COWARDY CUSTARD

at the Civic Theatre

25.05.11

This glorious pot-pourri of words and music by Sir Noel Coward was first staged while The Master was still with us. Together with its many imitators, it's remained popular ever since.

The present touring version, with just five talented and industrious performers, retains much of the charm and the humour of the original, while adding some effective touches of its own.

One such was the emotive inclusion of the London Bombings, alongside the Blitz, in the London Pride sequence. Sir Noel would have approved the patriotic, propagandist sentiments. And also the restoration of one of his personal favourites, Matelot.

The great strength of this revival was the use of cabaret stars at the top of their game – Dillie Keane, who was priceless in a bilingual Marvellous Party and I Wonder What Happened To Him, and the inimitable Kit and the Widow – Mrs Worthington and Twentieth Century Blues.

The two fresher faces were equally impressive – Stuart Neal dancing in Red Peppers and Room With A View, and Savannah Stevenson superb in the exhausting Coconut Girl audition sequence.

The very simple staging, with its phonograph and its grand piano, was effectively used; the sound reinforcement I found intrusively bright at times, but not enough to detract from a wonderfully potent reminder of this unique “talent to amuse”.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

at Shakespeare's Globe

24.05.11

Oranges growing from the Heavens, flowers around the stage, water features between the players and the groundlings. All suggesting sunny Messina. But there's a hint of Sicily's Arab past too, with lovely latticed screens, and fezzes for the Watch.

I wasn't much tickled by Dogberry [Paul Hunter], who seemed to be channelling the never-very-funny Jack Douglas every time he had a malapropism to flag up, though he and his fellows did have some clever slapstick moments. Hero and Claudio were a little underplayed, though Ony Uhiara had some lovely dialogue with her perplexed father [Joseph Marcell].

The chief delight of Jeremy Herrin's pacy, fresh production was the triple chemistry between Eve Best's very modern Beatrice, Charles Edwards's chatty Benedick and the packed yard. They both built a comic complicity with the audience, sharing quips and soliloquies with effortless ease. This is what marks out a great Globe actor – the ability to use the intimacy of the space and chat, informally and seemingly impromptu, with the crowd in the cockpit. Mark Rylance did it first, and memorably, for years. More recently we've seen Roger Allam's Falstaff and Miranda Raison's Anne Boleyn work the same magic, and now Best and Edwards. Dr Who and his Donna will have a hard act to follow ...

BADDOW MAGNA

Great Baddow Proms 2011 at St Margaret's Church

20.05.11

There aren't many bards about these days, to sing the praises and chart the story of their own neck of the woods.

So it was great to have this year's Baddow Proms devoted in large part to Eric Withams' new cantata, Baddow Magna, a setting of Chris Wright's words, chronicling the history of this village turned suburb. Performed in the parish church by a huge choir of villagers and school-children, accompanied by the Magna Band, illustrated by historical photographs, it was fascinating and enormous fun.

The sound of the Revolting Peasants, trudging back home in defeat, the jolly-bank-holiday music for Galleywood Races, the Waltonian chords, sirens and split choirs of evacuees in the World War II sequence, the dramatic flood of 1958, all were effective evocations of times past. There were local characters too, Bertha Sandford from the shop, Porky Amos from the school, and the tragic Molly Ram [her ballad sung by Jane White], whose murder is memorialised in Molrams Lane.

The work ended with an upbeat finale - “Long may its spirit last ...”

The first half of the concert featured local musicians in works from Vivaldi to YMCA, folk, opera and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Benjamin Britten's opera at the ENO

21.05.11

A lonely man returns to his old school, deserted but for the ghosts, meets his younger self, bitterly remembering being supplanted as teacher's pet by a younger boy.

Of course, it's Britten's Dream.

Christopher Alden's haunting production sometimes sits uneasily on the score, more so on the libretto. We need to read it as a palimpsest, perhaps, or like Hermia, see it “with parted eye”, taking in the two stories at once.

Innocence corrupted is a recurring theme in Britten; here it's as if Death In Venice and The Turn of the Screw have leached into this pastoral. It's the Dream meets the History Boys, with hints of “If...” for good measure.

However, when you're actually experiencing this potent re-working, the school is a strangely compelling image, mesmerising us into accepting this idiosyncratic reading.

The set, based on a real school yard, dominates, and the unnatural lighting supports the oneiric atmosphere.

Theseus, for this is the returning stranger, was Paul Whelan, awkward, haunted, looking not unlike Jennings as Britten in Habit of Art. Puck, his younger self, was a moving Jamie Manton, often close to tears, and bitter in his resentment right to the closing speech. Dominic Williams was the Changeling Boy, given much to do here, conducting the music, taking over some of Puck's tasks.

The outstanding performance of this production, though, was Iestyn Davies as jealous Oberon, the charismatic, creepy teacher. Beautifully sung, with real character and a strong presence wherever on the complex set he was placed. Both he and his music teacher Tytania [the wonderful Anna Christy] were very young – could almost have been mistaken for students. Also youthful, naturally, were the lovers, here imagined as passionate Sixth Formers – Demetrius a muddied oaf in the rugger team. Their trysts and quarrels were hard to take in this setting, though, with no wood in which to wander. But musically very impressive, especially Allan Clayton's Lysander.

The Rude Mechanicals, the only colour in this, grim, grey boyhood world, were, I think, the janitorial staff, with the “slow of study” Snug a PE teacher. Even seasoned performers like Simon Butteriss [Starveling, robbed of the plum drag role of Thisby] and Willard White [Bottom, with no ass-head of his own] struggled to find any fun in this world, shorn as it was of jollity, the magic largely replaced by misery. Where the lovers meet behind the bins, the “weed I showed thee once” is the herb of choice for sixties students, and the flowery bed is a cold, grim corner of the schoolyard.

But the effect of this “fruitless vision” was dramatic, and did often suit the score, given a superb reading by the orchestra under Leo Hussain. The schoolboys, sombre spectres filing slowly across, almost always behind the huge windows, were used effectively – the ending of Act Two was movingly powerful. The conjugation of Amo, Amas, Amat was tellingly replaced on the blackboard by Tytania's warning: Out of this wood do not desire to go ...

Opinions so far have been divided - “hateful fantasies” or “jewels from the deep”. I wonder, would this approach work for the Shakespeare play ? Would it make sense to anyone who knew nothing of the composer ? Would it do anything for a child new to the story ? And if not, does it matter ?

I, ELIZABETH

Dyad Productions

Cramphorn Theatre

12.05.11

Jim Hutchon was in the Cramphorn:

Any production with a Guy Masterson cachet is worth the trip out. He has produced a whole series of fine dramas, largely one person works. Actor Rebecca Vaughan, who we last saw in the spectacularly successful ‘Austen’s Women’, has assembled from a wide range of disparate sources, the thoughts and conversations of Elizabeth 1^st, from holding her own against the intellectuals of the day, to her private prayers and her innermost doubts.

The period Rebecca has chosen is curious. Not for her the drama of Elizabeth’s younger days, mother murdered and she cast out by her father Henry VIII, imprisoned by her sister and dubbed a bastard, or the later period of her glory against the Armada and the flowering of England as a superpower. Instead, she opted for the rather boring period in between where she is a largely unproven queen with suspicious and wary subjects.

The result is a declamation of great scholarship and meticulous research, but with not much drama for the audience to get a hold of. Rebecca is clearly a consummate actor with commanding voices, and while I applaud her dedication to talk non-stop for 90 minutes, she is not a natural story teller, so the result isn’t very ‘audience friendly’. It is erudite and wide-ranging, but not, I fear, theatre.