GREAT IS THE LORD

GREAT IS THE LORD

Waltham Singers at Great Waltham Church

21.06.2014

Music in Waltham for a June evening has been a fixture in the calendar since I began reviewing more than 40 years ago.

This year's concert, by the always impressive Waltham Singers under Andrew Fardell, was a varied selection of sacred music.

The home team was represented by Edward Elgar – his solemn, often dramatic Great Is The Lord – capped by that Balfour Gardiner warhorse, Evening Hymn, for eight-part choir and organ, with its dense harmonies and soaring architecture. William H Harris's contemplative setting of Donne, Howells' Salve Regina with Annabel Malton the solo soprano, and an upbeat motet by Stanford completed the English contribution.

The visitors fielded Monteverdi – exquisite late polyphony from Venice – his successor at San Marco, Antonio Lotti, whose Crucifixus was appropriately programmed just before the Credo, and Widor, represented here by a gloriously ostentatious Eastertide motet for choir and organ, with the stirring accompaniment played by Laurence Lyndon-Jones.

The Monteverdi sounded clear and immediate in this acoustic, and the Lotti, a wonderful showcase for the choir, was beautifully crafted, as the sound builds in this tense, anguished setting.

The choral contributions were interspersed with an equally eclectic selection from the Williams Kelleher Guitar Duo, including early English lute music – Echo, by Chester cleric Francis Pilkington, a charming version of Greensleeves – and a colourful group of pieces by the contemporary Argentine composer Pujol.

YOU CAN ALWAYS HAND THEM BACK

YOU CAN ALWAYS HAND THEM BACK

Made In Colchester at the Mercury Theatre Colchester

17.06.2014

for The Public Reviews

We are a grandfather … so this UK première of Roger Hall's soft-centred show about growing old and grandchildren was certain to hit the spot.

It's almost as if a focus group had come up with all those Third Age clichés: dodgy knees, deafness, technophobia, Christmas crises, skyping across the world, infant artwork on the fridge, a sideboard, even a stairlift – Stannah have supported this Colchester production.

In Andrew Breakwell's delightful production a single set does duty as the family home and Hillcrest retirement village. There's a grand piano, too, not only for the family photographs but also for the Musical Director, Stefan Bednarczyk, who does a nice line in Cowardish singing and Brechtian interventions, as well as accompanying the grandparents in Peter Skellern's songs.

There's a lot of schmaltz and sentiment in this gentle score – the best of this is the wistful Sunrise Sunset moment at the top of Act Two [They Grow Up So Quickly], reprised at the end, when the years have caught up with Kath and Maurice, who says a fond goodbye to his grandchildren before taking that last stairlift to heaven …

Happily there are one or two lively, sharper numbers, like the Twice A Night Tinkle Tango [don't ask] and Don't Let The Little Bastard Get Away, which cleverly imagines the bathtime/bedtime routine as a fitness workout.

The grandchildren are all invisible, left to mime and our imagination. Some stereotypes here [football for Sugar Rush Leonard, ballet for his sister, just as it's golf for grandad and book group for grandma]. But at least there's asthmatic, wussy Ollie, who brings along his Glee DVDs and ends up starring as Pharoah and Bloody Mary – we could have used his Happy Talk as an encore at the end of this somewhat depressing look at what the future has in store for the baby-sitting generation.

Lovely characters from two seasoned performers: Kate Dyson is Kath, delighting in her new role as grandmother, showing the photos [“They're not interested!” protests Maurice], and finally, Maurice gone, moving in to the annexe to be useful once more. Her role considerably enlivened by the glitterball Act One finale – I Still Got It Honey – where she struts her stuff on the work surface. Paul Greenwood plays Maurice, subtly ageing from the sprightly pram-pusher to the shuffling depressive confined to his favourite armchair.

All very nicely done; the audience chuckled away as boxes were ticked and funny bones tickled. But ultimately a little bland, a little shallow – one longed for something edgier, more acerbic, such as might have been penned by David Nobbs or Sue Townsend …

production photograph by Robert Day

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

HABEAS CORPUS

HABEAS CORPUS

Latchingdon Arts and Drama Society at the Tractor Shed

18.06.2014

Not for the first time, it's off to Latchingdon to see Habeas Corpus, one of the best plays by my favourite writer.

Alan Bennett's philosophical farce is a challenge for any group, not least because there is so much for the actors to do, and for the audience to appreciate. The jokes and the references come thick and fast; timing is crucial.

Even on opening night, LADS managed a creditable pace, and kept the thinnish crowd audibly amused. Gavin Rouse's affectionate production had many delightful touches: the telephones handed on from the wings [with the hands included in the cleverly choreographed curtain call], the surreal dancing with chairs in the closing moments, the follow spot, and the pop-up scenery [“set the scene and see the set-up”] reminiscent of Latchingdon in its glory days.

He was helped by a strong cast of comedy actors.

