What better entertainment than an upbeat, bijoux production of, arguably, the most upbeat and tuneful operetta ever written, on a wet, windy cold  Sunday afternoon in the stunning Opera House at Tunbridge Wells? And, as ever, I’m struck by the enlightened (in this instance) approach of JD Wetherspoon, which, once a year allows its pub to revert to its original function for two performances, with a meal package if you wish.

John Ramster’s eight hander adaptation runs with the wackiness of the piece. Hands, and other things, poke through holes on the side cloths of Bridget Kimak’s set and her costumes range from Pierrot to Alice in Wonderland with a splendid, massive, shiny yellow suit and chrysanthemum-topped headdress for a scary-looking skull-masked Mikado (Matthew Quirk).

The advantage of working on G&S with a small cast – and I’ve seen it with other companies such as Illyria Theatre and Charles Court Opera – is that you can hear every note and every word because it’s all so exposed. Music director Bradley Wood, sidestage on keyboard, has wisely run mostly at fairly moderate tempos so that the clarity is crystalline – after an oddly nervous opening number at the performance I saw.

Christopher Faulkner, as a gor-blimey, insouciant Ko-Ko, for example, delivers the all-topical little list, which he wrote himself, with impeccable timing and hilarious precision. The Mikado’s song is, unfortunately, a bit muffled by the mask but I really liked the way Gareth Edmunds, a fine tenor, and Wood managed all the tempo  and mood changes in A Wandering Minstrel I. And the madrigal,  Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day is, as sung here, a lovely example of a quartet really nailing it. I could almost feel Sir Arthur applauding.

Ashley Mercer as Pooh-Bah is magnificent. Tall, slender and sneering he literally wears a multiplicity of hats all piled one on top of another. He oozes stage presence and his bass voice is resonant and authoritive.

The larger-than-life Susan Moore is terrific as Katisha too. She has an old fashioned contralto voice like good claret and acts beautifully as the frumpy but oddly vulnerable and pretty vindictive woman nobody wants. She is also very funny, pulling faces and flirting with the audience.

Every director wants – needs, even – to put his or her own stamp on a piece as well known and much loved as this. If G&S is to work, it has to sparkle. It was, let it not be forgotten, lack of freshness which eventually alienated the Arts Council and killed the D’Oyly Carte company. The trouble is, though, that there is a fine line between imaginative artistic innovation and gratuitous gimmickry. And sometimes Ramster crosses that line. What on earth does it add to the piece to do Howdy Do in Texan accents as if we were at a rodeo? Why change the word Japan to Pajan? Why have Mathew Quirk, doubling as Pish Tush speak in a distorted accent which is a cross between West Midlands and cod-Jewish?

For various reasons I saw this touring show late in its run. It includes a lot of stage business with long bendy arms with which characters touch each other, kiss and so on. This is clearly how it was rehearsed last year when on-stage social distancing was a requirement. It would then have seemed quite witty. Now it feels a bit quaint. When this production is next revived, I’m sure this aspect of it will be dropped.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-mikado-5/

It isn’t often that I see a new play running for two and a half hours which holds a hundred per cent of my attention from the first moment to the last, causes me to dab my eyes several times, gasp in wonder more than once and chuckle a lot. Holst: The Music in the Spheres did all of that. And more.

Cecilia Payne, who went on to be a pioneering astrophysicist was a student of Holst’s at St Paul’s Girls School where he tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to study music instead of science. Ross McGreggor explores that relationship and finds an ongoing link between Holst’s Planets Suite and Payne’s work on stars. The play I’m reviewing here is one of a pair. This one focuses on Holst. The other – Payne: The Stars are Fire – I hope to see in April.

The play provides, with lots of time shifts, Holst’s life story from his troubled childhood, his poor health, his friendship with Ralph Vaughan Williams, his marriage and, of course, the music he was writing although for many years he also had to teach to pay the bills. Although he was born and grew up in Cheltenham his Germanic name inevitably caused problems in the second decade of the 20th century. The best scenes are the ones set in his studio at St Paul’s School where McGreggor imagines that Payne (Laurel Marks – a very intelligent performance) spends so many detention periods that these two lonely people become quasi friends rather than teacher and pupil. When his eyes are bad she morphs into his amanuensis, for example.

Toby Wynn-Davies is totally convincing as Holst – shivering with misery as a sickly, misunderstood child, diffidently courting Cornelia Baumann’s Isobel Harrison (good), weeping with joy as he conducts Jupiter or fretting about money and struggling with self confidence. It’s very nuanced acting. Even the piano playing at his desk works.

Edward Spence makes Ralph Vaughan Williams into a witty joker as well as a very supportive friend and Lucy Ioannou shows impressive versatility in switching between the prunes-and-prisms high mistress of St Pauls and Holst’s kind, down to earth aunt. Also strong is Alex Stevens as Holst’s stentorian, authoritarian father, and as Sydney Bressey a member of Holst’s orchestra at Morley College, killed in the war.

