CHRISTMAS AT BLACKMORE

The Stondon Singers at the Priory Church, Blackmore

20.12.16

The passing of another year is marked by this annual Christmas treat; as so often, the last of the carol concerts in the calendar.

The Singers, conducted by Christopher Tinker, began with the fifteenth century simplicity of Busnois' Noel, Noel, Noel, written when the Augustinian priory here was at its most prosperous, and ended with an equally simple, equally moving My Lord Has Come, written in 2010 by Durham composer Will Todd.

Loyset Pieton, of whom little is known, worked in Dijon at the start of his sixteenth century career; his O Beata Infantia was a wonderful discovery. Other highlights of a varied programme were Alan Bullard's Shepherds, Guarding Your Flocks, premièred here a year ago, Malcolm Archer's A Little Child There Is Yborn, with its haunting Alleluias, a nimble arrangement by Mark Wilberg of Ding Dong Merrily, and the sweet harmonies of Gabriel Jackson's lilting Christ-child. Michael Frith was the accompanist at the organ.

The capacity crowd got a chance to sing, too, and after a rousing O Come All Ye Faithful, the Stondon's traditional Christmas encore, an a cappella Silent Night from the west end of the nave.

As Nick Alston pointed out in his introduction, a choir is not just for Christmas, and the Stondon Singers' busy diary for 2017 includes a Marian anthology in Queen of Heaven, Evensong in St Paul's Cathedral, and the eagerly awaited William Byrd Anniversary in Stondon Massey.

William Todd - My Lord has come  from , A Christmas Eucharist from Bath Abbey, 25th December 2015. directed by Peter King

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

European Arts Company at the Cramphorn Theatre, Chelmsford

18.12.16

“Read by Mr Charles Dickens. The Author”. Well, we can only speculate on what those hugely popular readings were like, and how close Mr John O'Connor comes to the original. Personally I have always imagined a bold, melodramatic rendition, but this is largely a question of personal taste.

A single chair, the famous reading desk, put to many and varied uses, and some vaguely Victorian screens are the simple setting; unlike Dickens, director Peter Craze is able to call on sound, and to a lesser extent lighting, to conjure up Scrooge's world.

There have been cuts [Dickens sometimes took three hours to tell the tale] – the school room and Joe's rag-and-bone shop two of the casualties – but the key scenes are all in place: The Cratchits' festive meal and Fezziwig's dance both excellently brought to life.

An enjoyable reminder of the original behind so many adaptations and parodies. And, which would have delighted the Charitable Gentlemen, a performance that emulated the original in its charitable purpose, in this case raising funds for Dr Barnado's.

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE WINTER'S TALE
The Hermes Experiment at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone
13.12.2016


for The Reviews Hub

This 60 minute musical re-imagining of Shakespeare's problem play is a boldly ingenious experiment with the drama.

This year has seen many Shakespeare-inspired performances. Song recitals, of course, but also Mendelssohn, Walton, Korngold et al in concert with extracts from the canon. And it's not long since The Winter's Tale was successfully re-shaped as a full-length ballet.

This offering from The Hermes Experiment, though, stands on its own. Devised and developed during workshops at an Aldeburgh Music Residency, it seeks to re-interpret the play using musicians as an organic part of the performance. The text is ruthlessly pruned – out goes almost all of the comedy, the shepherds and the sheep, the beach and the bear. So the focus is on jealousy, joy and redemption.

As if aware that to absorb music and poetry together, but separately, is already a demand on the audience's concentration, the design is simple and subdued. The performers are all in black; their feet are bare. There are banks of flowers, and ribbons hung from the Cockpit roof suggesting a maypole or a circus tent.

The musicians begin at the back, but the harp, the bass and the clarinet move to a more prominent, integrated position for the staging of “Give me the boy” at the start of Act Two. There is movement, too, in addition to the music and the text, in a kind of chorus.

How well does all this work ?  The music and the words are subtly layered; sometimes one strand seems to move to the fore, to be supplanted by another as scene follows scene. Some of Kim Ashton's music is improvised, reacting to the verse and the events on stage. Some of it sounds more like under-score, of the kind which has been prominent at Shakespeare's Globe this season. Occasionally the actors struggle to make the text heard over the instruments. Leontes' first jealous rages, for example, which are wonderfully supported by movement and non-verbal vocalization, have to be shouted when a subtler variation in tone might be more powerful.
But the best sequences manage to be moving in a way that transcends technique. Perdita's wordless song as the snowflake petals fall and the swaddling scarf is passed to the grown girl, for example, and the whole of the closing scene, with its ethereal music and fine work between Perdita and Hermione.
The verse speaking is, for the most part, clear and intelligent. William McGeough's Sicily is strong, especially in his despair; Robert Willoughby is the object of his jealousy, and also gets some of the few laughs as one of the Gentlemen who share the news in the last act. Christopher Adams is the other Gentleman and everyone else bar Autolycus, a victim of the comedy cull.
Excellent presence from Sadie Parsons as a noble Hermione, with Louisa Hollway as a feisty, impassioned Paulina.
Héloïse Werner, co-director of The Hermes Experiment, is the soprano Perdita, her songs without words one of the chief glories of the scoring.
The music is constantly inventive – the prominent bass (Marianne Schofield) for the birth, the breast-beating, the pastoral harp (Anne Denholm). The musicians move in and out of the action, but only Florizel (clarinettist Stephen Williams) is both actor and instrumentalist.
The quartet's line-up – harp, clarinet, voice and bass – is itself very unusual, and Hermes have been assiduous in exploring repertoire and commissioning new work. This fascinating Shakespeare collaboration between Director (Nina Brazier) and Composer (Kim Ashton) is a ground-breaking, and often inspirational, blend of music, movement and text.

