THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Brentwood Theatre

11.12.16

Bill Francoeur was a prolific writer of musicals for the youth and amateur market in the U.S.

His free and easy adaptation, with James DeVita, of Lewis Carroll might raise a purist eyebrow or two, but the children in the audience, who probably know the ball park better than the chess board, were royally entertained for the full 90 minutes.

The transatlantic twist seemed to work best when it was most radical: the Wonderland Gamesters, or a country star Humpty Dumpty [an excellent Elliot Burton, who also gave us the White Rabbit and a talking flower]. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, tiny propellers on their schoolboy caps, also captured the wacky style well [Libby Grant and Laura Hawkyard].

Sophie Farquhar was a sweetly bemused Alice, pert and assertive with her rival Queens [Katie Lawrence and Lydia Shaw]. Olivia Sewell and Scott Westoby were pawns, and between them played eight other roles, from Tiger-Lily to a Dixie Chicken – one of Dumpty's backing dancers.

Technically the production – directed by Ray Howes with set design by David Zelly – was a triumph. A chandelier, red and white chessmen, and centre stage, a superb under-lit chess board on which Alice moves towards the eighth square. Some impressive production numbers too [choreographer James Sinclair] – the aforementioned Dixie Chickens, the baseball game, the ultra-violet ballet [always a panto favourite] and the gospel choir for “You Got Responsibility” using the whole space and the mirror ball !

production photograph: Carmel Jane

A DISTANT COUNTRY CALLED YOUTH

Through the Looking Glass Productions at the Mercury Studio, Colchester

04 March 2011

for The Public Reviews

“The play is memory.”

This little jewel of a piece is simply a litany of letters. Letters penned, or typed, to an unseen supporting cast of family, friends, professional associates, by the young Thomas Lainer Williams.

Skilfully adapted by Steve Lawson, and faultlessly performed by Oliver Andrews, who takes the text and makes it come to life, with subtle changes of mood and meaning adding value to the words.

This is a totally believable Williams, with his waspish wit and his effete Southern drawl.

We follow the writer's colourful career – letters to publishers, waiting tables in a hospital canteen, selling Pictorial subscriptions, working in a shoe warehouse, living at the YMCA – and his travels – notorious cabarets in Paris, a gay whorehouse in Mexico – and his long struggle to get his plays staged.

American Blues is accepted; Tom adopts his nom-de-plume. He gratefully employs an agent, polishes a vehicle for Lana Turner, and works hard on The Gentleman Caller, which we know as the Glass Menagerie, “I think it contains my sister ...”, resisting producer pressure for a happy ending.

Tennessee's relationships are difficult - “sadder and wilder” than a Chekhov play. We hear his passionate letter of “robust manly love” to the dancer Kip Kiernan; we glimpse his fragile friendship with Laurette Taylor, the first Amanda Wingfield.

We are briefly aware of his being harassed by Blue Devils, and he reaches more frequently for the bottle of Bourbon on the sideboard. But we are spared the decline and the “accidental” death. The play ends as he resolutely types the final act of The Moth – the one where Blanche throws herself under a train in the freight yards.

One lady confided as we walked thoughtfully out of the studio, “ I'm so glad he decided to go on with it ...”

The setting is evocative - I loved the floorboards with his correspondents' names written on them – the props sparingly but eloquently used: the tailor's dummy, the gramophone just once, his sister's strange green dress.

“Tenn” is a restless letter-writer. He flits from desk to chaise longue, from hat-stand to suitcase, as he evokes his Southern puritan family, his one-night-stands, his grandmother's death, his sister's illness. And all the time we are aware that all these influences, all these characters, will shape the plays he is yet to write.

A wonderful tour-de-force from Andrews, engaging the audience, effortlessly persuading us that these long-faded letters are freshly penned as we eavesdrop. Through them, and his perfect performance, we are able to spend 90 minutes in the company of this “whining spineless cissy” whose plays have become classics of world theatre, and whose centenary we celebrate this month.

Two more dates fixed this tour: Keswick for the actual birthday at the end of March, and Clwyd in May.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews