A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

at Shakespeare's Globe

30.04.16



Shakespeare's text cut and “improved”. Extraneous songs and dances making for a long evening.
No, not Emma Rice's “Wonder” Dream but Purcell's “Restoration Spectacular” The Fairy Queen, first staged in London more than 300 years ago. Nothing new under the watery moon.
Very much a calling-card production from Rice, taking the helm at Shakespeare's Globe following two decades from Rylance and Dromgoole.
A lacy metal forest outside the building. “WONDER” in lights over one of the merchandise carts. And inside, huge white balloons fill the sky, and semi-transparent green tree-trunks hang down into the yard.
Over the doors, two tech desks, signalling another departure: amplification and lighting effects. Of course, as is often argued, Shakespeare would have used them had they been available. But they weren't, and he didn't. And certainly not in this space, designed for a very different style.
“Rock the Ground” - a quote from Act Four – in neon at the back of the stage. A lengthy, uncanonical, but very funny prologue introduces the Globe Stewards who will become the rude mechanicals. Rita Quince and her crew, with Health and Safety Officer Nick Bottom the only man.
We're a long way from Warwickshire. In a weird Grexit, Athens is expunged, and the woods given a local habitation and a name – London, Bankside, Hoxton. Hipsters weeds are the lovers' choice: no longer two of each kind, since one of the couples is gay.
The feel is of an Indian wedding – Tanika Gupta the dramaturg here – and sitar music underscores much of the action. The songs – sometimes settings of Shakespeare's verse – range wider, with George Formby and David Bowie sharing the bill.
The rough magic of the Fairies is energetic, with much choreography. They are Tudor-clad, but it is dressing-up, since Katy Owen's engagingly nimble Puck has flashing trainers and a day-glo water pistol, and Zubin Varla's menacing Oberon swigs from a plastic bottle of cheap cider.
Lots of laughs, though not all of them are Shakespeare's doing. Mixed fortunes for the text - “you ugly bitch” is not a modern equivalent of Lysander's cruel but witty put-down. Meow-Meow's Titania delivers the nine-men's-morris speech movingly; Ankur Bahl's Helenus has a lovely soliloquy in the first scene.
The Pyramus and Thisbe sequence benefits from being trimmed, and is very amusingly done by the mechanicals with Rita Quince at the keyboard.
But as “Jill will have Jack / No looking back” is warbled as the play closes, it suddenly seems a “long age of three hours”.

I'm not sure I'm one of the “purists” and “traditionalists” whose reservations many reviews have airily dismissed. I've seen, and loved, some radical Dreams in my time: lesbian lovers, a boarding school, early Hollywood. But I found it hard to warm to this lively, loud staging, full of tricks and ideas, which seems to be aimed especially at people who don't really get Shakespeare. Of whom, unless she has been seriously misrepresented by the media, Emma Rice is one. Meant, surely, as a celebration of this place, in this anniversary year, it comes across as apologetic and patronising: you'll like this play better if we sugar the pill with gimmicks and jokes. Let's hope that the new audiences it brings in will stay for what looks like a varied season, finishing with a revival of last year's Merchant of Venice.

MADE IN DAGENHAM

MADE IN DAGENHAM

Leigh Operatic and Dramatic Society at the Palace Theatre Westcliff

04.05.16

for Sardines

The Essex première for Made in Dagenham, the Musical. And haven't LODS done the county proud! High production values, from the design to the orchestra to the professional-looking programme.

It's the uplifting tale of the archetypal Essex girls who take on the might of Ford America and the MCPs of the TUC to win their battle for equal pay. Following in the footsteps of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty, it's an unsubtle, manipulative show, redeemed by Richard Bean's engaging book and Richard Thomas's witty lyrics. And here, by an energetic, polished production on the Palace stage.

Helen Sharpe gets some wonderful performances from a strong cast, especially of course the women of the sewing machine room at Ford's.

