ROMANCING MISS BLISS

ROMANCING MISS BLISS

Jubilant Productions
at the Headgate Theatre, Colchester
10.02.16


Romantic fiction – top selling literary genre, staple of the mobile library – what does it mean to you ? Rose-tinted Barbara Cartland and her team of amanuenses ? A cottage industry of prolific hacks, many of them pseudonymous men ?
These tropes, and much more, in Anne Pearson's gently amusing satire, full of word-play [dentistry puns, Austen titles] and lovely pastiche: “the heart is a strange organ”, in novels like The Heart Surgeon's Secret, The Dentist's Dilemma and To The Moon And Back. The scenes in the dentist's chair are particularly cherishable: “I'll be gentle with you,” he promises. “Open wide … you seem much more relaxed this time.”
Fliss Bliss – her real name – is persuaded to enter a competition run by Pomme d'Amour Press. Her prize: mentoring support by best-selling author Olivia de la Fontaine – not his real name. Using the indispensable manual for aspiring romantic writers, The Pathway to Passion.
Along the way there are dramatized extracts from work in progress, and guest appearances by Miss Austen in drag and assorted denizens of the local library. It's fast-moving and great fun, though the writing could sometimes be a little tighter. As Mike says to Felicity: “interesting characters and witty dialogue.”
Needless to say, romance blossoms between neophyte and old pro, and a quirky finale has them jump up from Remington and Apple in a triumphant dance routine.
This is a lovely two-hander – even the gushing compère [Helen Watson] could easily be a voice-over like publisher Veronica [Patricia Byford] – and Christine Absalom and Ben Livingstone relish every moment, with perfect comic timing and tongues just far enough into the cheek …
This rehearsed reading, directed by Ignatius Anthony and produced by Jules Easlea, is, one hopes, the last stage of development before the long-awaited tour to small venues in the region.

THINGS TO COME – ROMANCING MISS BLISS

THINGS TO COME – ROMANCING MISS BLISS

Jubilant Productions at the Headgate Theatre, Colchester

Since the success of Merry It Was To Laugh There back in 2014, we've eagerly awaited a new chamber work from Jubilant.
After a few hiccups and false starts, Miss Bliss is getting a rehearsed reading at the Headgate next month.
Romancing Miss Bliss or ‘The Dentist’s Dilemma’ is a new original and comic look at the secret lives of those who write romance fiction, the best selling literary genre in the world.
Dentist Felicity Bliss thinks writing a romance is as easy as falling out of bed. For a bet, she enters Pomme d’Amour Press’s competition to write such a book, and wins. Her prize is to be mentored in the art of romantic fantasy fiction by a seasoned scribe and soon she discovers it’s not all satin sheets and Chardonnay. Can she write another book? Is there romance in dentistry? Will she learn to love her readers and will her mentor find some new vocabulary?

Written by playwright Anne Pearson especially for Jubilant, the play features an original ‘book-within-a-play’ style as the scenes from Felicity’s book are dramatised.

This reading features Colchester favourites Christine Absalom and Ben Livingstone, and is directed by Ignatius Anthony.

8pm on Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 February, tickets £8 [£6 concessions]
Headgate Theatre
14 Chapel Street North
Colchester
Essex
CO2 7AT

01206 366000

tickets@headgatetheatre.co.uk

MERRY IT WAS TO LAUGH THERE

MERRY IT WAS TO LAUGH THERE

Jubilant Productions at the Mercury Studio, Colchester

11.09.2014

for The Public Reviews

A Mercury homecoming for this timely anthology; the director and the performers familiar faces in this house. Devised by the cast and directed by Ignatius Anthony and producer Jules Easlea, the show mingles great poetry with the voices of the lads on the front and, in voice over [Anthony], the carefully preserved diaries of Captain K C Buchanan, who records with a dry, laconic precision the minutiae and the horror of life in the trenches. “Dull day with showers,” he writes, and later, “Beautiful sunny day”. For the death, and burial, of a comrade.

The simple setting has a small space for Him [Tim Freeman], mess tin, kitbag, and a small space opposite for Her [Christine Absalom], one of Binyon's ”familiar tables of home”, with a brief candle burning in the sad shires. And, strewn across the floor, diary pages and letters from the trenches and the home front.