There’s a lot of music in this show and several times we get a surreal ballet ensemble sequence such as the one in the first act when Holst’s inner turmoil is evoked by projection on the back screen, Mars driving along in its relentless 5|4 rhythm on the sound track while a tableau evolves from the whole cast moving a table. I also loved the scene in which Holst conducts and the rest of the cast becomes his orchestra – miming cellos, timps, trombones and so on as they become prominent in the music. It’s excitingly ingenious movement direction by Will Pinchin.

It’s a meaty, intelligent play with some good  jokes for educated grown ups although it’s never abstruse. I loved the crack about using a clarinet for a death, for example. “No, no” says Vaughan Williams. “Death is always an oboe.” And as a former Swale resident of course I enjoyed the Sheppey joke – I had no idea, though, until now, that Holst ever lived there.

I saw the final performance of this play at the Brockley Jack because the performance I was due to see earlier in the run was cancelled. The good news is that both plays are having another run – at  New Theatre Wimbledon 11-24 April. Catch it then if you possibly can.

Adapted from Eileen Browne’s much loved 1995 book, this 35-minute show is effectively an opera for preschoolers. Akeyo (Rujenne Green) wants to take a gift of fruit to her friend Handa (Hannah Akhalu) but all the fruit she gathers is eaten by animals she meets on the way so it’s fortunate that a goat knocks some tangerines off a tree. Tangerines – and every child in the audience is given a segment – turn out to be Handa’s favourite and that’s the surprise.

It’s a rhythmic story in which each fruit celebrated in song, in an African language, in a repeated melody and there’s a little tune which I know as The Farmer’s in his Den. The music is very simple and, almost entirely consisting of rounds based on major chords. One child, at the performance I saw, was singing some of it back to them before we were even half way through. Green and Akhalu both have clear, sweet voices and their intonation is excellent. There is no accompaniment although both actors are on stage smiling and rocking and sweeping to steel pan tunes before the show starts.

The fruit eating animals are puppets (by Peter O’Rourke)  which either emerge from the edge of Sophia Lovell Smith’s sandy African set or are assembled from around  Green’s person. The delicate teetering monkey is attractive and we get a neat zebra from inverting a neck sling that Akhalu is wearing. The giraffe is probably the tour de force moving with spindly elegance on its bamboo legs.

The children and their parents are seated on the floor round three sides of the square playing space – as a venerable (or something) onlooker I am given a chair. All the puppets tour the audience to wave at, inspect, gently peck the children in the audience which goes down well.

It’s a show which exudes charm and it’s very engaging. All the children I saw it with were entranced.

First published by Sardines:

The best thing in this show is the motorbike. Two black-clad actors crouch with wheels while two others ride – pretty dynamically – on top. The whole thing rocks, bucks and suggests speed and danger. Congratulations to whoever thought that up, whether it was director Hersh Ellis or Jasmine Ricketts who directed the movement.

Otherwise it’s hard to find anything positive to say about this overlong, laboured tale of two American teenagers, both with family issues, who run away to join a protest and change the world. As quest stories go it’s woeful: predictable and pedestrian. Half an hour in, I was gritting my teeth at the laboured, didactic dialogue (yes, we know about climate change and its implications, thanks) and the person next to me was asleep. Of course the quest is punctuated with incidents – not very exciting in this case and, once they reach their destination nothing is as expected because that’s what happens in quest stories. Meanwhile Salma Shaw keeps floating on as the moon with an illuminated ukulele in a show which simply cannot decide whether it’s based in reality or surreality.

All this mediocrity is a great pity because there’s some real talent in the cast. Richard Holt, for instance, shows a lot of charismatic versatility from a bar owner on the make to a bossy ghost dad. His coyote howls are convincing too. And some aspects of the lighting (Pablo Fernandez Baz) and projections by Elizabeth Mak find ingenious and colourful  solutions to working in a small space. I just hope they’ll all find a better show to work on very soon.

This was, I’m afraid, one of those (quite unusual) occasions when I found myself wondering for over two hours why I had volunteered to spend my evening seeing a play when I could have been at home with a good book.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/rain-and-zoe-save-the-world/

Moreover I wasn’t comfortable with the zoological and biological solecisms. Snow the White Lion is eventually rescued. She is the last of her species so that’s important. How she come to be pregnant is a mystery.

And Cheetahs, for goodness sake, are carnivores. “Don’t trust a cheetah with your Ryvita/With just one packet I’ll make a racket” is a witty lyric but surely this show is supposed to me making some serous points not teaching nonsense?

I winced at the rhyming of Guatamala with koala too. Sorry, folks, but koalas live in Australia.

All this is a pity because the songs are jolly and varied in style from Calyspo to Rap to ballad. These will already be known to children who attend Perform classes for 4-7s.

All seven members of the cast are strong singers and there’s some nifty movement choreographed by Frank Thompson) In particular, Darren Hart is a bit of a show stealer as the bouncy, jokey Cheetah, Rachel Lea-Grey gives us an attractive young Zebra learning to overcome self effacement and Carole Stennett’s cobra is slitheringly convincing. Ben Stock shows a lot of versatility as a ridiculed English colonial gent, leader of the monkey troop and a crocodile.

