The auditorium was packed solid for the 20th annual
Brents Awards ceremony. Hopeful nominees – many groups taking a whole table –
cheered and applauded as the winners picked their way, Oscars-style,
to the stage to receive the coveted engraved glass award. Amongst those honoured, three excellent dramas: Female Transport from New Venture Players [best design of a play] The Thrill
of Love from Kytes Theatre Group [best supporting actress – Josie
Bruty, best actress – Romy Brooks and best production] and My Boy Jack from The Hutton Players [best supporting actor – Ben
Sylvester, best actor – William Wells] Musical theatre successes included Shenfield Operatic's
Jekyll and Hyde [best supporting actress – Kate Smith, best actor –
David Pridige] and Brentwood Operatic Society's The Wiz [best
musical]. Youth companies were strongly represented, with no
fewer than eleven group and individual nominations, including Vivid's
High School Musical, Horizons' Blood Wedding, BOSSY's 13, and
sweeping the board, the memorable Into the Woods from Firebirds [best
youth performance – Fleur Sumption, best design, most imaginative
costume, best supporting actors - Tom Carswell and Seb Mayo, best
actress – Charlotte Rayner, and, joint winners of the Mary Redman
Award – Charlotte Rayner and Kate Claussen].
And, worthy winner of the Jo Stoneham 'unsung
backstage hero' award, Joy Beyerman, for more than
forty years unstinting service to Brentwood Operatic. nominations in full here photograph: Chris Cook, Brentwood Gazette
“I
see the London opening,” says actor/impresario Chitterlow. How
perceptive. As we watch the Chichester production's last day, the
cast
already know that they will all transfer to the Noel Coward on
October 29. Not
so hard to predict, really, given the track record of Chichester
transfers. But nothing has been left to chance. This is “the new
flash bang wallop musical”, the third incarnation of the
original Tommy Steele vehicle. Radically,
for those still mourning the Old Military Canal, the book has been
given a makeover by Julian Fellowes, no less. And there are new songs
a-plenty from Stiles and Drewe [Betty
Blue Eyes, Travels with My Aunt]. That
big number is key. Two lessons seem to have been learnt. First, you
can't really follow that. So it's shifted to the Act Two finale.
Second, the show needs more of the same. Big, energetic production
numbers and British charm. Knees-up
in the Hope and Anchor. Swinging from the chandeliers. So we have
“Pick Out A Simple Tune”, “Back the Right Horse”, and, a
charming seaside postcard duet for the girls - “Touch of
Happiness”. But
we still have “Money to Burn”, “If the Rain's Got to Fall”,
and some of the quieter numbers: “Too Far Above Me”, “The One
Who's Run Away”. Not
to mention the title number. The
Chichester/Coward cast is led by Charlie Stemp as Kipps – a young,
energetic, broadly beaming song and dance man. The two women in his
life - “Up and Down the Social Scale” is another new number –
are Devon-Elise Johnson as Anne and Emma Williams as Helen. Ian
Bartholomew is a brilliant actor-laddie, who's also the vicar in the
ensemble. More doubling from John Conroy as Mr Shalford and Foster
the butler, and Gerard
Carey as black sheep of the Walsingham family and, memorably, the
camp photographer in that
big number. The
design is based on a Victorian bandstand - “Borough of Folkestone”
on the cast iron work – all blue skies and seaside with multiple
revolves for smooth scene changes. And, this being Chichester,
there's real wet rain at the end of Act One, and some wonderful
production numbers, not least the show-stopping banjo orchestra. Though
it'll be a tall order to replicate our
front row experience
in the Noel Coward, formerly the Albery, still known as the New
Theatre back in 1963 when Steele first played Kipps's banjo.
Kneehigh
at Shakespeare's Globe 28.08.2016 “In
the dark times, will there be singing?” It's
not every family show that cites Brecht in the first moments. This is
Kneehigh's big-hearted adaptation of the Morpurgo story of one girl,
her cat and the Second World War. Emma
Rice has brought it to the Globe, as she did with the equally
enchanting Flying Lovers earlier in the season. It
sits well in the democratic space of the Wooden O, though the Globe
adds little to the experience. The groundlings, as usual, get the
best of it. The actors, clad in overalls, sweep the yard before the
action, the excellent blues band warms up from the musician's
gallery. There
is plenty of music throughout – underscoring, which is becoming a
feature at Rice's Globe – telling the band to shut up for a bit
raises a hearty laugh. But
there's also a knees-up with banjo
and beer bottles, and a haunting spiritual from a dead GI. South
Devon, 1943. Home to Lily, her cat and her family. But they are soon
to be made homeless by
Exercise Tiger, rehearsal manoeuvres for D-Day. Also far from home
are a French schoolmistress, evacuees from London, and American
troops. It's
an inventive, engaging production – the landing craft, tiny models,
sail, and burn, in tin baths at the front of the stage. Tips the cat
is a rag-doll puppet. Young Lily dreams of a playground face-off,
complete with skipping rhymes, to settle the conflict between Hitler
and Churchill. Great
performances all round, not least from Katy Owen as Lily, feistier
and flirtier than in the book. Ncuti
Gatwa and Nandi Bhebhe are the two black Americans, Adi and Harry,
Chris Jared Lily's father, as well as the village parson and Grandad.
