Rapunzel from Chickenshed Theatre, London.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

The online premiere of Chickenshed’s 2017 show is as large scale and glitzy as we’ve come to expect from this ebulliently inclusive company.

Framed by a story about six children falling asleep and embarking on a dreamy quest to find their storyteller/Rapunzel (Cerys Lambert) it also unravels a secondary, episodic quest story about a king and queen who are searching for their long lost daughter.

Lou Stein’s version – inspired by many workshops with Chickenshed members – works at lots of levels with hope, love cooperation and positivity at the heart of the message.

Theatrically it needs …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/rapunzel-chickenshed-theatre/

We’re in Tuscany in 1528 where a nun, Alessandra Cecchi, has just died having left instructions that she is not to be undressed. The Mother Superior overrides the old lady’s wishes and commands two young nuns to prepare her body for burial in the normal way. On her body they find a huge tattoo of a snake, starting on her back, encircling her waist and ending with its head and forked tongue pointing into her genitals. How on earth did an elderly nun acquire such a thing?

The rest of Sarah Dunant’s best novel (2003) comprises an explanatory memoir, left by Alessandra in the capable hands of her former black slave and lifelong friend, Erila. She’s bright, feisty, brave and artistically talented but not conventionally attractive. We follow her – the daughter of a prosperous cloth merchant (although there’s a bit of surprise in the mix relating to that) – through the first Medici rule in Florence and then the torture-fuelled horror of the Savonarola years. Along the way she marries for social convenience, safety and because it’s what her family requires. Then there’s the reclusive, troubled man she calls “the painter” from whom she learns much to improve her own art. He is a vital strand in her life. Who exactly is he, you wonder? Most readers will probably work out his identity before the truth is finally revealed and we learn how she came to carry a serpent on her body.

Underpinning all this is a reasonably accurate account of what life in Florence must have been like in the late fifteenth century – and it isn’t pretty. There is also a great deal of intelligent background about art, religion and how the two things complement or confound each other against devastating political power struggles.

The characterisation delights too. Erila is the friend we’d all like to have – frank, sensible, caring and able to use her own independence and courage to make things happen. Alessandra’s husband, the generally decent, reasonable and believable Christoforo is quite something too – he doesn’t want to marry, for reasons which soon become clear, any more than Alessandra does but he needs a wife and child for form’s sake.

I read this book when it was first published nearly 20 years ago and have never forgotten the drama of that opening: the “respectable” old nun and the highly erotic tattoo. Like good cheese or wine it seems to have matured since then and I enjoyed revisiting a fine historical novel which remains fresh and compelling.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Ordinary Days, streaming via The Theatre Café website until 6 April 2021.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

A revival of a 2007 show first developed at New York Theatre Barn, this is a warm and uplifting piece in the hands of Daniel Smith under whose direction it was filmed in Norfolk.

Yes, the title summarises the plot. Four very youngish, ordinary people live in, or have come to New York. Jason (Will Arundell) is in the process of moving in with his girlfriend, Claire (Nic Myers) but things are initially troubled. Deb (Bobbie Chambers), a student, loses her dissertation notes but they are found on the Subway by Warren (Joe Thompson-Oubari), a gay man looking for a purpose in life.

Of course there is an intersection, of sorts, between these two storylines and a memorable moment when the whole cast comes together in a quasi-operatic quartet.

I liked the use of sung soliloquy in which …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Reivew: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/ordinary-days-pickle-stage-productions/

The Band Plays On was filmed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield and has been made available to watch online until 28 March 2021.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

The best shows always have a moment, incident or episode which really stick with you and change you. In The Band Plays On it’s Jodie Prenger singing ‘The Crying Game’ in her arresting three octave voice and then delivering a monologue called ‘Sanctuary’ in which her life falls apart at the onset of the pandemic somewhat more drastically then most people’s. I defy you not to weep for her – and then rejoice with her at the redemptive power of art.

Chris Bush’s play, directed by Robert Hastie and Anthony Lau, consists of five monologues delivered by five women of South Yorkshire, They’re played by Jocasta Almgill, Anna-Jane Casey, Sandra Marvin, Maimuna Memon – and Jodie Prenger. Think Talking Heads in miniature …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-band-plays-on-sheffield-theatres/

ina and the STEM Sisters from HMDT Music, streaming until 11 April 2021.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

If a puppetry mini-opera about women scientists sounds unlikely, then it is. But it works. I learned a lot, as will the primary school age group at which Jina and the STEM Sisters is, loosely, aimed.

It’s neatly contrived for pandemic restrictions too. Basically it’s a two-hander with puppeteers (Nix Wood and Ruth Calkin) on stage and a lot of puppet voicing, both sung and spoken, by a cast who are elsewhere.

Face masks – bandit style and matching – are, incidentally a good way of depersonalising puppeteers to make them less visible.

Jina, who wants to be a scientist, is in a wood. It’s literal with trees but it’s also metaphorical because she’s on a journey towards enlightenment …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/jina-and-the-stem-sisters-hmdt-music/

Oxford Lieder Winterreise

Posted on March 2, 2021

All the way from the resonant arpeggios of Gute Nacht to the haunting, wistful A minor pianissimo of Der Leiermann, this is an elegant, thoughtfully judged Winterreise. We are taken, very effectively, on the final journey.

Dietrich Henshel is an admirably unshowy performer. He stands simply beside the piano without swaying or arm waving. The drama is entirely in his voice and face but there’s plenty of it. His Der Lindenbaum is warmly impassioned, his Fruhlingstraum finds a lovely lilt in the opening bars and his high notes and big intervals are nicely controlled in Letzte Hoffnung. I found his Die Wetterfahne a bit breathy but it’s a fairly minor quibble.

Warmest praise too for Sholto Kynoch’s work on piano. These pieces are – when performed as sensitively as this – definitely duets rather than songs “accompanied” by piano. In Der Wegweiser, for example, Kynoch’s exquisite playing really highlights the breathless effect. Interestingly Kynoch manages his music by technological alchemy – a tablet on the music stand, presumably controlled by a left foot blue tooth pedal. It’s a neat way of precluding the need for a human page turner in close proximity in these Covid-compliant times – if you’re brave enough.

The concert began with emerging artist Anna Cavaliero singing two Schubert songs. Her singing is crisp and warm and she, too, has a tightly integrated rapport with Kynoch on piano.

It’s good to be back in the Holywell Room, with Petroch Trelawny as the ever urbane, competent, knowledgeable link man. I wish, however, we didn’t have to have those lights decorating the balusters behind the piano which, when you watch digitally, connote all the gaudiness of cheap Christmas decorations.

An advantage of watching digitally, though, is the way the subtitles are now managed. You are given the whole poem at the side of the screen with a moving highlight so that you know exactly where you are and a line by line translation at the bottom of the screen. As a non-Germanist I like this although I suspect purists might find it irritating. It’s new technology for Oxford Lieder so I’ll make allowances for the couple of times when the performance moved to the next number but the printed text didn’t.

First published by Lark Reviews: https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=6292

I’ve really missed Jermyn Street Theatre and it’s a pleasure to be reviewing there again – even virtually.

Susan Elkin | 18 Mar 2021 11:06am

It has to be said that I haven’t really embraced digital reviewing but I’m glad I made an exception for Ian Hallard’s debut play which, as I sat at the computer in my home office on a springlike March morning, made me laugh aloud several times and held my attention for the whole 60 minutes.

Richard, a history teacher, and Ros, a recently bereaved carer for her sister, are on a first internet date – and it has to be via Zoom because this is 2020. Hallard as Richard (“Have you ever been a Dick?”) and Sara Crowe as Ros are wonderfully awkward with each other as it becomes apparent that they have nothing in common. There’s a hilarious, dead pan faux pas about an aubergine. As the summer wears on there are more Zoom meetings – different clothes each time – with the twinned shots sometimes swapping across the screen and then eventually, once the hospitality industry re-opens, an alcohol-fuelled dinner in a restaurant with a lot of comedy about social distancing. And I shall cherish the tortoise joke for a long time.

A back story (no spoilers) gradually emerges for Richard and then things begin to take an unexpected turn. The wife Lois (Katherine Jakeways) from whom he is separated treats us to some gloriously natural, totally convincing acting. And we watch Ros, who claims to want to be adventurous but is initially nervous, ill-at-ease and clumsy, gradually find her feet. Sarah Crowe really nuances the painfulness and then the gradual change.

What a good idea for a play – topical and workable under current restrictions. Beautifully directed by Khadifa Wong it’s both entertaining and thoughtful.

coronavirus Covid-19 London social distancing Susan Elkin

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/ive-really-missed-jermyn-street-theatre-and-its-a-pleasure-to-be-reviewing-there-again-even-virtually/

This revival is the first production by a theatre company

Susan Elkin | 28 Mar 2021 13:37pm

Jilly Bond and Chris Pickles. Photo: Pavel Goneski

Stewart Pringle’s play won the Papatango prize in 2017 and was staged that year at Southwark Playhouse. This revival is the first production by a theatre company and – a two hander set in one very simple room – it’s ideal for these socially distanced times, although it’s a shame that changing pandemic rules have caused it to be postponed twice. This live stream via YouTube is a compromise.

Harry (Chris Pickles) and Denise (Jilly Bond) meet in a Yorkshire village temperance hall. He is there weekly with fussy briefcase and papers to chair a meeting and she’s there to teach a zumba class. They help each other in almost every one of the short scenes to set up the room which means putting up or taking down a Gopak table – with its trestle legs.

At first there’s a lot of awkwardness. Gradually Harry and Denise thaw and – with a lot of misunderstandings and some comedy – eventually establish a tentative friendship of sorts. Most of the dialogue is deceptively, deliberately banal. Actually the play is laden with subtext. He, a tongue-tied widower, is clearly attracted to her although he’s held back by diffidence and upset to find she’s married. She sits in on one of his meetings and is disappointed to find that it’s not a council meeting he chairs. Instead it’s the Billingham Improvements Committee which generates a lot of nimbyish hot air and very few improvements which makes Denise cross and exposes the yawning political gulf between them. On a lighter note the scene in which she tries to teach him zumba is wryly funny. Both characters grow and change through all this in response to each other. It’s a rich play.

It is good to see two experienced actors who know each other well (Pickles and Bond were both on the staff at Drama Studio London for many years) working together like a pair of practised duet-ers – bouncing off each other with sensitivity and conviction. Matthew Parker’s direction is thoughtful too although there’s a great deal of the two actors walking round the space and standing apart from each other. I presume that’s for Covid reasons but it feels slightly unnatural at times.

It’s a brave decision to stage a full length play with interval (used for an interview with Pringle and Parker) digitally. The piece runs for two hours which, when you’re watching on a small screen, rather than sitting in an inclusive theatre space, feels like a long time. The majority of the shows I’ve seen on screen in the last year have been one hour without interval.