Chickenshed doesn’t believe in doing things by halves. A cast of 800 young people – yes, 800 (but not all at once) – and 23 adults demonstrate, yet again, just what this famously diverse, inclusive theatre company can do, even when their work has been pandemic-curtailed for much of this year.

This show which owes a tiny conceptual debt to Sondheim’s Into the Woods, is a reworking of a show which Chickenshed staged in 2006 and it does exactly what its strapline promises. It mixes up fairy tales with lots of song, spectacle and flair.

At the heart of it we have the brothers Grimm and one of them (Lauren Cambridge) is female. Cue for witty, topical comments about gender constructs and patriarchal assumptions. They are trying to write stories, and the dynamic between them is quite fun, but their characters keep escaping. The overarching narrative is Hansel and Gretel who are lost so their father (Ashley Driver) is on a quest to find them despite the machinations of, for example, Rumpelstiltskin (Michael Bossise) and the Queen (Gemilla Shamruk)  mother of the dancing princesses.

Bossise is statuesque, astonishingly adept on his stilts and has a magnificent basso profundo singing voice. He also has a good line in sounding very plausible when of course his character is up to no good at all. Bethany Hamlin as Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother/witch has oodles of stage presence – lots of flounce and venom – and she sings beautifully.

I really like the idea of pairing BSL signers – who are often accomplished acrobats, singers and actors in their own right – to characters so they seem like an alter ego. Demar Lambert, for instance, “represents” Rumpelstiltskin and adds another whole layer to the character. I don’t remember this being quite so overt in previous Chickenshed shows so maybe this is the handprint of Belinda McGuirk, directing for the first time.

Another Chickenshed trademark is to give short single verse solos to lots of children – as well as the adult big numbers –  so we see a lot of talent and teamwork as the show proceeds.

The 23 adults – 12 staff members and 11 students or trainees – are in every performance. The children work in four rotas and I saw the Green Rota in action. And the best moments in this show are when the stage fills up with them, immaculate, dynamic choreography (by a team) ensuring that they form groups, shapes and rhythms like a professional army. Some of the children have special needs of various sorts and it’s a lump-in-the-throat joy to see the slick way they are involved, supported and fully included. Even the curtain call is a work of art with over two hundred people on stage – and I’m told that back stage discipline, always good, is now calmer and better organised than ever because there’s a one way system which everyone adheres to. Professionalism at its best.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/everafter-a-mixed-up-fairytale/

Image: Richard Jinman

So what happens if you give Juliet’s lines to Romeo and his to her thus making her a Montague and him a Capulet? You get a topical, thoughtful  take on the play which really makes you stop and think about why, even today, we often expect females to be more passive than males. You are also forced to reflect on the whole nature of loyalty, violence, knife crime and much more. This interpretation, set in London in 2021 (a positive Covid test becomes part of the plot)  and couched in Intermission’s trade mark seamless blend of street speak and Shakespeare, is effectively a powerful commentary on the play as we know it.

Juliet, for example, is in the garden – feisty and very interested –  while Romeo, more diffidently, is on the balcony.  It is Juliet who is banished at the end (“Your Uber’s waiting”) while Romeo’s sister, Capo, is keen get him on an aircraft and away to film school because that’s what he’s always wanted to do and she wants him out of the way. Then of course it’s Romeo who lies dead when Juliet returns – and the ending isn’t quite what Shakespeare gives us but I was deeply moved especially by the searing anguish of Megan Samuel as Capo.

One of the most startlingly effective ideas in this vibrant production is the chorus. Rather more Greek than Shakespearean a group of eight actors is threaded amongst the action watching, commenting, interjecting usually in very short burst of the original text. They act as an inner voice for characters on stage as well as making observations. It’s tight, neat and impressively synchronised. Asked in the post show question and answer session how they’d achieved it, one of them answered, chuckling: “With a lot of practice!” I also liked the way we get Friar and Lawrence, a pair who run a tattoo parlour as a cover for an illicit drugs business.

The twenty six members of the company role share so that, although they’re all involved there are two cast lists. I saw the Juliet Cast  which gave us Ophelia J Wisdom as Juliet and, my goodness how she develops the character in the “two hours traffic of our stage”. She starts as an everyday teenager and ends as a mature woman. It’s a very convincing performance.

