MURDER BY THE BOOK

MURDER BY THE BOOK

Phoenix Theatre Group at Christ Church

07.10.11

Jim Hutchon was in the Hall at Christ Church

Director Chris Wright's treatment of this complex, funny and stylish comedy murder thriller is to keep the throttle pressed firmly to the metal from line one. He kept the speed and pressure up as the actors were allowed to develop really very convincing characters. The improbable murder plot had innumerable twists and turns which were dealt with by a talented cast with a lot of comic potential between them.

Andy Millward keeps up an almost Noel Coward repartee as a novelist and critic planning to do away with his estranged adulterous wife, while she, Tricia Childs, giving as good as she gets, plans a similar fate for him. Both seek the help of an hilariously confused Syd Smith as his publisher and her lover. Steve Holding痴 dark brooding looks lighten up considerably with impressive comic talents as the fluent-talking neighbour who is not what he seems, and boy friend of the secretary, Jean Speller, who has her own agenda.

In this Christie meets Coward amalgam, nothing and nobody are what they seem, but, after a while any weaknesses in the plot are swallowed up in growing laughter. There were occasional dead spots in the narrative drive, but the Friday night audience left with a sense of a really entertaining night of fun.

MAYAKOVSKY

MAYAKOVSKY: The Slanting Rain

Salida Productions and The Mercury Theatre Company

06.10.11

for The Public Reviews

Vladimir Mayakovsky was a poet and playwright prominent in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, an eccentric, wayward spirit who finally shot himself in 1930.

The Mercury Theatre Company have collaborated in this innovative staging with Salida Productions – they worked together on Romeo and Juliet in 2010.

The studio is set up like the back room of a pub on open mic night. Beer-stained tables huddled round a dais. But onto the stage walks not a truculent, potty-mouthed alternative comedian, but a truculent, potty-mouthed Futurist poet. It feels like stand-up, with the house lights left on, and plenty of interaction with the audience, picking on punters and humiliating the man with the mobile. There's even an undercurrent of wry humour.

Ed Hughes' performance is a masterpiece of fire and physicality. In a Leninist three-piece suit, pens in breast pocket, he berates lyricism, the past, Pushkin, and especially critics. The poet of the people, he writes and performs for the factory and the shipyard. He's used to slapping faces and kicking bollocks; he prefers the rotten apples and broken bottles to the cotton wool reception he gets chez Gorki.

Andrew Rattenbury's hour-long monologue draws heavily on the poems, although, perhaps intentionally, it was not always clear when the tirade ended and the verse began. There were hints of tenderness, too, tears of love lost and loneliness making a telling contrast with the anger and the aggression.

The stark staging was effective, with chalk scrawled on the wall, and the poet's trademark yellow coat standing out against the black brickwork.

Was this how it was when the real Mayakovsky stood up in front of the five thousand ? We'll never know, but the piece, urging outcry and confusion, was a powerful reminder of a seminal figure in Soviet culture.

I want to be understood by my country, nothing more.
but if I fail to be understood –
what then?,
I shall pass through my native land
at an angle, in vain,
like a shower
of slanting rain.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

UP'N'UNDER

UP'N'UNDER

Cut to the Chase at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch

03.10.11

for The Public Reviews

1984. The Robins [Hull Kingston Rovers] won the Championship / Premiership double, and John Godber's Up'n'Under took to the Hull Truck stage for the first time.

It tells the story of a hopeless pub Sevens team who are pitted against the formidable Cobblers Arms. Thanks to their self-appointed manager Arthur, who has a fortune riding on the result, and their ballsy trainer Hazel, they go into the final with a sporting chance …

Godber is a great favourite at the Queen's, and resident company Cut to the Chase and Artistic Director Bob Carlton have come up with a fresh take on this well-loved fable, performed in their unique style, against a simple but striking set – stars, screen, locker room and turf.

I'll admit I have seen the all-important game itself done more excitingly [the six actors have to play both sides], but the use of a shadow screen was effective. And there were many really funny sequences, especially the routine in Hazel's gym which ends the first half. The gum shield moment, Phil's hot-water-bottle dream, the work-place confrontations, and the wonderful curtain call, were memorable too. Music – almost all done a cappella by the cast – was brilliantly incorporated into the action.

And the cod-Shakespearean choruses to this history worked very well.

Many familiar faces [and thankfully less familiar backsides] on view in this line-up. Jared Ashe, as the bewildered butcher Frank, delivered the prologue and a good few of the laughs, Tom Jude was Steve as well as the slippery rival manager Reg, Mark Stanford the keen young teacher, and Callum Hughes a fresh-faced apprentice.