Laura Hurrell is a wonderful Rita O'Grady, the strong, if initially reluctant, spokeswoman for the group. We see her domestic life almost wrecked by the strike; Hurrell manages to convince both as an ordinary working-class woman and a heroine of the industrial relations struggle for equality. Not to mention selling some of the best numbers in David Arnold's patchy score. Amongst the other broad-brush characters are Kathy Ward's inarticulate Clare [her “Wossname” number is a delight] and Emma Elliot's dolly bird Sandra. Sarah Gallucci brings pathos as well as personality to union convenor Connie, and Jo Whitnell is excellent value as big Beryl, potty-mouthed and incorrigibly outspoken.

Anthony Bristoe is a sympathetically conflicted husband, a New Man in the making, perhaps.

The men have to do a good deal of doubling in this show, so Monty, the Union Man, is convincingly done by Simon Sharpe, who's also the gross club comic Chubby Chuff. Barry Jones has three roles, including a slightly camp Harold Wilson, superb in his number with the trio of Civil Servants. Hard-hearted, hard-nosed US boss Tooley is powerfully played by Lewis Sheldrake, who's also the boy Barry, target of some fruity banter from the women. And Peter Brown works hard in multiple roles, including Latin teacher Mr Buckton, part of a plot device which brings together Rita and Zoe Berry's Lisa, middle-class feminist wife of Ford UK boss Hopkins [Neil Lands]. It involves a protest against corporal punishment in school. Unthinkable now, of course. If only equality had been so thoroughly won.

1968, year of revolution, is compellingly recalled. In the musical idiom of some of the better numbers - “This Is What We Want” for example - and in the settings – the Social Club and the Berni Inn.

Paul Ward's set is minimal – impressive sewing machines, less impressive Cortina – I liked the way the O'Grady's home was set before the overture: kitchen sink, ironing board, lunchbox, Weetabix. Outstanding digital graphics by Andrew Seal – the orange domestic décor, the Dagenham plant – make the many changes of scene simple and dynamic.

Stunning staging of some of the big numbers - choreography by Michelle Taylor – the title song, and the rousing anthems that end each act: Everybody Out and Stand Up.

Rachael Plunkett is the Musical Director, and she's part of the great pit band under the baton of Stuart Woolner.

GUYS AND DOLLS

GUYS AND DOLLS

at the Phoenix Theatre

26.04.16

A national tour on the road, and at the Phoenix on Charing Cross Road another change of cast.
No disappointments here, though; the show seems just as fresh as it did in Chichester. The drunken brawl, Luck Be A Lady, and a brilliant transition from hanging noose to Havanah and Carlos Acosta's showy choreography.
An excellently pairing of Samantha Spiro, consistently entertaining as Miss Adelaide, a priceless Dietrich-inspired débutante, and Broadway veteran Richard Kind as good old reliable Nathan. A fine Nicely Nicely from Gavin Spokes, a Savoy cast survivor. The lovers are Siubhan Harrison's severely pious Miss Sarah and Oliver Tompsett's superbly sung Sky.
Good to see the splendid Jason Pennycooke as Benny Southstreet – his title number with Spokes eliciting a well-deserved Bravo! from the back of the stalls.