Intermission Youth Theatre works with young people from across London who are helped to find a pathway away from risk or danger of various sorts through drama. Improvisations facilitate devising which Darren Raymond eventually converts into a script.  The standard of work they produce  is remarkable especially, this time, given the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/juliet-romeo/

This show is warm, silly, affectionate, whacky and very funny. But, actually it’s more than it seems on the surface. At the heart of all the surreality of this upbeat Christmas jolly lies an immigration story, questions about inclusion, adaptation, fitting in and a gentle euthanasia subplot. And that’s why it works. We get real emotion as well as escapist nonsense from this accomplished cast of seven, several of whom are actor-musos.

A pair of enterprising Tanzanian hyenas, whose English is perfect, steal the identities of two tourists eaten by a crocodile. The new Mr and Mrs Bold, tails hidden under their clothes, come to live in the former Bold home in Teddington – where they, and soon their two children, conceal their Hyena identity, get jobs and live more or less as if they were human beings. They laugh a lot, as hyenas do and Mr Bold (David Ahmad) works as a writer of cracker jokes and some of them are very good. They don’t get on with their neighbour (Sam Pay) and eventually mount a rescue operation for a threatened hyena in a safari park – and that’s most of the plot.

Julian Clary’s songs are bright, cheerful and catchy and with orchestrations and arrangements by Simon Wallace (on stage on keys)  they range over a whole spectrum of styles. The retro rock and roll number “There’s nothing keener than a hyena” is good fun, for example, with the word “Hyena” flown down on a big panel with flashing

James Button’s set is neat. We see a kitchen, a dining room and bedroom and at one point a simple but clever way of showing of two groups of hyenas tunnelling towards each other under a brick wall. And there’s a skeletal blue Skoda in which the Bolds drive round the safari park.

Of course you don’t have to work very hard to see that the Bolds, with their different ways, trying desperately hard to conform are like any other immigrants. It’s hilarious but also mildly poignant. And the story about Tony who has to be rescued because he’s old and the vets are going to put him down really pulls at the heart strings. Bear in mind, too, that Julian Clary wrote this so when rescued Tony chums up with Mr McNumpty we are wittily led to sense that they might have a future together beyond friendship.

I’m awarding the fourth star for two reasons. First the performance of Amanda Gordon as Mrs Bold is glorious. She communicates volumes with the merest look, sings beautifully and moves compellingly. Second, I loved the tuba (Sam Pay) in the orchestrations. It gives aural depth and adds an unusual sparky musical humour.

But the funniest joke of the evening (on press night) was not scripted. Sam Pay, resignedly and rhetorically, as Mr McNumpty: Who knows what’s been going on while I’ve been at the shop? Child in audience: Me!

This review was first published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-bolds/

Not that Jarman is in any sense a cosy play. The anguish, joy, anger and creativity of the titular artist and film maker is agonisingly caught by Mark Farelly – a fine actor (and the playwright) who seems to be making something of a speciality of plays about famous, troubled gay men. In the last year or so I have also seen him in Howerd’s End and Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope, both of which he wrote himself. Jarman, an 80-minute monologue is a more physical piece and, arguably, much more tragic as we trace Jarman through the appalling ravages of aids when he becomes “a refugee in my own body” facing not only the illness but the devastating judgements of others, including bishops.

We see Jarman in his famous garden, the details of which – an artist through and through – he describes with intense sensuality. We hear the horrors of his boarding school childhood, follow him through art school and into film making. We also enjoy the irony of his first job designing Don Giovanni for John Gielgud with all its emphasis on the hell and damnation which Jarman had long been threatened with. Eventually comes the Aids diagnosis and the bleak joy of settling to a life of celibacy with a young man who became his carer. “For the first time in my life I was in love” he says, telling the audience that he’d always been able to throw away ex-lovers like tangerine peel.

Mark Farelly’s performance is electric. He breathes his words, moves like rubber and has a knack of making his eyes glitter. Jarman is definitely in the room and at the end when he leaves the stage, the lights go up and Farrelly appears as himself you feel bereaved.

Also noteworthy is the poetic power of the text of this play.  Young weaves in quotations from John Donne and Shakespeare among others and every line she writes is driven by a very distinctive rhythm – often rooted in things Jarman said and wrote. It’s well researched work.

And, this is simple low budget theatre. It’s all achieved with a roll of brown paper, a sheet, a chair and a torch. With acting and writing of this calibre you don’t need “production values”.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/jarman/