but also, very effectively, unexpected arrangements of All Saints and Justin Timberlake.

Sam Kordbacheh is an elegant, statuesque Gatsby, enigmatic and unemotional, save for the powerful moment when he loses his temper with Sean Needham's racist asshole Tom Buchanan. Georgina Field gives a wonderfully inebriated Myrtle; Sam Pay is incredibly moving as her wronged husband. The shallow, self-absorbed Daisy is beautifully portrayed by Ellie Rose Boswell, and Alison Thea-Skot is the emancipated golfer Jordan Baker. A great character turn from Stuart Organ as the ageing mobster Meyer Wolfsheim, with his cuff buttons made of human molars.

The lighting is atmospheric; back projection and film are sparingly but tellingly used. And, at the end, silent movie credits not only for the actor/musicians but for every member of this amazing Queen's Theatre company.

production photograph: Nobby Clark

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews