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Spice of Life

I think variety is the best thing about my life and work. In the last two weeks I’ve seen a children’s show at Chichester, amateur takes on Our Country’s Good and Follies, three youth theatre shows (one of them in Cambridge and two by National Youth Theatre 2018 Rep Company)  one straight play, one for under 5s and a musical at Jermyn Street.

In the forthcoming week I shall be at Canterbury for Glyndebourne’s La Traviata and back at Chichester for The Watsons. Then there’s a local amateur staging of O What a Lovely War and I shall be off to Half Moon Theatre (two Saturdays running!) for Off The Grid at the end of the week.

The work takes me from big venues such as Chichester Festival Theatre, Marlowe Theatre Canterbury and the Olivier to niche spaces like Park Theatre or Jermyn Street and often pub theatres – dozens of them, of course, all over London.

And often – as a reviewer on press tickets –  I see shows I wouldn’t have dreamed of buying tickets for so there’s an element of personal learning curve as I see more and more work which is – maybe – outside my usual comfort zone. I was bowled over, for example, by Six at Arts Theatre after its doing so well in Edinburgh and I recommended it to lots of other people. I’m so glad it’s coming back in the new year. But my point is that I’m really not into hip hop and would never have imagined how much I’d like this show.

Sometimes it works the other way. I see something that I’ve dutifully trotted open-mindedly along to and loathe it. I sit there thinking how glad I am that I’m not actually paying for this experience – and please can I go home soon?  That was how I felt, I’m afraid at National Youth Theatre Rep Company’s Victoria’s Knickers last week although the cast are very talented.

Another thing I really enjoy and value about reviewing is that – and it’s a deliberate choice – I see shows by different sorts of company not all of them professional or commercial. It’s always a pleasure to see what Cambridge Theatre Company does with its local youth casts for example (Peter Pan next month) and I get a lot of pleasure from the work of  adult non-pro companies too. Sedos’s Our Country’s Good at the Bridewell  last month for instance was one of the best amateur straight plays I have ever seen. And I’m happy to support local (to me) south London companies such as West Wickham Operatic Society and ArtForm in their endeavours. Of course I shall like some shows better than others – and say so – but that’s simply how it works.

It’s also good to have the opportunity, sometimes, to talk professionally, to the people involved in these shows. This week, for instance, I interviewd Moira Buffini who has adapted Macbeth (50/50 gender casting) for National Youth Theatre Rep Company which I shall see at the end of this month.

If only I could accept more invitations. But I have other work – features and so on – as well as reviewing. Four or five shows a week is usually about the limit of what I can manage. Except in December of course when life enters a manic phase. Sometimes, for a couple of  crazy weeks, I find myself seeing two or three in a day. Have notebook. Will travel.

The Midnight Gang. Chichester Festival Theatre. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

The Distance You Have Come continues at the Cockpit Theatre, London until 28 October 2018.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Billed as a song cycle (by Scott Alan who also directs) this two-hour piece sits somewhere between musical theatre and a concert.

Six people interact in various roles as we explore, through song and drama, the messiness, anguish and happiness of human relationships ranging from parenthood to suicidal despair, dating and more.

The problem with it is that it needs a lot more narrative cohesion …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-distance-you-have-come-cockpit-theatre/

 

The opening concert in MSO’s 108th season really belonged to young cellist, Maxim Calver. Aged only 18, he was a finalist in this year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year and he stood in at short notice for the booked soloist.

Unusually he began, at conductor Brian Wright’s request, with a solo piece – a variation, from a work by Lutoslawski commissioned by Rostopovitch and pretty dramatic it was too. He played this ambitious piece, complete with glissandi and quarter tones with intense insouciance.

Then, in place of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, it was on to a strikingly mature performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme with the legato variations leaned on for maximum romance and the faster ones delivered with crisp witty aplomb. His use of harmonics is spectacular too.

And as if that weren’t enough he then treated us to a richly nuanced encore – the very familiar but evergreen Sarabande from Bach’s First Cello Suite. Thus, this engaging, poised young man who smiles though the music when his rapier eyes aren’t staring into the distance, whizzed through the music of three centuries in less than an hour.

The concert began with Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem which is getting a number of outings this year to mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice. It’s a tricky work. You don’t often see MSO front desk players visibly counting but they carried it off. The Dies Irae movement with the relentless rhythms ably underpinned by weighty percussion  (seven in the section) was especially impressive and there was some lovely work from harpists, Milo Harper and Alex Tindall.

