NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

Basildon Ballet Company

Brentwood Theatre

30.04.11

In an ambitious first venture on the Brentwood Theatre stage, Michelle's Brown's inclusive Basildon Ballet Company presented a full-length narrative piece based on the Wizard of Oz.

Her choreography was simple but strong, giving all of her dancers a chance to showcase their skills. I wonder, though, about the wisdom of focusing on the classical ballet – not the most forgiving of genres – when the subject matter might lend itself to something more modern. And many of the sequences were a little long, tiring the dancers and exhausting the ideas.

The demanding role of Dorothy was taken by Colleen Palmer, who brought poise and energy to the part; the other principals included Vicki Glover's Glinda [she also danced Aunt Em], Stacey Barham's Wicked Witch, and the colourful trio of Nisha Vyas's Lion [who had the most characterful choreography], Chloe Hookins' dapper Tinlady and Victoria McAllister's lively Scarecrow. Her costume was wonderful - I also liked Dorothy's frock: gingham over ballet frills, and ruby slippers of course.

The younger dancers were given plenty to do – three pas de deux for the Munchkins. But while they were focused and confident with their dances, their stage discipline was less good when they were simply required to sit and watch.

The music, arranged by Marcus Brown, was a mix of gems from the classical repertoire, Arlen's tunes, plus some wittily eclectic choices: Elton John, Keep Young and Beautiful, Anyone Who Had A Heart for the Tin Man, and for the Scarecrow, Neil Richardson's Approaching Menace, better known as the Mastermind Theme !

No credits for any of the composers in the programme, unfortunately. More significantly, there was nothing about the background to this obviously keen young company, which seems to aim to bring classical ballet to all – although there were no male dancers this time out. This unambitiously assumes that the entire audience will be made up of family and friends ...


My colleague Mary Redman was at the opening night ...

Eight years ago Michelle Brown, a Basildon dance school proprietor and choreographer for this show, was inspired by a television documentary programme showing a ballet company consisting of people of all ages, all abilities, all experiences or none.

A year ago she set up Basildon Ballet Company and this year the results were shown to the public at Brentwood Theatre. In reality, due to lack of knowledge of how to publicise a show and how to compose a programme, the audience consisted almost entirely of friends and relations. It also meant that those of us unfamiliar with the company were at a loss to understand its background without asking for clarification.

But, all power to their feet and the entire company's bravery.

To an experienced dance eye, yes there were some absolute beginners involved who had never appeared on stage before and I really at times wondered what on earth was going on. After a talk with Michelle all became clear.

I agree with every thing Michael Gray has written particularly as to the length of the ballet and the complicated story that had developed. The young Munchkins were a particularly lively bunch but a far more firm directorial touch was needed to put an end to the dreadfully long gaps between scenes and to train dancers to keep their attention on the action. You can't simply do your bit then switch off your character and simply observe what's happening.

Costumes must have cost a fortune and had a certain Basildon style to them, even Dorothy's pointe shoes were glamorous in red glitter.

I'd love to see this group again next year when they've all had an opportunity to research things further by going to see as many other groups as possible such as Chelmsford Ballet Company (still going strong since the 1940s).

In the mean time, keep up the good work and practice all you can.

UP OUT O' THE SEA

Eastern Angles

Brentwood Theatre

29.04.11

Off the lonely Suffolk coast a wreck has lain for thirty years. Now it is to be brought to the surface, just as a prickly journalist from London turns up in the the tight-knit local community, with her laptop and her searching questions.

Andrew Holland's Up Out o' the Sea, directed, with his usual sure touch for the intangible, by Eastern Angles' Artistic Director Ivan Cutting, deals with those Eastern Angles stock-in-trade themes of origins, ghosts and time-slips.

A company of five bring some complex characters to life, as their stories unfold and intertwine. Rough-edged chancer Tweedie, looking for love and a way out of the dead-end, was played by Francis Woolf, who caught precisely the mixture of bravado and vulnerability. His colleague Dolphie was Mike Aherne, who managed to make the grumpy old fisherman both believable and sympathetic.

Lisa-Marie Hoctor played two linked characters, both immature, both young mothers; I loved her Emily, the mysterious girl with a touch of the devil, who dreams of passing through into glory …

Laura Harding was brilliantly convincing as the writer with secrets of her own – the picnic at the Point was movingly done, as was the “information versus emotion” dialogue with Lisa-Marie's modern Milly.

And Lisa Tramontin was excellent as the Librarian, by no means a stock character, despite her stereotype hair and cardigan.

The setting was evocative, practical and versatile - I admired the imagination that turned a door with oilskins hanging from hooks into a stretcher for the victims of the storm.

The show is touring the region until 4 June – Essex dates include Margaretting, Brightlingsea and Coggeshall.

