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Mr Stink (Susan Elkin reviews)

Mr Stink continues at the Chickenshed Theatre, London until 4 August 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

This show is the sort of cheery, uplifting stuff which sends you home with a spring in your step and a smile on your face. It’s inclusive. It’s diverse. And it’s fun.

David Walliams’ whimsical story about a rather unhappy little girl who befriends a tramp, thereby transformatively rehabiliating them both, is a good fit for Chickenshed with its “theatre changing lives” mission. And it was, apparently, Walliams himself who suggested that they do it following the success of last year’s The Midnight Gang.

Lou Stein’s version embellishes the basic story by adding …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/mr-stink-chickenshed-theatre/

When you’re old enough to remember seeing Sir Adrian Boult and Otto Klemperer live it’s really quite exciting to see a conductor as young as Ben Gernon, 28, doing a fine job and reassuring us all that classical music is in safe hands for decades to come.

A crisp and intelligent performance of that glorious old warhorse, Beethoven’s Emperor concerto was the high spot of this concert – noteworthy for sensitive dynamics and a certain freshness, especially in the adagio.  Paul Lewis played it with warm maturity and precision.  And I always judge any performance of the E flat concerto by the handling of that beautiful link passage between the adagio and the rondo – maybe one of the most exquisitely lyrical few bars Beethoven ever wrote. Here the lingering rubato was nicely balanced before it danced triumphantly away.

The evening had begun with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s What Did We See? – an orchestral suite from Between Worlds. A four movement suite extrapolated by the composer from her 9/11 opera, it is moving (once you’ve read the programme notes and understood what it’s about) and musically interesting. It uses, for example, a battery of unusual percussion and requires six percussionists to play gong, horizontal bass drum, cymbals sounded by passing a rod vertically through the centre hole, xylophone, glockenspiel, various rattles and shakers and a strange bowed bell – among many other things. There are evocative, chittering percussive sounds in the strings too – produced by specialist bowing and tapping as well as atmospheric glissandi. All this is, I suspect, pretty difficult to play but the BBC Philharmonic rose ably enough to the challenge.

After the interval came an uplifting performance of Brahms Second Symphony conducted without baton – as also for the Davies and the Beethoven. For the Brahms he didn’t use a score either. As always that creates a strong line of very direct communication between conductor and players. They gave us an articulately melodious first movement, a gently sombre contrasting adagio and an allegretto at cracking pace with emphasis on the busy strings, every note clear. Then came a resounding allegro with lots of energy, bounce and passion. The roar of applause at the end was well earned.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

As soon as the 2018 Proms Youth Choir sang the first vibrant note of Eriks Esenvalds’s unaccompanied setting of Longfellow’s sonnet “A Shadow”, you knew that this was going to be quite an evening. Two hundred and fifty singers seated in one stage-right huge bank created a very warm strong sound which burst joyfully through the grandiloquent Royal Albert Hall acoustic. And if some of the exposed top soprano notes felt a bit strained, well I can live with that. It will be a long time before I forget this piece – a first performance – which ends with the choir whistling and the sound slowly dying away to the tinkling of bells and small glockenspiels in the hands of some of the choir members. The choir consists of University of Birmingham Voices, University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir, North East Choir and BBC Proms Youth Choir Academy. Each group had trained separately and then come together for a four day intensive rehearsal residency led by Chorus Director, Simon Halsey who conducted this fine performance.

Next, in a concert entitled War and Peace, came Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem played by Georg Solti’s World Orchestra for Peace which draws players from orchestras based in several continents. They’d sat quietly waiting in position during the opener. And if I may be allowed a “girly” observation it’s good to see a band in which the women dress in different colours. Visually very jolly. Coloured shirts for the chaps next, please.

Donald Runnicles splits his first and second violins across the stage which, as always, makes the lower strings sound more integrated – especially in the pizzicato section in the third movement’s lush (hopeful?) conclusion. The second movement was memorable too. With its col legno tattoo rhythm, snare drum and trumpet tune it really was Dies Irae and – in a piece which ensures that all four percussionists work hard for their fee – the decelerandoending with all those offset notes from different sections is not for the faint hearted. This lot brought it off with all the passion and panache it needs.

But the jewel in the crown was the magnificent account of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony which formed the second half – the choir now re-grouped evenly behind the orchestra. I have actually sung this piece in the Royal Albert Hall and so understand well the problems of the conductor being a very long way away – not an issue at this performance, partly because the impeccably trained choir sang without copies so that their responses were impeccably precise.

Runnicles gave us lots of sensitivity and colour in the first three movement with effectively exaggerated piano passages in the first and close attention to the detail with some very crisp string runs in the second – as well as making the very best of one of my favourite moments when the timpani take over from the bassoon lead and we’re into anticipation and excitement.  The lilting lyricism of the third movement was tenderly clear too with emphasis on delicate pairings of instruments which sometimes get lost in the texture.

Introducing the Ode to Joy theme at a brisk tempo and very softly left Runnicles with plenty of colourful, dramatics places to go and he certainly did – inspired perhaps by the fabulous quality of the choral singing (four good soloists too but somehow – seated between the orchestra and choir they seemed almost secondary in this performance). Verbal precision and very accurate pitching drove the piece along to its triumphant conclusion – any nervousness now forgotten as the sopranos sailed through those sublime, long high notes. Bravo to all concerned.

First published in Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Antony McDonald, director of this production, puts a modern, mildly feminist spin on Richard Strauss’s opera-within-an-opera and it responds rather well. The thirty five minute prologue, which forms the first half, gives us a female composer (Julia Sporsen) in jeans falling in love with Zebinetta (Jennifer France) when the latter arrives with her Burlesque troupe and threatens the opera. Veteran actor, Eleanor Bron, meanwhile, makes a cameo appearance as the party planner.

