JEKYLL AND HYDE

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

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

01.11.11

A World Premiere at the Queen's for Halloween, a version of the classic Gothic tale set in a Music Hall just up the road in the East End, the seedy Victorian milieu where Jekyll's alter ego roamed in search of pleasure.

Chris Bond's inspired adaptation includes lots of songs from the period, including Marble Halls and a lovely temperance number, a cod operation, a vent act, some Doctor Doctor jokes, silent cinema-style underscoring from Satie, Dukas, Stravinsky and others, two quite savage satirical numbers and a couple of singalongs from the band.

In the case of Cut to the Chase, that means the company, of course – where else would the programme credit “Whore – cello, keys, percussion” - the excellent Karen Fisher-Pollard. And who's that sinister white-faced figure playing trombone at the back ? Simon Jessop, who's our Chairman at the Billet Lane Bucket of Blood, and also manages several other roles including a splendidly Wildean Mrs Jekyll.

It's all over in 90 minutes – plus an interval, with special J&H cocktails on offer – so you'd be forgiven for fearing that Stevenson might be killed in the rush, lost in the laughter. But no, a change of scene and mood, and generous quotations from the text remind us of the philosophical under-pinning of this story of dark duality – we are not one man, but two, not one nation, but two. The writing veered crazily between Carry On, sibilant narration and sub-Tennyson verse. And miraculously never came off the rails.

Matt Devitt's production is very stylish [Norman Coates the designer – after Doré], with an intricate proscenium arch, a lovely lab for the Doctor, with its altar-like bench for him to play God on, and a surreal keyhole door for peeping Tom Jude, who gave a powerfully melodramatic Jekyll. Mark Stanford was the wounded soldier and Jekyll's friend and mentor Lanyon, Rachel Dawson was the Sally Army girl and the doomed Ellen, and MD Carol Sloman gave us a definitive male impersonator Toff, in the style of Burlington Bertie.

There have been many dramatic adaptations. Just months after Stevenson's tale first hit the bookshops, work had begun on a stage version, and since then we've had a blockbuster musical and David Edgar's play for the RSC. I think Bond's gallimaufry of styles comes off well – it worked for Crippen, I recall, and of course for Sweeney Todd. And that's no coincidence, since it was Bond's 1973 play that Stephen Sondheim saw and set to music ...


production photo by Nobby Clark

AN OLD BELIEF Stondon Singers

AN OLD BELIEF

Stondon Singers at St Laurence Blackmore

22.10.11

From the Fifteenth Century to A Child of Our Time, the Stondon Singers guided us through some of the finest sacred choral music.

The austere, rhythmically intricate Dufay, the richer sounds of Gabrieli, the eloquent harmonies of Lassus, the sublime cadences of Lotti's Crucifixus, traced the development of music to the Renaissance and beyond.

The Gabrieli was accompanied by Brentwood Brass – the final Alleluia of O Magnum Mysterium was especially effective – and they also gave us some purely instrumental interludes, including William Byrd's March for the Earl of Oxford, as well as Handel and Eleanor Rigby.

The Singers, directed by Chrisopher Tinker, jumped forward after the interval to Parry, the Songs of Farewell, including the meditation on death which gave the evening its title, two Elgar Part Songs, and finally the five Tippett Spirituals, featuring some superb step-out soloists from the choir.

I felt that the singers were perhaps more comfortable, more relaxed in the familiar harmonies of the twentieth century, but the structure of the programme gave us a valuable insight into the development of the sounds which have echoed through places of worship over six centuries.

There is an old belief
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief,
Dear friends shall meet once more.


Beyond the sphere of Time and Sin,
and Fate’s control,
Serene in changeless prime
of body and of soul.


That creed I fain would keep,
That hope I’ll ne’er forgo:
Eternal be the sleep
If not to waken so.

UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL

UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL

Stephen Moriaty at Christ Church

21.10.11

Glen Berger's fascinating, multi-layered monologue follows a rather dull Dutch librarian as he sets off in pursuit of a mystery borrower, his battered Baedeker returned 113 years late.

With slides and a flip chart, he details his quest [“not riveting but interesting”] to track down the man who left a laundry ticket in the book, just one of dozens of neatly labelled clues.