Keith Spencer certainly looked the part of the old-fashioned General Practitioner from Hove. I am sure that his confidence and comic timing will have increased as the run went on. But many opportunities were missed [no attempt to convey the subtext of the “a little run down” speech]. He was good, though, in his Brighton Pier sequences [Bennett would be bemused, or possibly incensed, to hear his verse bowdlerized] and the Our World speech.

Eileen Judd was his frustrated wife – elocution her strong point - Carole Hart his flat-chested spinster sister. Nice work from Adam Hart, in his awful specs, as Dennis/Trevor/Leonard and Aimee Hart as the lovely Felicity. Gill Bridle was outstanding as the old colonial lady, commanding the stage and never missing a trick. Greek Chorus Amelia Swabb was superbly done, with Hoover and feather duster, by Joan Cooper. Denzil Shanks, with his fluttering hands, was David Hudson, Canon Throbbing, on his bike, was Alan Elkins. LADS veteran Robin Warnes lost inches to play a convincing Sir Percy, and Bill Wright was the unfortunate Mr Purdue.

Some black holes in the lighting plot meant that crucial asides, especially stage right, tended to be lost; the black curtains in the doorways were a distraction. I wasn't convinced by the Instamatic. I wanted to see the Rubens [helps to get the Apollo Space Missions laugh]. And I was sorry that the Hammond organ we heard at the opening wasn't used more often.

Tiny niggles, these, for the most part, born out of an unhealthily close acquaintance with the play – producer once, MD once, audience countless times, from Guinness on. This was a thoroughly enjoyable romp, boldly and stylishly done by the legendary LADS.

OWEN WINGRAVE

OWEN WINGRAVE

at Snape Maltings

15.06.2014

Against the bare brick vastness of the Maltings, Britten's pacifist chamber opera risks looking a little lost. Glad we sat near the front. Originally written for television, it needs the intimacy of close-ups for the powerful conflict between “the last of the Wingraves” and his martial clan.

But fortunately there are some superb performances to savour here.

Susan Bullock is the implacable aunt; Samantha Crawford the sympathetic Mrs Coyle, wife of Spencer Coyle [an excellent Jonathan Summers, looking in his mutton chop whiskers the image of W S Gilbert] the military college lecturer to whom Wingrave first confides his distaste for war. And James Way, as the Ballad Singer [written for Pears], chillingly conjures up the ghost story which gives the piece its tragic end.

Ross Ramgobin sings Wingrave – beautifully phrased, and, like almost all the characters, crisply enunciated. His “Peace” aria in Act Two is compellingly delivered, and Ramgobin subtly brings out the strength behind the tortured traitor to the Wingrave family values.

The chamber reduction by David Matthews sounds fresh and incisive in the hands of the Britten-Pears Sinfonia – all that late-Britten percussion – and the opera is conducted, with more precision than passion, perhaps, by Mark Wigglesworth.

Neil Bartlett's staging uses some makeshift screens to suggest locations, while introducing a silent chorus of present-day soldiers ["The Dead"] to move the screens and to embody the accusing ancestors. They are a constant, menacing presence, their dress uniforms an uncomfortable irrelevance to their inner aggression, frighteningly focused on Wingrave himself. And towards the end each is given a ghost child of his own, dragged ominously off into the wings.

Good to see this neglected opera back in the space which saw its first performance. And good to celebrate an Essex connection or two. Ross Ramgobin was educated in Chelmsford, and has appeared in Chelmsford Cathedral, which provides the choristers for the legend sequence, who also appear, in period pyjamas, in the massacre of the innocents …

OUR HOUSE

OUR HOUSE

Springers at the Civic Theatre

14.06.2014

Oh what fun we had … a moment of pure Madness in the closing minutes of the last night, as the triumphant cast jumped down to join the cheering crowd in the aisles of the Civic Theatre, all dancing to the umpteenth reprise of the title number.

Barry Miles' production is cheeky and lively from the off, with a huge cast throwing themselves into this song-and-dance story of a Camden lad whose double life makes a powerful morality play. The choreography, by Melissa Smart, is quirky and inventive: the stop motion street scene, the Vegas wedding, the fan dancers, the skipping-rope, the Berkeley brollies, and, most talked of over interval drinks, those dancing desks and daring lifts.

Jon Newman played good Joe and bad Joe – a virtuoso performance as he flipped between the straight and narrow and the primrose path. Nicola Myers was his movingly loyal girl Sarah, with two excellent duets in the second act. A huge cast changed costume and character in a twinkling – funeral to wedding – and brought a raucous enthusiasm to these iconic numbers.

Strong character support from Colin Shoard as the Dad from Above, and wonderful comic double acts from Ian [Frank Spencer] Pavelin and Aaron Crowe as Joe's gormless mates, and Sophie Lines and Natalie Hills as the heartless girls.

The dialogue is not always convincing, the lyrics even less so, but the story and the music carry the show – Ian Myers' classy pit band had the audience waving and clapping along about eight bars in …