★★★

My life, even now, is full of firsts. I’ve read most of DH Lawrence’s prose and poetry, much of it many times. But The Daughter-in-Law, written in 1913 but not staged until 1967, was my first encounter with one of his plays. Like most of the novels it explores the relationships between sons and lovers and/or strong passionate women and weak men against a backdrop of the mining community world that Lawrence was born into.

It’s an uncompromising, rather grown-up regional play written and performed in Nottinghamshire dialect – comprehensible without the glossary in the programme thanks to some very clear speaking, good acting and an excellent job by voice and dialect coach Penny Dyer. Lawrence isn’t usually a bundle of laughs but in places this play – the dialogue well paced – is quite funny. Marriage, snaps Veronica Roberts as the forthright, unsmiling Mrs Gascoyne, is like a mousetrap … the cheese doesn’t last long.

Stomping heavily about with her stick, Mrs Gascoyne learns from a neighbour (Tessa Bell-Briggs – powerful) that her newly married elder son Luther (Matthew Barker) has recently impregnated another girl. The conversation is naturalistic and compelling in the Arcola’s transverse configuration with a longish dining table forming the centrepiece in the miner’s cottage – either Mrs Gascoyne’s or Luther’s.

The girl needs forty pounds (around £3,000 in today’s money) for an ‘arrangement’. Money is short. There’s a contentious miners’ strike but Luther’s wife, Minnie (Ellie Nunn), who has worked as a governess, has a little nest egg. Should she pay up? Eventually she loses her money rather more dramatically but no spoilers here.

Nunn is splendid as the titular daughter-in-law looking after Luther – who makes a terrific first appearance in his “pit dirt” – and then rebelling against the injustice of the marriage she’s in before finally regretting her feistiness and realising just how much she really does love her man. It’s an unlikely, very Laurentian, ending in which the men triumph over women against the odds. Nunn’s is complex role to bring off but she nips ably between cool reasoned argument and passion. And she’s exceptionally good at the shouty bits.

Barker gives a balanced performance as the troubled, confused Luther – still tied, as his wife forcibly asserts, to his doughty mother’s apron strings. And Matthew Biddulph does well as the faintly foxy, jokey unmarried younger brother, similarly over-attached to his mother.

It’s a wordy, but generally well constructed, play and director Jack Gamble ensures that the pace rarely flags even in the 90 minute first half. It’s an interesting piece of theatre although I doubt that DH Lawrence will ever feature of lists of finest British playwrights.

Photo: Idil Sukan/Draw HQ

★★★★

Kinky Boots, full of truth, challenging issues and triumphant feel-good factor, is just the show for these politically troubled times and a damp, chilly January night. You simply can’t help but smile at its cheery ebullience.

The 2005 film (Geoff Deane and Tim Firth) was entertaining and thoughtful, the West End version was a roof-rouser and this touring production more than ticks the boxes. A reminder in case you’ve been on Mars for the last fourteen years or so: Price and Son, a family-run shoe factory in Northampton is unexpectedly inherited by Charlie Price who discovers that it’s in deep financial trouble. A chance meeting with a transvestite dancer leads to the idea that making sexy long boots, strong enough to take a man’s weight, for the Milan Fashion Week could save the day for Charlie and his workforce.

Kayi Ushe is splendid as larger than life Lola, strutting about issuing put-downs being outrageously funny and – then the real depth – revealing of his innate vulnerability. I have a very wise, experienced clergyperson friend who says that the toilet scene is the best bit. She means that it’s about acceptance, trust and love, I think. This is the point when flamboyant Lola – aka as Simon from Clacton and now conventionally dressed – tells Charlie (Joel Harper-Jackson) about his troubled childhood. In the musical version it is, of course, a sung dialogue and Ushe does it with powerful poignance. And when Harper-Jackon joins in, with minimal accompaniment at this point. it becomes really special. It works brilliantly within the rhythm of the whole piece too because it contrasts so colourfully with the big brash singing and dancing numbers.

Harper-Jackson sings well as Charlie and is a very convincing anxious factory owner with other conflicts in his life to compound his problems. Paula Lane is good value as Lauren, his right hand woman in the factory and Demitri Lampra has entertaining fun as the lumbering, homophobic Don especially in the boxing scene with Ushe from whom he is about as different in every way as he could possibly be. Inspired casting.

Really, though, this is an ensemble piece. The factory staff becomes an accomplished, slick chorus from which each actor emerges to play small roles. Then there’s Lola’s backing group of drag queens from her London nightclub act. Their work is energetic, deliciously over-the-top and nicely choreographed (Jerry Mitchell who also directs).

Warmly recommended for an escapist evening if you need cheering up.

Photo: Helen Maybanks

Yes, there’s plenty of fine material here for a high flying (although still only four years old) community company to work on. And Cambridge Theatre Company certainly rises to the challenge admirably.

Allan Knee’s book and Mindi Dickstein’s lyrics create a very sympathetic and respectful account of Louisa M Alcott’s famous, feisty, quasi feminist American Civil War novel about a relatively impoverished, middle class family of four daughters whose father is away in the war.

Emma Vieceli is splendid as the central character Jo, the impetuous, independent daughter with ambitions to write professionally (a loose self-portrait of Alcott herself). Vieceli, who sings with warmth, strength, accuracy and sensitivity, catches all the conflict Jo deals with between love for her family and passion to succeed. She’s an eloquent actor too and it will be a long time before my image of Jo March as a literary character ceases to have Vieceli’s expressive face.