It soon becomes clear that “A.” is Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, condemned to stay on his feet until Our Lord returns to the earth. And equally obvious that the Librarian will wander with him, obsessively determined to meet the mystery man and claim his fine on the overdue guide book.

In Stephen Moriaty's impressive performance, our Dutchman with his date stamp and his “twisty mystery” is humourless and cold at first, but as the character develops, he seems a confused and forgetful sleuth, as his words become more confessional and confidential.

This production, directed by Audrey Cooke, was not helped by the formal staging in Christ Church. I longed for a more intimate encounter with this intriguing character, for the lecture to become a shared experience.

13

“13”

The National Theatre in the Olivier

20.10.11

Drove past St Paul's 99% occupation camp on the way to the National. The placards and the protesters on the Olivier stage seemed very topical, as did the breaking news references to riots and recession.

Dramatist in residence Mike Bartlett – his Earthquakes in London very effective in the Cottesloe's claustrophobic night-club – took on the vast spaces of the big house in a state-of-the-nation play which wasn't afraid to talk religion, politics and philosophy at its audience. In fact, many of the themes, and not a few characters, were foreshadowed in Earthquakes.

This time we have, amongst an eclectic bunch of Londoners, a Dawkins figure [author of “Fairytale God”] a conservative PM [an elegant Geraldine James, reasonable but sententious] and a Messianic young man [Trystan Gravelle] who starts his ministry on an upturned bucket and finds his disciples through YouTube.

Bartlett has a good sense of the zeitgeist, and a good ear for the language of every day life – Katie Brayben's Shannon one of several excellent characterizations.

The heavier themes – evil, [Ruby is “not a good child” and meets an awful end in a chilling but incongruous moment] Armageddon, Apocalypse – are sometimes hard to take, though, and whereas I was hoping for twists and reversals after the interval, the piece just got wordier and more didactic.

When John deserts his followers and they lose their cohesion, we are left with a strong sense of the “individual voices” they have once more become - “he's left us all to work it out for ourselves, “ says the cynical soldier at the close.

Thea Sharrock's production boasts some excellent design ideas [Tom Scott] – like the black cubes: a tiny one for Stephen's non-existent God, a larger one suspended above the stage for the in-coming, and a huge one for the first act, at one point stunningly peopled with the figures “in other people's dreams”, which opened up with steps and ladders for the second act.

But the piece does not need the vast stage to work – television would do just as good a job. Genuinely theatrical moments, like the quartet of voices arguing about Iran, were rare.

Two elderly Americans at the interval.

Him: “We're leaving.”

Her: “Are you not enjoying it - I thought it was very good ...”

Worth going along – certainly on the Travelex £12 deal – to make up your own mind.

BRITTEN SINFONIA

THE BRITTEN SINFONIA

M&G Concert at the Civic Theatre

16.10.11

Opening the new M&G concert season, a welcome return for the Britten Sinfonia, regular visitors here over their nineteen year history. They brought us a programme less interesting than the one they chose to open their subscription series this month in Cambridge, Norwich and London, but nonetheless varied and satisfying. Performed with the usual passion and flair.

“All our chamber music suffers in the concert hall from the inappropriateness of the space,” Gustav Mahler told a journalist. So he re-worked some of his favourite quartets for full orchestra. One such arrangement, of Schubert's Death and the Maiden, was only recently unearthed, and it formed the centrepiece of Sunday's concert.

An intense reading, with the inexorable elemental forces well suggested in the finale, and the emphatic sonorities of the Andante showing Mahler's hand most clearly.

A definite chamber music feel to the rest of the programme, too. A sparkling, tightly focused Mozart Divertimento to start, and Vivaldi's Four Seasons coming up fresh, under Thomas Gould's inspirational direction. His interpretation of the solo violin part had an exciting freedom of expression, encouraging his virtuoso colleagues to live their roles, sweltering or shivering in the Italian countryside.

This is programme music par excellence, and it would have been nice to have enough light to read the helpful notes. And though we appreciate our interval drink, the sounds of their preparation and disposal can easily ruin a pianissimo passage ...