Simon Jessop was a believable Arthur, making this erstwhile hot-head a rounded character rather than simply a figure of fun. And Karen Fisher-Pollard more than held her own against the “tissue-paper gladiators” - her scene with Arthur one of the tenderer, subtler moments.

But appropriately, this was all about team-work, and the pace and the pitch-perfect performances made for a very entertaining 90 minutes on “the playing fields of Castleford”. And the audience went home very enthusiastic: “I'm so gonna buy a ticket and see that again,” said one lad as we left – far too young to have even heard of Eddie Waring ...

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

Chelmsford Theatre Workshop at the Old Court

23.09.11

How to make Gogol's classic satirical farce work for our times ? Bungs and backhanders are no less prevalent than they were in19^th century Russia, I'd guess, but the characters are very much of their era.

The Young Vic this year chose a traditional take, involving the audience in the cartoon world of small town politics. Danny Segeth, for CTW, took a more radical line. A cast of young comedy actors, a black box, a version [after Alistair Beaton] which moves everything to today's UK, and a generous dollop of physical theatre.

How successful this approach is will depend on how amusing you find the performances, and whether you can accept a world with emails but no phones, where the Mayor actually runs the “nasty little town”, vodka and madeira are the tipples of choice and fresh salmon is delivered to the hotel restaurant.

Gold star for effort to Ian Eagleton, whose Director of Education was a mass of tics and grimaces, speechless with nerves. Joe Kennedy was a greasy, greedy Mayor, and there were two nice double acts, from John Mabey and Anna Rogers as the gossips, and from Fabienne Hanley and Leanna Johnson as the Mayor's grotesque wife and daughter – think Ugly Sisters. As the mystery inspector, James Christie used his comic presence to excellent effect – his drunk scene was masterly – and he was well supported by Gemma Robinson as his valet [in this version a slightly superfluous “friend”].

Especially at the start, a more manic pace would have suited the style, but there were lovely sequences, such as the planning of the inspections, and Khelly trousering “loans” from a queue of frightened officials. The movement work was directed by Catherine Hitchins: I liked the final sequence [“Regret”] which forced us to reflect on the human failings behind the farce.


production photo: James Sabbarton

CROSSED KEYS

CROSSED KEYS

Eastern Angles in Peterborough

29.09.11

for The Public Reviews

Plenty of drama on the streets of Peterborough – as I enjoy a pre-show drink at the Draper's Arms, a group of young Asian men is intimidated by a lone man in a football shirt. The barman moves him on, politely but firmly.

Greg Lyons' play – part of Platform Peterborough - 2011 starts on the city's streets, and it's noticeable that almost all the scenes are set in the open air.

A young couple are searching for the symbol of the crossed keys [part of the city's arms] set in concrete bricks near a very ordinary road junction. Hussein supervised the original work, but the years have faded the cheap coloured bricks. The drama, in just over thirty minutes, takes a serious look at difference, at culture, at the sacred, and at the healing effect of time. The two lovers struggle to keep their relationship alive in the face of the hostility of Shahruk's family. Michael, a straight-talking Irishman, also an incomer to the city, inadvertently brings about resolution of a kind, at no little cost to himself.

All three characters are explored and developed in Kate Budgen's clear, straightforward production. We get to know them surprisingly well in just half an hour. Shahruk, movingly played by Mariam Haque, is clearly afraid of what her uncle might do if she marries the wrong man. Forced to “disappear” to university, forever changing her phone to avoid detection, she finds the secrecy and the subterfuge an intolerable burden. Even when she qualifies as an architect, and enjoys a Cornish honeymoon, she is still unsure about a relationship that cuts her off from her family. John Bosco's Hussein, loving, caring, but constantly tested, is a really likeable character, whether crossing swords with Michael, or flirting with Shahruk. And Aidan Dooley is magnificent as the spiritually knowledgeable paving layer [“poking a stick in an ant's nest of cultural confusion” one of his many memorable turns of phrase] – his speech on the Sacred, delivered while opening his Thermos flask, was superbly crafted.

The setting is of necessity very basic: three sections of the kind of fencing they put up round road works. Looks really effective under the rood screen of St John's church. There are some telling images – her niqab teamed with a “Gorgeous” designer bag.

I was fortunate to see the piece twice. In the generous space of St John's – where the kneeler in front of me has the same red and yellow symbol – I found the drama less intimate, but more meaningful, than in the back room of the Brewery Tap, just ten minutes away from the those worn and faded bricks …

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews