SISTER ACT

SISTER ACT

SODS

at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff

14.11.14

for Sardines

The stage show was slow to follow the family favourite film, coming at last to Broadway by way of the London Palladium. SODS have secured the regional premiere, and Ian Gilbert's production is a stunning success, bringing the distinctive blend of gospel and gangsters to vibrant life.

The show is spectacularly lit; the frocks are spot on, from the awful 70s threads to the lamé and sequins on those Act Two habits. But the staging is necessarily simple, with a spaghetti curtain on which are projected stained glass and mirror ball, Last Supper and dart board.

Not the greatest show – succeeding on the movie's coat-tails and the Goldberg effect. Only one memorable number, though Alan Menken's score does have some enjoyable pastiches, and wonderful opportunities for the singers. The plot is clunky, the story coarser than on celluloid. But, by heaven, you certainly feel entertained by the end of it, especially when the cast is as talented, the staging as assured as it is at the Palace this week.

Sharon Rose has been singing professionally since childhood, but Deloris van Cartier is her first dramatic role. She takes to the stage like a duck to water – she has a warm, sparky presence, and handles the dialogue as convincingly as the singing and the dancing, of which she has plenty. A stand-out, star performance; let's hope it won't be the last time she's cajoled onto the boards. Ben Huish is a fresh-faced Sweaty Eddy, a match in charm and star quality for his “wayward woman”.

There's lots of fun to be had with the gangland buffoons [Jon Buxton's confident Curtis their boss], with especially compelling comedy from Declan Wright as TJ. Great character work, too, from those game sisters, notably Liz Green as Mary Lazarus and Charlotte Cox as the confused young postulant: her Life I Never Had a thoughtful triumph.

SODS stalwarts – well over a hundred roles between them - take the key characters of the Mother Superior [Ann Barber, in fine voice, making the most of the outrage] and Monsignor O'Hara, an early and shamelessly enthusiastic convert to the new order [Dick Davies, cavorting in his colourful cassock].

The ensemble work is impressive [choreography by Vicky Wyatt] – all those “celibate nuns shaking their buns” - and there are lots of ingenious ideas – the turn-and-change transformation at the end of Act One, the ghostly nuns in their pyjamas, the chase sequences, the camp choirboys [are these the bachelor antique dealers?] who get to ascend to the circle boxes, the kitsch fantasy dancers for Fabulous, Baby!.

Ashton Moore conducts with a keen sense of the seventies style that permeates this show.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

Kytes at Brentwood Theatre

13.11.2014

Discovering a new play, well written, with something worthwhile to say about the human condition, performed with style and integrity by gifted actors, is rare anywhere. On the often denigrated am-dram scene, it is a cause for celebration.

Australian playwright Andrew Bovell's piece, from 1997, is new only in the sense that, to my shame, I'd heard of neither him nor his work. It forms the basis of a film, Lantana, screened in 2001.

Graham Poulteney's production for Kytes uses nine actors. Originally, all these characters were played by four, which would give it a more theatrical, less literal, less linear feel. But it is the right decision here – our actors, and our audience, have enough demands made on them as it is.

The drama begins with a virtuosic quartet – chamber music an easy analogy here – with overlapping, impeccably timed dialogue. Infidelity twice over. Later, in duet and solo aria, other themes, other stories emerge. And after the interval, the characters from these subplots take centre stage, the threads inexorably intertwining in a tragic tapestry.

All of the actors give compelling performances. Their hesitations, their lifelike speech patterns effortlessly convince us that we are eavesdropping on real people, feeling their real pain, even if the characters as written seem remarkably ungrounded culturally, or even geographically.

Lionel Bishop, for instance, the last piece in the jigsaw, makes a memorable impression as a man haunted by guilt.

His therapist wife, predictably with issues of her own, is heart-rendingly played by Sara Thompson, with Hayley Webber as her nervy, insecure patient, troubled by guilty memories of a long-forgotten affair with Paul Sparrowham's unhappy Neil, unable to let go. Mike Gordon gives a mysterious, slightly creepy, neighbour who may, or may not, have murdered one of the women ...

The two couples in Act One are Justin Cartledge, restless and confused, and Helen Pinson's plain Jane, each having a one-night stand with Amy Clayton's brilliantly observed Sonja – a mood change in a moment, excellent in the girls' duet in the bar, on her fourth martini – and Ray Johnson's policeman, a sympathetic performance which brings out the humour as well as the heartache.

An intriguing two hours – the symmetry, the dreams, the clichés, the linking motifs [shoes abandoned, women disappeared, faces disfigured], the parables, the patterns, the disturbing themes [trust and lust, betrayal and suspicion]. Simply staged – maybe even the phone box is superfluous – and precisely directed, this is thought-provoking theatre at its best.

GHOST WRITER

GHOST WRITER

Guildonians at Harold Wood Methodist Church Hall

12.11.2014

“The play's the thing ...”

David Tristram's “haunting comedy” gleefully blends Shakespeare and Blithe Spirit in a clever whodunnit with plenty of laughs, plus a scream and a shudder or two along the way.