Pictures at an Exhibition, of course, as we now usually hear it owes as much to Ravel’s orchestration as it does to Mussorgsky’s original piano suite. In this intelligent performance Brian Wright allowed every soloist and solo section  – some excellent playing here – to ensure that we noticed their contribution but without ever letting the piece feel bitty. It sailed along with warmth, fireworks and lots of colour. At the end Wright stood tuba player, Andy Bridges up first and quite right too. His solo was splendid as was Mike Austin’s work on alto saxophone. And The Great Gate of Kiev, the final section, with those evocative tubular bells and cymbal clashes must have sent every member of the audience away with melody ringing in their heads.

Yes, the season is off to a fine start. Roll on 1st December.

This review was first published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Middle Temple Hall – in all its Elizabethan glory with carving and stained glass – is a stunningly beautiful concert venue. It was, apparently, the venue in which Twelfth Night was premiered (earliest known performance, anyway) in 1602 so it’s rather delightful that the tradition continues.

This concert opened with a world premiere of Windows by Misha Mullov-Abbado. I’m not sure how fair it is to point out that he’s the son of Viktoria Mullova and Claudio Abbado but he is, obviously and literally, a born musician. This work in three unrelated movements (written originally as standalones) is unexpectedly tonal and lyrical as well as, at times, jazzy and lilting. The first movement is almost lush in places with some fine, very exposed string work. I also admired the quality of the trombone playing over lots of well controlled vamping in the middle syncopated movement.

And then it was Schubert’s Eighth Symphony. Outcry Ensemble claims to approach modern music with the passion and rigour you’d expect to experience when hearing mainstream repertoire and to apply the explorative-analytical approach normally required for contemporary music when they play standard repertoire. And in this work you could hear exactly that from the dramatic dynamics to the well pointed general pauses which made it feel very crisp and fresh. In the andante Henshaw balanced the sonority with the alternating lightness, and the percussive pizzicato came through with notable precision. Yes, there was an occasional wrong note but that’s the joy of live performance.

The acoustic of Middle Temple Hall is perfect for Schubert. It worked much less well for the Brahms Violin Concerto. In the opening and closing movements the orchestra was often too loud so that accomplished soloist Oscar Perks seemed almost competing aurally and losing. Henshaw really should have been aware of this and damped his orchestra down. The gentler passages and the whole of the middle movement worked well though and it was a real treat to hear Perks play his own cadenza which explored the themes of the first movement with imaginative virtuosity.

This review was first published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

This fine play asks a lot of very searching questions and answers none of them. The complexities of sexual consent were topical in 2015 when the National Youth Theatre first staged the play it had commissioned from Evan Placey. They’re even edgier now so the revival is timely.

The long first act takes us to a school where married, pregnant teacher Diane (Marilyn Nnadebe) who has already has a child is trying to “deliver” sexual relationships education to a cheerfully unruly group. At the same time she must deal with Freddie (Fred Hughes-Stanton) a student from seven years back who has reappeared in her life with an agenda. The very intense second act is a flashback which reveals what actually happened seven years earlier. It’s a neat way of exploring the central issue from a range of angles.

You can’t legally consent to sex under 16. Should it be otherwise? Can a male old enough to have a full erection actually be abused by a woman given that he has to take the more active role for sex to happen? (An issue which has always puzzled me but perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life). What about consent to sex between a married couple? What responsibilties does a teacher have if a pupil confides abuse by a sexual partner the same age? Oh yes, there’s an awful lot to think about in this play.

Nnadebe is a fabulous actor. She is totally natural as the teacher struggling to control a volatile classroom liberally but appropriately. She is convincing at home as the troubled wife and mother. Her awkward body language – partly the pregnancy and partly social discomfort – is beautifully observed. Then she sheds seven years and is suddenly lithe, long haired and drunk sobering up quickly and bantering with the teenage Freddie. Any teacher watching this will wince and want to call her away to safety. It’s a really terrific performance.

And Hughes-Stanton matches her, appearing first as the inadequate, flawed 20-something who works in a bank and who contacts his former teacher. There’s a fine, perfectly written scene with his brother (Jay Mailer) too in which the two actors play off each other with real truthfulness so that the acting is invisible. And I shall long treasure the image of Hughes-Stanton sitting on the sofa eating biscuits in Diane’s flat when she is utterly devastated but he’s too young and crassly unaware to understand.

The ensemble work in the first half is pretty electric although, well directed (by Pia Furtado) as it is, I think the song dance interludes are gratuitous. They do them very well but they don’t add much to the effect of the play. The classroom scenes are a delight though with a lot of humour gleaming through the issues. So are the conversations between Laurie Ogden as Mary, a young teacher and Georgia (Alice Vilanculo) an apparently confident student whose life is actually pretty troubled.

