Havering
College at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch
08.06.15
A
stunning showcase for Havering College's performing arts faculty,
with dozens of talented students taking over the Hornchurch stage and
their friends, families and supporters filling the auditorium.
So
much inventive work to enjoy, performed with professional polish by
these enthusiastic young people.
Sousa
with tutus in Stars and Stripes, a classy hybrid Tuxedo Junction, a
sinister, stylish Thriller.
Classical
ballet – an impressive Sleeping Beauty with lifts and disciplined
corps de ballet. Sophisticated show dancing in the opening number,
Burn the Floor, a blink-and-you-miss-it literal interpretation of
Movies were Movies, and terrific tap in Cabin Pressure, where Karen
Hardy followed hard on the heels of Catch Me If You Can.
Vocal
delights, too – Tosca, a confident jazz idiom in Every Time We Say
Goodbye, and, a rare treat, Judy Garland's delicious Carnegie Hall,
with tutor Simon Gray tongue-in-cheek at the concert grand.
This
cult musical is a cultivar of the 1960 Corman film; from modest
origins off-Broadway, it has grown into a major industry, with
community groups drawn to its catchy tunes and off-the-wall story.
Specialist plantsmen supply the various Audrey IIs, from dwarf to
magnifolia.
You'd
wait a long time to see a more perfect specimen than this joint
production with the Mercury's Wiltshire twin, the Salisbury
Playhouse, the work of its Artistic Director Gareth Machin.
Everything
about it feels absolutely
right. James
Button's fantastic design, inspired in part by the street photography
of Vivian Maier turns Skid Row
into a three-storey slum, with Richard Reeday's band on the first
floor above the shop. The subway rumbles beneath, while a corrugated
curtain flies out to reveal the eponymous shop, which
begins as a fly-blown failure and blossoms into Mishkin and Son.
The
staging is full of ingenious ideas: the snapper and the hooker, the
two clocks, the four phones, the bins, the magazines, the newspaper
with the total eclipse on its front page and the faded poster for
Attack of the Puppet People, another cult schlock horror classic. The
costumes are
clever too, embracing
the “cheap and tasteless outfits” of
the 1950s:
the skirt of roses, the leopard-skin sling.
The
excellent vocal trio – a grungy Greek chorus – branch out from
“worthless ragamuffins” to plant-costumed
backing group
and botanical operatives taking the cuttings which will propagate
this strange and unusual plant world-wide.
Crystal,
Chiffon and Ronette - Gbemisola
Ikumelo, Karis Jack, Carole
Stennett – are a key part of this production, their numbers
superbly choreographed by Nick Winston. They pop up in the gutter, on
the balcony, out of the drains to tempt Seymour in Suppertime.
She's
played by Frances McNamee, with a great vocal presence and a
winningly vulnerable look in her Fay Wray nightgown.
Simeon
Truby makes a wonderful Mushnik, and Jez Unwin is not only the rebel
dentist
in
leather, with his quiff and 'tache, a glorious hybrid of Elvis and
Vincent Price, but also, in quick succession, Bernstein, Martin,
and the wife of the editor of Time Magazine. Ben Stott is an
exquisite Seymour: slight, speccy, his every movement speaking
volumes.
The
three carnivorous
plants
are impressive, too, voiced by Leon Craig and animated by Andrew
London. Tapping its feet to the Senior and Junior Schtick, grabbing
its prey, turning its head knowingly, belching when Seymour finally
succumbs.
The
whole show feels almost operatic [in a good way], with the cast
squeezing every last drop out of Ashman's book and Menken's music.
I
half expected the height of the set to be used to make
Audrey II
tower like a beanstalk – instead, in
a much
more effective finale,
singing
clones
appear on the upper levels and, as in the 1982
original, suckers drop down over the audience, threatening to devour
all these enthusiastic young theatre-goers bathed in a ghastly
leafy-green light ...
Puck
and the
fairies are frequently female; Dawn French was a wonderful Bottom a
few years back. But a quartet of lesbian lovers – “Jill
shall have Jill” -
is surely a first, just one of the fresh ideas in Jim Crozier's
updated Dream.
No
such liberalism in the Athenian trade guilds, though, where the rude
mechanicals – a plumber and a brickie now in their ranks – are
all blokes.
The patriarchal society that allows Peter
Nerreter's fine Egeus to invoke the “law strictly provided”, even
in equal marriage, shows no sign of softening.
Modern
dress all round, with colourful Romany-themed garb for the fairy
denizens of the Athenian wood. Modern music too, with a nice original
score from Owain Jones, and Daft Punk for the boom-box bergamasque.