Ewan Wardrop gives hilarious broad-brush comedy as the Lord of the
Manor and the brassy mother of evacuee Barry [Adam Sopp]. And there's
a memorable double from Mike Shepherd as a grumpy Grandad and Lily in
later life, reunited at last with the older Adi, played by hep cat
Adebayo
Bolaji, who's also in charge of the music. As in
War Horse, a young person's search for a beloved animal, lost in the
wider world of war, is at the heart of the story. There is a happy
ending, but the tragedy and the loss of life is not sanitised.
There's dignity as well as daftness in this hugely enjoyable ensemble
piece.
BRITTEN IN BROOKLYN Positive Entertainment Wilton's Music Hall 02.09.2016 for The Reviews Hub
Alan Bennett, in The Habit of Art, imagines a meeting between ageing geniuses, once friends and collaborators, Auden and Britten. Truth, though, is often stranger than fiction, and Zoe Lewis's fascinating new play looks back to the war years, when the poet and the composer shared a frequently squalid house on Middagh Street. Novelist Carson McCullers was another resident, plus of course Britten's partner Peter Pears (like Thomas Mann's daughter Erika, and Auden's lover Chester, sadly absent from this company). A later arrival, Gypsy Rose Lee, brought along her domestic staff, which alleviated the squalor a little, apparently. An evocative set on three levels, echoing the faded décor of the auditorium, features, amongst the clutter, a walnut veneer grand piano and a bathtub, both used to excellent effect. The piece begins with an unseen orchestra tuning, before young Britten conducts Dawn from the Sea Pictures. As he does so, he fields questions from his tribunal, tried as a Conscientious Objector after his return home in 1942. “Why did you spend two years in the United States?” - “To get away, sir.” Then he's deep in the bowels of the boat bringing him back, writing to Auden, remembering his time in the house: a first encounter with McCullers, dancing, drinking, playing parlour games. A bohemian enclave where everyone is “free to create, unfettered”. But then it's Pearl Harbor, the party's over. A naval officer (David Burnett), a Pinteresque blend of menace and charm, brings an official letter summoning Britten back to the UK. He's read Crabbe, and the idea for Peter Grimes is born – which is where we came in. The quirky writing chimes well with the creative mess of Middagh Street; its poetry sometimes subtly suggests the genius at work: “You collect her lost words like jewels and put them in little frames...”. A superb young cast, directed by Oli Rose, captures beautifully the bizarre encounters and surreal incidents, as well as the deeper emotional passages. Ruby Bentall is outstanding as Carson, flaky, flighty and frighteningly intense; a nice contrast with the simpler, more straightforward allure of Gypsy (a compelling Sadie Frost). Though his performance is engaging, it is harder to believe in Ryan Sampson's Britten, wiggling his hips on the staircase, responding to an introduction with “Call me Benji” or “Guilty as charged”. A frequently cheerful live wire, with little hint of the repressed, shy man many people still remember. John Hollingworth's hard-drinking Auden is a mercurial, often melancholic man, sensitively portrayed: poised to jump from the roof, recalling the geniuses lost in the Great War, or joining Britten in a cabaret Funeral Blues to end Act One. They're all long gone to the Pantheon of posterity, of course. The brownstone February house is no more, demolished soon after the war to make room for an Expressway. Wilton's Music Hall - “London's secret theatre space” - survives, though during the war there would have been nothing to tempt Britten, or Gypsy, through its shabby doors. It was then what it had been for most of the 20th century, a mission hall and soup kitchen. production photograph: Marc Brenner
Coming
soon to St Martin's Church – the setting last month for the Young
Company's beautiful Romeo and Juliet – TWAS Theatre's new
production of Shakespeare's sylvan comedy As You Like It. It's
set in the present day, in a travelling community, but still
features a cross-dressing Rosalind, Charles the Wrestler, “All the
World's a Stage” Jacques and the rest, plus live folk music. It's
playing in the Colchester church on September 29, 30 and 31, at 7:30.