The Rep company is the top tier of NYT’s work. It offers funded professional training, predicated on a West End rep season for an ensemble selected from the membership. Consensual is the opening play in the 2018 season. Victoria’s Knickers and Macbeth are still to come.

This review was first published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-National%20Youth%20Theatre%20of%20Great%20Britain%20(Rep%20Company)-Consensual&reviewsID=3363

 

society/company: Cambridge Theatre Company
performance date: 24 Oct 2018
venue: Great Hall at the Leys

Arguably the greatest (in every sense) musical of the second half of the twentieth century, West Side Story is a colossal undertaking for a, mostly, youth cast but they rise admirably to the challenge under Chris Cuming’s direction.

Cambridge Theatre Company has managed to assemble 22 boys for this project which is, in itself, a real achievement given how dance heavy the show is. Cuming gets them moving so imaginatively and slickly that he enables every one of them to “dance” even when the moves are not, in themselves, complicated or difficult. He has a real gift for getting the very best out of young people and making it look splendidly and colourfully dramatic.

Working on Scott Hunter’s set with scaffolding across the back to create a range of levels and the transitory atmosphere of uneasy immigrants (ever topical), the cast of fifty five, pulsing with energy, are directed to make good use of the space. They leap, slide, race, somersault, jive, shout, click fingers and a lot more. The band, of which more anon, are in another room.

The two central performances are outstanding. Jasmine Cairns, as Maria, commands the stage whenever she’s on it and she has a strikingly mature singing voice. She’s a convincing actor too especially in the devastating last scene. The piece is loosely based, of course, on Romeo and Juliet and does not end happily.

Olly Manley who plays Tony has a warm, melifluous, well modulated singing voice and yes, his acting ensures that we all agree he’s a lad any girl would fall for, irrespective of his background.

Abigail Mann is good value as the jabbering, anxious Anita with a good mezzo voice and Richard Sockett ( adult and a familiar face on the Cambridge Theatre scene) adds gravitas and balance as Doc. Dan Lane as Riff is an accomplished actor and Oli Wyatt brings plenty of oily malevolence to Bernado

MD Graham Brown has thirteen excellent musicians tucked away elsewhere in the building all doing their utmost. There are two problems with this, though.

First, this pared down arrangement does not do justice to Bernstein’s wonderful score which was originally meant for a full size symphony orchestra. Here the texture is often woefully thin with middle parts missing. And of course almost everyone in the audience knows the music very well so you can’t help feeling the gaps.

Second, a vibrant, complex piece like West Side Story demands the immersiveness of live music close by. If Brown and co are elsewhere – monitor screens etc, notwithstanding – he can’t feel what’s happening in stage and in places that shows.

I spoke to Cuming (having interviewed him for Sardines last summer) during the interval and learned that these young people had an intensive week together in August. Since then it’s been weekend rehearsals. Cuming reckons it totals the equivalent of about two and a half weeks. Many professional companies would gib at so little time for such a colossal undertaking. Bravo, Cambridge Theatre Company. You continue to do a magnificent job.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Cambridge%20Theatre%20Company%20-West%20Side%20Story&reviewsID=3361

Fibian McKenzie, Cooper Snow, Albie Stisted, Cody Molko & Anjali Shah. Photo by Manuel Harlan

society/company: Chichester Festival Theatre (professional)(directory)
performance date: 22 Oct 2018
venue: Festival Theatre, Chichester
FOUR STARS

 

I’ve been going to shows at Chichester almost since the theatre opened when I was at teacher training college round the corner. And this is the first time in over 50 years that it has included a children’s show in its main Festival programme. Please, please let this be a new tradition because I think it’s a wonderful idea especially if you’ve got talented Dale Rooks (who runs Chichester’s outstanding Learning, Education and Participation Programme) on hand to direct.

This musical version of The Midnight Gang features five child actors (two teams) cast from all over the country and six adult professionals. We’re in the Lord Funt Hospital where children incarcerated in the children’s ward go for adventures round the hospital at night until one project goes hilariously wrong and things have to change. It’s belly laugh funny – Walliams knows a thing or two about laughter of course – but it’s also poignant and moving as it touches on some serious issues such as one child’s terminal illness and one adult’s apparently rootless life. It’s a rather glorious celebration of imagination, kindness and hope too.