This is an edited and updated version of my review for The Public Reviews. Pleased to see the traverse staging made to work so well on the Brentwood stage.

photo by Mike Kwasniak

FORTY YEARS ON

The Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich

23.04.11

Surely a centenarian by now. The unnamed Headmaster, whose retirement in 1968 is the peg for Alan Bennett's rag-bag vaudeville history of Britain in the Twentieth Century, Forty Years On, is confined to the Albion Nursing Home, alone with a television set and an uncaring carer.

These bleak bookends to what is already a play within a play were the invention of Stephen Picton, who directed this welcome revival for the Maddermarket, and also played a brilliant Tempest, the role Bennett wrote for himself when young.

All his turns were realised with wit and panache – the Wildean Lady Dundown, Beerbohm, the Confirmation Class. John Hare, as the Headmaster, caught the frustration, the nostalgia and the rueful regret in a performance redolent of the great Gielgud, creator of the role. Though I would have enjoyed it more had he managed to stick a little closer to the text.

James McGary played Franklin, the new Head, with some nice character work in the Buchan pastiche and the basement of Claridges. Versatile support from Etta Geras's Matron [Nanny Gibbins, Primrose Hill] and Mel Sessions's Miss Nisbit, Nursie to Hugh and Moggie.

The dozen or so schoolboys were denied much of their fun [the Rugby Song, Sybilline Quarrell, the treble duets], and were often shunted off into the balconies, but did contribute some telling tableaux – the Edwardian tennis, the old Queen, and the leads at Kimber transformed to the trenches of the Somme. Lovely cameos from Oscar Schmidt-Hansen's Wigglesworth, Nathan Ross's Foster and Findlay Norton's Treadgold, with his name proudly, if anachronistically, displayed on his rugger shirt. And they were given some key passages of narrative. I was impressed with the second 'cheiromant' reader, and the first speaker in the extended Envoi, the final sequence which caught exactly Bennett's ambivalent intentions.

Elsewhere, especially at the end of the run, I might have expected a more seamless, pacier presentation. And I could be endlessly picky about detail: Lawrence lived at Clouds Hill, Connolly ran Horizon magazine, Binyon wrote “grow not old” ... Production values were generally high, though, - the uniforms, the milk bottles, the props basket - with effective choices of music [Vaughan Williams, Forget-me-not Lane], creative use of slides and shadows, and a panelled set just right for the school on the Downs, bedecked with bunting and the garlands of memory.

FRANKENSTEIN

The National Theatre in the Olivier

19.04.09

“Over-produced,” I muttered when I saw the NT Live relay of Frankenstein. I was thinking of the rain, the boat, the train, I suppose.

This week in the Olivier it was an entirely different experience. The vastness of the open stage kept everything in perspective, and though it remains true that it could be staged much more simply, Danny Boyle's production [and of course Nick Dear's take on Mary Shelley's story] was a memorable experience.

The great bell, the pod, or cocoon, from which Johnny Lee Miller's Creature is born [Shelley is vague on this...] and the dense canopy of vintage electric light-bulbs, almost organic in effect, were all brilliant pieces of stagecraft. As was the train, with its twin shadows.

The two central performances [famously alternated, like Olivier and Gielgud as Romeo and Mercutio] were searingly strong. Miller discovering his naked body, and later his voice, Benedict Cumberbatch realising what he has done, and the inevitable consequences of playing God. A second hearing revealed richness in the text, and potent echoes of literature, theology and political philosophy. Paradise Lost, of course, and original sin, with the “Monster” tasting Satan's bile. But also shades of Prospero in Karl Johnson's wonderful de Lacey – exiled from his library, but permitted to keep his books. The Creature his Caliban - “you taught me how to curse ...”

“You and I, we are one,” Frankenstein realises, alone with his creation in the waste of frost and snow. Now it is the Creator who assumes the foetal position, as the tragedy reaches, not an ending, but a conclusion of sorts. Though ironically, it is Frankenstein Senior [a towering performance from George Harris] who asks “What have I brought into the world ?”

THE BIBLE

the complete KJV at Shakespeare's Globe

17.04.09

The Word is God, according to Shakespeare's Globe, who have themed their 2011 season [loosely] around the 400^th birthday of the King James Bible.

In fact, there was a foretaste last year, with the smash hit Anne Boleyn [a new play from Howard Brenton], which is returning for a longer run this year.

And to kick things off officially, an ambitious recital of the whole sacred text, using a company of twenty actors [an eclectic band, including some Globe 'stars'] and a system known as Recorded Delivery, which enables the performers to recite with an iPhone instead of clutching a book.

Palm Sunday saw a good house, even at 10 in the morning, for Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy; the marathon reaches Revelation on the evening of Easter Monday.

Directed by Jacqueline Somerville, it proved an absorbing, often moving insight into words both familiar and unfamiliar – the brisk pace, and the variety of voices and approaches to the text shone new light onto the words of King James's committee of translators.