And Lotte Collett’s costume designs are inspired – just enough animal hints to make us believe in them. Sharron Ballard as Eeli the elephant, for instance, is all in grey with a trunk protruding from her chest – she creates an elephantine ambience by moving it with her hand.

An opportunity lost, therefore. We owe it to children to entertain them truthfully rather than patronising them with this sort of stuff. As it is the talents of this cast and creative team are wasted.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/jungle-rumble/

Eunoia – a Greek word meaning beautiful thinking – is the name of Chickenshed Theatre’s 2022 new-writing festival. Nine duologues and monologues have been selected for professionally directed performance in two separate evenings during the ten-day season. I saw group 2 – in the simple intimacy of Chickenshed’s upstairs studio theatre.

The most striking of the four pieces came last in Answer the Call by Ashley Driver who also directs. I knew nothing whatever about the 1,500 men from the West Indies who volunteered their services in the First World War – willingly giving their all for their colonial “masters”.  Some of them died of disease before they reached the front. Nathaniel Leigertwood and Demar Lambert play two such men, bantering in their rich, golden accents and wondering just how equal they are and, if they’re not, what they could or should do about it. Then one on them becomes ill. The questions remain topical and this powerful, immaculately written and thoughtfully acted fifteen minutes had me thinking hard about the issues all the way home.

Before that we had Sara Chernaik’s Just Imagine, a monologue which invites us to think about immigration, identity and the personal stories which underpin us all. “Come. Listen to my Story” is the refrain as Brahms’s German Requiem fades away in the background.

I didn’t personally like Never Have I Ever, the opening duologue (by Sophie White) which featured two people in an untidy bedroom, one very drunk and the other very sober, gay and distressed. Stevie Shannon’s drunk voice work is, however, well studied although I missed some of what she said.

Body awareness amongst men is an interesting topic and Astonishing Light by Cathy Jansen-Ridings explores it with both horror and humour. Having your body surgically altered is not, ultimately, going to make you happier – which is what the rather annoying Gabe tries to make Benedict see when they meet in a Cosmetic Surgery waiting room.

It’s an uneven evening but it certainly offers some accomplished acting and plenty to reflect on.

This charming, witty moving show – just in time for half term – is as good a piece of non-pro family theatre as I’ve seen anywhere. There are many adaptations of Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 classic about. (I even dramatised a scene myself for a Zoom Christmas party in 2020 when we were all pretty desperate for entertainment) But Alan Bennett’s version for National Theatre in 1990 is probably the best there is and that is what Bromley Little Theatre gives us.

Aneria Knight’s bespectacled, innocent but perky Mole is a delight and there’s real theatrical chemistry between her and Jessica-Ann Jenner (who also directs) as plain-speaking, down-to-earth, grown up Rat. Jenner uses a rich Yorkshire accent (her own?) for Rat. It’s as comforting as Yorkshire pudding and reminds us of who wrote this piece.

Howie Ripley’s broad south London Badger is another joy. It’s gravitas spliced with earthiness as he takes command of the other animals representing decency, common sense and authority without cant. In this version he forges a little friendship with Mole which makes Rat a bit miffed. Ripley strides about the stage in a black sweat-shirt with a few stripes and sporting a stripy scarf. All the costumes in this show are suggestive rather than graphic – no silly tails or ears because as Jenner says in her programme note she wants to focus on the human traits of these characters.

And so to the outstandingly talented Joshua Williams-Ward as Toad. He commands and lights up the stage for every second he’s on it – reminding me of a young Alex Jennings. Williams-Ward overacts in character and gets lots of laughs, timing his click back to “normal” impeccably  especially in the jail scene. It’s an astonishingly mature performance. Like several members of this cast of fourteen, he has come through Bromley Little Theatre Youth Group which Jenner co-leads.

This show is an ensemble piece with much slick multi-roling, scene changing and a handful of songs. When they morph into scenery shifters cast members simply don high viz jackets to “disguise” whatever costume they’re wearing. Amongst many excellent things I was especially struck by Chris Nelson’s body wagging, richly voiced Indian washerwoman, Hana Rae Corvin’s Sloaney Otter and Isabella Zufolo’s gentle Jailer’s daughter.

The set almost deserves a review of its own. Bromley Little Theatre is committed to green issues and works with local organisations to help tackle them. Designed by Tony and Jessica-Ann Jenner, the set for The Wind in the Willows is ingeniously built entirely from recycled materials. Thus Badger’s front door is actually part of an old fridge, a “fire” is created from an inverted supermarket basket threaded with orange paper, Rat’s boat is an old bath and so on. Cars are created from wooden cartons with ensemble members rolling wheels and the barge is built from big cardboard boxes. The effect is atmospheric and convincing. And just to remind us of the message a “human” occasionally wanders past the animal action and throws down a drink can or crisp packet.

If you can get to Bromley Little Theatre before 19 February this is a show well worth catching.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-wind-in-the-willows-7/