production photograph: Cathy Pyle

STOAT HALL

STOAT HALL

Eastern Angles at the Sir John Mills Theatre, Ipswich

10.12.2016

for The Reviews Hub

Toad Hall? Wolf Hall? The inspiration behind this bit of harmless fun is mostly Mantel – a Tudor rose projected onto the boards, Thomas Crudwell given a brief mention - but the Bard is in the mix too, together with Adele and Geoffrey Chaucer.
Fans of Eastern Angles' alternative Christmas entertainment will rejoice at the return of Mrs Giblets the dog, and thrice rejoice at the return of writing team Julian Harries and Pat Whymark. Pat also directs and acts as Musical Director.
The prologue owes a good deal to Shakespeare. The audience is divided into Suffolk and Norfolk – the traverse staging one of many challenges in this friendly but cramped auditorium.
“You there! Explain the plot!” The gauntlet thrown in jest to one of the cleverer, cheekier members of the audience. She can't, and there are no spoilers here, but the action begins with Sir Roger de Polfrey (excellently done by Ipswich Christmas veteran Richard Mainwaring) bemoaning the state of his stately pile – he's got damp in his front elevation, and even the king has heard word of his enormous crack. The jolly opening number has the various cowboy contractors sporting hammer, awl and ball-cock. A reluctant pretender to the throne, Roger has two daughters and a fool called Perch. There are but five actors, but the list of characters is long and eclectic: Gerald the Happy Herald, Sir John Dum-di-Dee, alchemist of choice, Agnes, ancient granny and Chaucerian, Tom Foolery,  Ant and Dec, body snatchers, Mr Softee, a further fool. A fine bestiary too, including a fox, a bluebird, a rabbit, and legendary devil dog Black Shuck. The audience stands in for the stoats, although there are stuffed stoats on the headgear of the secret society meeting in the crypt. No cuddly stoats on sale in the foyer, either, surely a merchandise opportunity missed.
Mrs Giblets, who plays Goblet the dog, surviving the vivisection table and bringing a wonderfully surreal touch to the final pages, did appear in the foyer at the end, a fond farewell to her fans and a fundraiser for Eastern Angles' Once Upon a Lifetime project.
Matt Jopling is a likeable Perch (and his rival Mr Softee), who is besotted with Sir Roger's fair daughter Rosamund (Geri Allen). The less alluring daughter, Hedwig, is played with enthusiasm, a beard, and a fine sense of the ridiculous by Patrick Neyman, who's also the Alchemist and a superb hooray Henry VIII. Violet Patton-Ryder mangles the Middle English with aplomb as Agnes, and is also the feisty Cook.
The choreography is lively and inventive on the tiny stage, and there are some splendid songs: The Fox is in the Thicket, for example, or the Unsuited duet for Rosamund and Perch, or the hilarious No Taste for Entertaining, in which Goblet shouts out foodstuffs to fit the lyrics … “there's an offal lot at steak”.
There's plenty of cod-piece humour (“What's that sticking out of your arras?”), some much-loved gags that were old when Will Somers was a boy - “Have you got quoits?” and variants, “Walk this way!” - but nothing is overplayed, the audience is involved but not humiliated, and there's an educational element, too. The collective noun for stoats is a caravan, apparently. 
As the man says - “excellent fooling, i'faith” - “just the Tudor ticket!”.

production photograph: Mike Kwasniak

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Brentwood Theatre

11.12.16

Bill Francoeur was a prolific writer of musicals for the youth and amateur market in the U.S.

His free and easy adaptation, with James DeVita, of Lewis Carroll might raise a purist eyebrow or two, but the children in the audience, who probably know the ball park better than the chess board, were royally entertained for the full 90 minutes.

The transatlantic twist seemed to work best when it was most radical: the Wonderland Gamesters, or a country star Humpty Dumpty [an excellent Elliot Burton, who also gave us the White Rabbit and a talking flower]. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, tiny propellers on their schoolboy caps, also captured the wacky style well [Libby Grant and Laura Hawkyard].

Sophie Farquhar was a sweetly bemused Alice, pert and assertive with her rival Queens [Katie Lawrence and Lydia Shaw]. Olivia Sewell and Scott Westoby were pawns, and between them played eight other roles, from Tiger-Lily to a Dixie Chicken – one of Dumpty's backing dancers.

Technically the production – directed by Ray Howes with set design by David Zelly – was a triumph. A chandelier, red and white chessmen, and centre stage, a superb under-lit chess board on which Alice moves towards the eighth square. Some impressive production numbers too [choreographer James Sinclair] – the aforementioned Dixie Chickens, the baseball game, the ultra-violet ballet [always a panto favourite] and the gospel choir for “You Got Responsibility” using the whole space and the mirror ball !

production photograph: Carmel Jane