THE BEST THING

THE BEST THING
Vamos Theatre at the Cramphorn Theatre, Chelmsford
29.04.2016

for The Reviews Hub




Masks are a very ancient theatrical tradition. Today, that tradition is kept alive by Vamos “the UK's leading full mask theatre company”.
This bittersweet tale of the permissive society, social stigma and a love-child lost is brilliantly brought to life by four performers and many more masks.
The scenery – designer Carl Davies - is skewed, fun and bright – not unlike the show itself, which despite the tragic theme retains a lightness of touch and a veneer of nostalgia which helps to sugar the pill.
Susan, child of the 60s – Georgie Girl and Shout! on the soundtrack – reads Lady C, gets her hair bobbed and her clothes Quant-ified, drags boyfriend Dennis away from the World Cup to make clumsy love in the light-box bedroom. Their baby is given up for adoption, on her dad's insistence, it would seem. He offers her a Beatles LP by way of compensation. Young Dennis would love to be a father, but Susan has walked out of his life, her contact with her daughter Lisa is limited to letters and birthday cards, never sent. Ingeniously, and movingly, the action is framed and fleshed out by Susan's funeral, and the reunion of Lisa and her grandfather.
There are some terrific set-pieces: the three women in the hairdressers, the three students at the typing school, the three mothers in the labour ward. The use of body language is impressive. It is amazing how much can be conveyed without words, or facial expression. Although, weirdly, the features of Russell Dean's wide-eyed masks do seem to alter according to our expectations of the characters' moods – exasperated or affectionate, imploring or severe.
The audience does have to do some of the work, of course. Interestingly, the teenage girls in the row in front struggled a little with the form - “It's not the same without speech...” and felt the need to explain the plot to each other, in discreet whispers, as it developed.
Rachael Savage's piece is an unusual approach to a largely forgotten piece of social history – a period well within living memory when many young women lost their babies to adoption simply because they were born out of wedlock.
It is beautifully, sensitively brought to life by the four actors: Richard J. Fletcher, Marissa Gunter, Sarah Hawkins and Angela Laverick. The original music by Janie Armour, and the vintage sounds of Donizetti and the Swinging Sixties, together with the décor and fashions of the age, set it firmly in period. Mask means that much more doubling can be done, and it also means that the work is equally accessible to speakers of any language, and to deaf and hearing audiences alike.

INVINCIBLE

INVINCIBLE
The Original Theatre Company and the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester
28.04.2016
for The Reviews Hub

Social class is at the heart of much British comedy. Ayckbourn, in particular, is master of the awkwardness, the inferiority complex, the snobbishness and the culture clash.
Torben Betts' play mines much the same seams. A bourgeois couple have downsized, thanks to the recession, from London to the terra incognita of the North. He's a redundant civil servant; she's a Buddhist, Marxist artist. Seeking to integrate into their new milieu, they invite a couple of neighbours round for drinks. She's a perma-tanned dental receptionist; he's a pot-bellied postman. And the scene is set for excruciating misunderstandings and increasingly heated exchanges of views. As, for instance, when anti-Blair Emily attacks the politicians who risk the lives of “misguided, ignorant” troops in foreign wars, only to find that Alan and Dawn are patriots, 110% behind our boys, not least because they have a personal link to the conflict. Or when Alan seeks Emily's expert view of his paintings.
They're stereotypes, of course, but beneath the clichés lie substantial back-stories, and it is these which will drive the second act into darker, more tragic territory.
Two events occur almost as soon as they arrive. A confessional moment sees them confused in a gloriously awful misunderstanding, beautifully handled in the writing, and in the performance here.
And this is the turning point, when deeper feelings come to the surface and the personal, and political, divide widens between the middle class, who will survive despite everything, and the “real people” whose lives are destroyed.
A fine quartet give rock solid, pin sharp performances.
Graeme Brookes is the boorish, boring Alan. He makes him a sympathetic character, despite his many faults. His great loves are his paintings, his cat Vince [for HMS Invincible, hence the play's title] and his glamorous wife Dawn [Kerry Bennett]. All of them taken from him by the new couple next door. Oliver, cricketer and civil servant is played by Alastair Whatley as a wet liberal who cannot share the socialist passions of his “highly strung” partner, beautifully characterized by Emily Bowker.
Christopher Harper's production skilfully suggests these two couples who speak without listening, whose relationships have become tired. The groupings for the many confrontations are brilliantly appropriate. The scenes, some of them quite short, are linked with patriotic airs, from Pomp and Circumstance to Sailing By. The audience are drawn in to these troubled lives, moving from knowing laughter to total involvement.
Victoria Spearing's convincing, lived-in design is introduced by a little model train, travelling through tiny wooden towns on the apron before coming to rest amongst the other toys, to be tidied away before the guests arrive.