Walliams, Lavery and Rooks all know exactly what they’re doing and full marks to ever came up with the idea of the illuminated messages over Simon Higlet’s grandiosely, convincing hospital set complete with reversible panels and rooms emerging from the central floor. I am still chuckling over the instruction that parents should, at this point (a wacky bit of puppetry) cover the eyes of impressionable children and that children with impressionable parents had better cover THEIR eyes.

Cody Molko, a student at Sylvia Young Theatre School, played Tom on press night and found a nice level of assertive innocence and vulnerability in one who hates his boarding school and has been told that his parents don’t care about him. All the children play off each other well. Rafi Essex gives a delightful performance as the cheerfully obese George. Jasmine Sakyiama has oodles of stage presence as Amber and Felix Warren is strong as the geeky, musical Robin whose eyes are bandaged. Cerys Hill sings beautifully as Sally, the cancer patient, especially in the wistful number Big Beautiful Life.

Dickon Gough is outstanding as the Porter who’s been associated with the hospital all his life and has nothing else. He is very tall and, although acting a limp, sometimes takes off gleefully in dance with the children and what a melifluous singing voice. Jennie Dale enjoys herself as the appalling matron pitched somewhere between Miss Trunchbull and the Wicked Witch of the West. Her flirty tango with Tim Mahendran is a moment to treasure. Lucy Vandi is rather good value, too as the jazz singing catering trolley operator, Tootsie.

Arguably, though, the real reason this show works is Joe Stilgoe’s songs. Witty words fly almost continuously and I love the understated melodies often supported by just a vamp so that you can hear and enjoy every one of them. Jennifer Whyte and her five piece band – just visible through the set at the top – do a fine job.

On press night the auditorium was full of parents and grandparents with children enjoying a half term treat. There is clearly an appetite for this sort of thing in Chichester so I’m (hopefully) looking forward to another family show next year.

This review was first published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Midnight%20Gang%20-%20%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85&reviewsID=3358

 

★★★★

Sophie Ward as Alda Pennington and Tim Woodward as Arthur Rawlings. Photo – Scott Rylander

The Paradise Circus – ★★★★
By James Purdy. Produced by The Playground Theatre.
society/company: Playground Theatre (professional)
performance date: 12 Oct 2018
venue: The Playground Theatre

It’s 1919 and Arthur Rawlings (Tim Woodward) has lost his favourite eldest son in the war. He has no time for the younger ones (Joshua Ward and Sam Coulson) whom he regards as “lazybones and dreamers” so when he gets an opportunity to part company with them he grabs it – only to be felled later by regret and remorse. The plot sits somewhere between The Mayor of Casterbridge and Death of a Salesman. James Purdy (1914-2009) is a highly compelling playwright whose work is at last getting some of the recognition it deserves – this production is the world premiere of this play.

The Playground Theatre is, on this occasion, configured in the round and because it’s a large space there is space for the cast behind some of the raked seating – cue for some very atmospheric, wistful, immersive, choral singing and fine incidental music mostly played and sung by the impressively versatile Darren Berry (who trained at The Royal Ballet School so he dances too) on piano, violin, kit drum, guitar, banjo and more as well as voice and playing a small speaking role as Gonzago.

Sophie Ward is outstanding as the still, calm, sardonic Alda Pennington, a local “witch” consulted by Rawlings in his despair. The wisest, most knowing person of all her character makes outrageous predictions and observations. But this is not witchcraft or magic, it’s wisdom and practicality and she is right every time. Ward dominates the action whenever she’s on stage.

I also liked Joshua Ward’s (yes, he’s Sophie’s son and the late Simon Ward’s grandson – dynasty?) work as Greg. He uses an impassive way of speaking associated with trauma and enduring distress until at the very end when he crumbles and quivers but it’s immaculately understated. He and Coulson work nicely together too with a lot of focused listening.

At the heart of this powerful production is a fine tragic performance from Woodward ably supported by Mark Aiken as the kindly sensible Dr Hallam with whom he has a lot of scenes. There are also some pleasing scenes with Debra Penny as Minnie, a sort of long term live-in family friend and, by implication, mistress to Woodward’s character. She too is affectionate and decent – but with an angry past as her red hot scene with Sophie Ward’s character makes clear.

The Paradise Circus is a tragedy about personality flaws, misjudgement and bad decisions, as strong in its way as Othello or Dr Faustus – and, with sensitive direction by Anthony Biggs – it makes for pretty riveting theatre. A bit of a gem, in fact. Goodness knows why nobody has seen fit to stage it before.

This review was first published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Playground%20Theatre,%20The%20(professional)-The%20Paradise%20Circus%20-%20%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85&reviewsID=3345