This was the first British army to be almost universally literate, thanks to our belated emulation of the Prussian education system. Hasty scribblings from front line or field hospital made these Tommies the bloggers of their day, Easlea claims, and it's easy to feel the intimate immediacy of their words, even across a hundred years.

Their thoughts are interspersed with contributions from the great and the good – Kitchener, Ataturk, an acerbic A P Herbert. The women, who found a new freedom in these dark days, are well represented here. Pacifist poet Margaret Postgate Cole - “The Veteran”, May Herschell Clark's pithy “Nothing to Report”, Rose Macaulay's “Many Sisters” and Sassoon's German mother dreaming by the fire ['While you are knitting socks to send your son / His face is trodden deeper in the mud.'] And 12-year-old Inez Quilter, remembering the fate of millions of horses caught up in mankind's conflict.

The show's title – from Wilfred Owen – suggests a lighter side, and there is a leavening of grim humour from the Tommies themselves – Mr Rat, Trench Pudding and Ragout Maconnochie, the London Skittish, and Madame la Somme, accompanied on teapot and tin plate percussion.

Rich pickings indeed from the pity of war, from Helen Mackay's troop train “Will the train never start? / God, make the train start!” to Robert Graves' Armistice Day “flappers gone drunk and indecent”.

No shortage of Great War entertainments this year. What makes this stand out is the superb sequencing of the extracts [all scrupulously listed in the programme] and the contribution of our two actors. Freeman proudly remembers his great-grandfather, who survived the war, awarded the VC on the same day, a week before the Armistice, which saw Wilfred Owen killed in action. Not readings but heartfelt performances, simply presented, with non-specific costumes, back projections, and a bonus collage in the interval - “Postcards Home” - a film by Dai Vaughan.

Merry it was to laugh there-

Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.

For power was on us as we slashed bones bare

Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

MERRY IT WAS TO LAUGH THERE

MERRY IT WAS TO LAUGH THERE

Jubilant Productions at the Cramphorn Theatre

04.07.14

A century on, so much remains of the War To End All War.

Chatting before curtain-up, we heard of medals, binoculars, embroidered postcards from the front, ornaments fashioned from shell-cases – all carefully preserved by the families of the Fallen.

And of course the words. This uniquely moving anthology, devised by the cast, directed by Ignatius Anthony and producer Jules Easlea, mingles great poetry with the voices of the lads on the front – the first universally literate army – and, in voice-over [Anthony], the carefully preserved diaries of Captain K C Buchanan. Like many of his brother officers, he recorded with a dry, meticulous precision, the minutiae and the horror of life in the trenches.

The simple setting has a small space for Him [Tim Freeman], mess tin, kitbag, and a small space opposite for Her [Christine Absalom], one of Binyon's ”familiar tables of home”, a brief candle burning in the sad shires.

The women, who found a new freedom in these dark days, were well represented here. Pacifist poet Margaret Postgate Cole - “The Veteran”, May Herschell Clark's pithy “Nothing to Report”, Rose Macaulay's “Many Sisters” [ a tomboy's complaint – 'Oh it's you have the luck, out there in blood and muck' ] and Sassoon's German mother dreaming by the fire ['While you are knitting socks to send your son / His face is trodden deeper in the mud.']

The show's title – from Wilfred Owen – suggests a lighter side, and there was a leavening of grim humour from the Tommies themselves – Mr Rat, Trench Pudding, Madame la Somme, the London Skittish.

Rich pickings indeed from the pity of war, not readings but heartfelt performances from our two actors, simply presented, with non-specific costumes, back projections, and a bonus collage of postcards home in the interval.

We do not discover until the end that the first words we hear – A Soldier's Winter [ 'And as I lie there staring at the sky / is my body cold ? / As I lie I hope I am not forgotten / But here I am alone. / I close my eyes and try to think of home …' ] were penned not in the mud of Flanders but just five years ago in Kandahar …

Merry it was to laugh there-

Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.

For power was on us as we slashed bones bare

Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.