The
hard-working cast includes Barry Taylor's compelling, stylish Oberon,
Diane Johnston 's Titania enthusiastically lusting after Bob Ryall's Bottom, with his lecherous
bray. Natalie Patuzzo makes an entertaining teenage Puck, high-fiving
the audience and radiating mischief. Liam Mayle stands out in the
theatricals – an amusingly thespian Thisbe. Nicholas Milenkovic
makes a poised, polished Philostrate.
The
lovers are never an easy call, and there is
little fun in their misadventures
here – some strong performances, though, with good verse speaking
from Mabel Odonkor's Lysanda in particular.
Moonshine's
back-pack dog, Flute's smartphone, the disco dancing, the factory
hooter and the car horn, the moody fairies and the torn leggings –
all evidence of a fertile imagination and a desire to please a 21st
century audience. But pointless pauses and lacklustre deliverytend
to impede
“the passion of loud laughter” in
this otherwise interesting and entertaining Dream.
Hot
on the heels of The Rehearsal next door, another Jeremy Sams show,
with another family pile shrouded at the start, and another outbreak
of amateur theatricals amongst the aristocracy.
This
time it's his new book [with Robert Hudson] for A Damsel In Distress,
the wickedly pleasurable cocktail of Wodehouse and Gershwin, based
on the Hollywood hit
of
1937.
The
action switches between the Savoy Theatre and the Marshmortons'
Gloucestershire seat. Kicking off withe a formulaic but hugely
enjoyable Things Are Looking Up: tap line, upright pian, backstage
busy-ness and frocks on rails.
Kitty
in the City is the show; its author, George [Richard Fleeshman],
seeks a purpose in life, and finds it in the shape of Summer
Strallen's Maud,
on the run from her formidable aunt [Isla Blair, excellent].
The
plot is thin and silly, but is carried triumphantly by a string of
memorable Gershwin numbers – Stiff Upper Lip, with more tap
dancing, one of the best – and uniformly impeccalbe performances.
Desmond
Barritt as Keggs, the lugubrious butler, given to quoting the Bard,
Nicholas Farrell superb as the Lord of the Manor whose love for his
pigs and his roses is eventually shared by Billie [Sally Ann
Triplett]. And, stealing the scene in a patisserie extravaganza,
David Roberts' delectable French chef.
This
shameless cult musical is nearly a quarter of a century old now; the
story it recycles has its origins in medieval Germany.
But
it's set very firmly in the suburban 1970s, with music all the way
from Donna Summer to Johnny Rotten. More tongue-in-cheek campery, wit
and wisdom than your average juke box musical, given a storming
performance by Cut to the Chase, the Queen's own company – heavily
augmented for the occasion.
No
fewer than twelve actor/musicians, led, as is customary, by an
outrageous drag queen. In the wonderful home-made-in-Hornchurch
tradition of the Queen's, they've come up with Lady Felicia, dear
friend and distant cousin of Hornchurch favourite Fred Broom. More
grab-a-granny than disco diva, she does time the carry-on comedy
wickedly well, sells a series of sassy songs, and comes on in an
impressive collection of flamboyant frocks, reflecting the genre of
the musical numbers: a country music momma, the Iron Lady, a naughty
nun in a Sister Act moment for the wedding.
Everyone
else gets to dress up, too, with more changes than cruise ship chorus
boys, from the beige polyester of domesticity to glam rock, ballroom,
punk and lounge. One spectacular quick change – from supermarket to
sequinned ball gowns – deserved its round of stunned applause.
The
tunes are a nostalgia-fest for the older audience – Nobody Does It
Better, My Way [Sid Vicious version], Stand By Your Man, Wuthering
Heights and Welcome Home. The title number, too, of course, and
dozens more, including a clever TESCO parody of the old Ottowan hit
DISCO. And culminating in that empty anthem We Are The Champions.
All
done with a polished professionalism - “Jimmy Filth”'s God Save
The Queen is preceded by a totally tasteless Peters and Lee [Jones
and Felicia] and followed by three chaps in tuxes backing Miss Hot
Stuff channelling Carly Simon. This kind of gentle send-up will only
work if, as here, it's rooted in affection and secure performance
technique.
As
ever, the gorgeous costumes and the scarlet and black set [banks of
speakers and dazzling lights] are all done in house.
The
show is directed by Matt Devitt with Julian Littman looking after the
music – Queen's regulars both – and manages to combine a
high-energy clap-along night out with a morality musical cabaret. A
potent mix, deservedly cheered to the rafters by the audience on
opening night.