In the support roles there’s some top notch singing from Cat Nicol as the girls’ mother. Eleanor Thompson is delightful as Beth the piano playing sister who later becomes ill and Ekaterina Rahr-Bohr, as the youngest sister Amy deals with the complexities of the role with real flair. Her character is spitefully jealous but she’s no Austenian Lydia Bennett and eventually redeems herself. Caroline Dyson is, as ever, good value as the judgemental Aunt March – her soaring contralto voice works especially well in ensemble numbers – and Davinia Fisher brings the right level of worried maturity to the eldest sister, Meg.

The men are strong too. You can see why Meg falls for Matt Gregory’s attractively voiced John Brooke and Andrew Ruddick’s sardonic but ultimately coy Professor Bhaer convinces us that, yes, Jo might just succumb. Leo Stewart Oakley is persuasive as Laurie too and Richard Sockett, a very reliable Cambridge stalwart, is good as the initially irascible but later warmly supportive neighbour Mr Laurence.

Also very impressive is the (unseen) the twelve piece band led by James Harvey. There’s some very exposed string solo work in this score along with lots of different styles, rhythms and effects. And it all comes off with aplomb in this production.

Keep them coming, CTC. You may be in your infancy but you go from strength to strength and I’m already looking forward to the five further shows you have scheduled for later this year.

★★★★

Rose Heiney’s 90-minute play about internet addiction, self respect, relationships and more is acutely observed and immaculately well written. Bravo.

A monologue, directed by Hannah Joss, it presents an unnamed 20-something woman (Kimberley Nixon) who occupies a gloriously squalid room (an accolade for designer Louie Whitemore), dressed in a filthy pink rabbit onesie – with ears. The set and her clothing reflect her state of mind. As she unravels her story we learn that, traumatised by her father’s developing violent, section-able schizophrenia in his mid fifties she becomes attached to “the bunny”. That doesn’t matter too much until she accidentally gets into a press photograph of a teenage funeral unconnected to her. Then she and her photograph, her tweets and her blog posts go viral and she becomes ever more “fucked up” as her favourite poet Philip Larkin bluntly but eloquently put it. But she never stops being very funny indeed as well as evoking horrified sympathy.

Nixon’s naturalistic acting is splendid. Most of the time the work is invisible and therefore totally convincing as she slurps vodka, fiddles with her computer, perches on an old sideboard or waves odd bits of the set about. She times her anecdotes skilfully and imitates everyone she meets and tells us about. She presents a fine cameo for example of her rampantly left wing but posh Oxford University friend Penny (Benenden and her father has five Labradors) and another of her strident, needy younger sister who can barely read packet instructions. The neat way she nails the all too recognisable stereotypes and the things they say is hilarious. She’d good at voices and accents too, playing in her native Welsh lilt but mimicking lots of others. It’s a bravura performance and if it was, in places, slightly gabbled with consequent stumbles on press night I shall put that down to opening night nerves.

It’s a fine, cuttingly topical play which showcases an outstanding performance. You have until 9 February to catch it.

★★★★

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1989 sung-through, quasi-operatic show was probably overdue for a loving revival. It is shot through with the one song everyone knows – Love Changes Everything – which is arguably overused but there’s lot more to it than that.

Now it has one. Following a successful run at Hope Mill Theatre last year and ably directed by Jonathan O’Boyle, it’s small scale. But since this is a story of convoluted inter-generational relationships it sits rather well in the intimacy of the Southwark Playhouse space configured in the round

The music is substantially reduced in scale too. Originally written for full orchestra, here it is a transcription for two keyboards and percussion. MD, Richard Bates and his colleagues are out of sight above the stage playing plenty of attention to musical detail.

The 1955 novel on which this musical is based was written by David Garnett. It is rooted in the author’s own complex Bloomsbury Group relationships. It tells the story of love, loyalty, desire, regrets across three generations of one family. Garnett himself (to cut a long story short) was the lover of Angelica’s father Duncan Grant when she was born. A generation later he married her. And there are echoes of that in Aspects of Love.

Lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart add a neat and witty dimension and it’s a credit to this cast and their director that you hear every word: “hatchet” rhymed with “catch it” for example. Jason Denvir’s set and costume designs and Aaron J Dootson’s lighting create lots of very appealing period atmosphere. Price’s dresses are stunning and when the stage is flooded with warm, mellow Mediterranean sun you can almost smell the armagnac.

And so to the cast. Kelly Price is terrific as the troubled but hedonistic Rose, a charismatic French actor who marries an older man. She brings what Marcel (Minal Patel), her business manager and theatre colleague, calls “your strength and your fragility” to life. Price finds brittleness, passion, humour and elegance in the role and has remarkable voice control and range – both in pitch and dynamic – especially in what, in a classical opera would be called “recitative”.

Also very strong is Felix Mosse as Alex. He’s meant to be 17 when he first meets Rose and Mosse, slight and boyish in appearance more than convinces us that he’ll be “twenty in three years’ time” He too can manage the lightest, quietest thoughtful song as well as passionate full belt and he’s a fine duet singer. The six-eight number he does with Eleanor Walsh as the pubescent Jenny with lots of verses comes off delightfully, for instance, as they both lean on the chromatic accidentals as the relationship between them begins to spark. It means that we can see what’s happening even if their characters can’t.

Walsh excels as the child who then blossoms into a desirable adolescent. Wince we might, but the age of consent was (and is) 15 in France where most of the action takes place. Alex is waiting – just as, in real life David Garnett waited for Angelica Bell throughout her childhood. The on-stage chemistry between Mosse and Walsh nails all that and her top notes are quite something.

This is one to catch if you can. It punches well above its weight.

Jerome Pradon, Kelly Price and Felix Mosse in ASPECTS OF LOVE. Photo: Pamela Raith