A grotty bedsit at 2B Elsinore Gardens, where playwright Edward [Tim Tilbury] is discovered, in an impressive opening tableau, about to make his quietus with a revolver. He's rescued, not for the first time, we surmise, by his cuddly, camp landlord from downstairs [Tom Hind]. But, spoilers hard to avoid here, his ex-wife, the late Ruby – a lively, likeable Chrissie O'Connor – appears, like Peter Pan, through the open window and demands he avenge her “murder most foul”.

In Susie Faulkner's pacy production there's lots of Coward-ly fun and crackling cross-talk with this mischievous spectre, before the hapless Edward agrees to round up a suspect or two and catch the villain out as they read through his new play, remarkably similar to the “real-life” dialogue we've just heard, where one confession follows another, drinks are poisoned, and mind-games play out over the gin ...

Sounds complicated ? So it is, but witty and well crafted, and confidently delivered by an experienced cast. The principals are joined by Abi Farenden as an innocent actress, Enid Law as the grande dame Frances, and Iain Attiwell relishing every moment as the ageing luvvie in a strawberry wig.

The set, with its supernatural special effects, is well designed and nicely dressed, with movie memorabilia and some pretty posters from the professional house just up the road ...

RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET

RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET

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

10.11.2014
for The Public Reviews

Artistic Director Bob Carlton is bowing out after 17 years at the Queen's Hornchurch. And what better swan song than his Olivier award-winning musical, making its umpteenth appearance here before launching a national tour and finally splashing down in Manchester next May.

It's a heady mix of Shakespeare, science fiction and classics from the fifties. You probably have to love all three, and know your way around, to really appreciate every nuance. And Mr Carlton almost certainly fits that demographic …

Against a simple set – somewhere between “Space:1999” and a rock festival stage – the timeless story plays. The low-tech gadgetry [hairdryer space guns, bubbles, the wobbly shuttle-craft maquette] all part of the period charm. And despite the efforts of the enthusiastic audience, the reverse polarity never quite “fully operational”.

Mostly in blank verse, Shakespeare, cod and kosher, cleverly tweaked to fit the sci-fi scenario, and including some outrageous word-play.

This twenty-fifth anniversary production has some familiar faces, including Mark Newnham's “teenager in love” Cookie, reprising his 2012 performance, including the virtuosic guitar solo to ”She's Not There”, with its ever more extreme riffs.

But not, alas, “Frido” Ruth, due to make his fourth appearance as the walking Coke can, but prevented by a tendon torn in preview. His part is taken, in time-honoured chorus-to-star fashion, by Joseph Mann, making his Queen's début playing trombone and, with just four hours' rehearsal, an engagingly cute Ariel.

Sean Needham is Captain Tempest, his pipe clamped firmly between his teeth, his tongue permanently in his cheek, with trumpeter Sarah Scowen as his Miranda. Christine Holman is a strong Science Officer, later revealed as a pneumatic Gloria. A brilliant Doctor Prospero, too, in Jonathan Markwood, who's played genuine Shakespeare in this house, and has great fun giving us both his Lear and his “King”.

Chorus, not for the first time, was the legendary Brian May, appearing on screen for prologue, interval and epilogue.

The music, arranged by Julian Littman with Greg Last directing from up on the bridge, is always enjoyable, often apposite: Wipe Out, Great Balls of Fire, Monster Mash, Connie Francis's Robot Man and The Byrds' Mr Spaceman. Particularly delicious were The Young Ones, with those Shadows steps, and a wonderful a cappella teenager in love.

Actor/musicians were a breakthrough when the Starship Albatros first made landfall on Planet D'Illyria, and are still a huge strength of the Queen's Theatre's offering. The nine-piece band reminds us of their amazing versatility in the finale, before stepping out of costume and into a rock gig for a celebratory [or self-indulgent, according to taste] energetic encore.

The short run in Hornchurch is a complete sell-out. But fans of this cult classic will be more than willing to travel, if not to D'Illyria, then at least to Dartford or Darlington, for the 2015 tour.

production photograph: Nobby Clark

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

FOR THE FALLEN

FOR THE FALLEN

Stondon Singers at St Lawrence, Blackmore

11.11.2014

Armistice Day was marked in Blackmore with this timely concert, including works from some of the best-loved choral composers now writing.

But the evening began, and ended, with Douglas Guest's In Memoriam, a short, simple setting of Binyon's familiar words of remembrance; a reading too of a poem by Julian Grenfell, who lost his life in France in 1915.

Morten Lauridsen, master of American mysticism, wrote his Lux Aeterna after the death of his mother. It is a simple, heartfelt continuum of sacred texts on the theme of light, sung with sustained emotional momentum by the Singers under Christopher Tinker, with Michael Frith at the organ.

Even better suited to their forces was Rutter's Requiem, which was accompanied by members of the Meridian Sinfonia: the oboe for The Lord's My Shepherd, with its exquisite soprano solo, and the mournful cello for Out of the Deep, which seemed somehow to resonate with the ancient stones of this historic Priory church.

A memorable, moving musical commemoration of those lost in war, and proof that the Stondon Singers' expertise extends far beyond the Renaissance polyphony for which they are best known.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees a newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.