The point, of course, is an examination of high art and its relationship with “popular” art. The incongruous Gilbertian compromise that the opera company and the burlesque troop will stage a show about Ariadne collaboratively is – in this production – suitably entertaining and witty. It also heightens the poignancy of the bereft Ariadne (Mardi Byers) whose lover, Theseus has abandoned her. I shall long treasure the silly dance with tricks by Zerbinetta and her troupe of four – to Strauss at his most tunefully spikey – as they try, and fail, to cheer up Ariadne.

Jennifer France is in her element as Zerbinetta and her show piece number – with Queen of the Night-like top notes and vocal acrobatics along with delicious comic timing, nippy dancing and lots of panache – gets her a well-deserved round of spontaneous applause. Mardi Byers delights as a velvety voiced, soulful and then joyful Ariadne and there’s lovely work from Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Bacchus who eventually sweeps her off her feet – their concluding duets are warmly balanced and theatrically satisfying.

It’s one of Strauss’s richest, and best orchestrated operatic scores and conductor Brad Cohen brings out the colour – even though from my seat I could hear more stage left percussion than I could horns who were on the other side.

Antony McDonald’s set is an ingenious device. It consists of three scruffy caravans – all with doors for exits and entrances and one which can be (and is) climbed on. These are the backstage areas for the visiting performers and they sit well against the elegant residual brick and stone work of the Holland Park house to suggest that a couple of troupes of performers have arrived at a stately home. In the second half, for the opera, the caravans are moved to the sides to make room for the dining table which forms the main set item for Ariadne but we never forget that this is a show within a show.

I’m less convinced by the rather clumsy device of doing the prologue in English and the opera in German. I suppose it stresses the idea that first these people are being themselves and then they’re acting but it felt very false and certainly confused several audience members who were seated near me.

First published by Lark Reviewshttp://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Last week I  revisited two examples of theatre changing the lives of young people. Everyone in this industry – and those who directly or indirectly manages funding for such organisations – really should get into these places to marvel at what theatre can achieve.

First I went to Chickenshed to see their latest production – the very enjoyable Mr Stink. “Inclusivity” is an easy word but it’s rarely practised quite as fully as it is at Chickenshed which runs classes and activities for children and young people of ALL (and they mean all) abilities. Some members have Downs Syndrome, some cerebral palsy, some have illnesses, some have personality or behavioural issues and many have none of these things. They are just young people wanting to do drama. It’s fabulously, admirably and exemplarily diverse.

There’s a cradle-to-grave aspect to Chickenshed too. Several of the adults in the Mr Stink cast have been members since childhood. Having worked through Chickenshed’s BTEC and degree programmes they are now on the staff helping to deliver what Chickenshed calls “Theatre Changing Lives”. Some of the children the organisation works with would probably have difficulty fitting in elsewhere but here they are having a whale of a time, growing as people, learning a huge amount and taking part in high quality quasi professional theatre. As always after visiting, I was on a high all the way home.

A couple of days later found me at Intermission Theatre, based at St Saviour’s Church in Knightsbridge to interview artistic director Darren Raymond for a magazine article. Intermission works with 25 young people a year, drawn from all over London. Darren doesn’t want them “categorised” and he’s right. Let’s just say they lack opportunities in their own neighbourhoods and may be at risk of getting into trouble with the law.

As Intermission members they take part in drama workshops and stage plays based on Shakespeare which Darren adapts and directs. The most recent was Ring of Envy which is a version of Othello using a rather wonderful blend of street language and Shakespeare. I saw and enjoyed it the same night as Mark Rylance who is an enthusiastic patron. The organisation is now in its 10th year and Darren has lots of success stories of young people who’ve gone on to make a success of their lives after finding a sense of purpose and worth at Intermission.

The biggest success story is arguably Darren himself who discovered Shakespeare while serving a long sentence (he actually did three years) in Brixton Prison for possession of Class A drugs with intent to deal and money laundering. He was 19 at the beginning of his sentence. Thanks to London Shakespeare Workshop  – yet another example of how theatre can change lives –  he ended up playing Othello in a prison production as well as on tour after his release. Then he was invited to start Intermission Theatre and the rest is history. Today he’s a practising Christian, husband and father of three daughters.

QED. Drama is transformational. Would Arts Council England, the DfE and any Big Businesses with a sponsorship budget like me to act as a consultant?

 

The Alzheimer’s Society logo is based on a forget-me-not and how very apt that is. It’s all too easy to shut Alzheimer’s people away and forget them – so much easier than dragging them out to places and I’m as guilty of that as anyone. And, although I often observe that this ghastly illness is much more than memory loss, forgetfulness is certainly a major symptom.

I see this increasingly in My Loved One’s reading habits. I’m relieved he still reads a lot because neither of us has ever been a habitual TV viewer and of course he needs a default activity. Mostly he reads on his Kindle. We share downloads. “What are you reading?” I ask brightly. He simply can’t tell me. He doesn’t seem to be able to remember a word of it. Not only can he not tell me the title or author but he can’t even explain what it’s about. Whether he’s able to pick up the thread of a book when he returns to it I have no idea – and frankly don’t want to know because if he really can’t follow a plot and is just “reading” mechanically out of habit than that’s almost too sad to bear. To think this is a man with whom I used to discuss books. What a long time ago that begins to seem.

Then there are dates and commitments. He has no idea what day of the week it is and will say, for example. “This must be school traffic” if I’m driving him to the garden centre on a Saturday afternoon. I keep a big calendar on the kitchen notice board and cross off the days off but he still likes to write things (hand writing now quite shaky) in his diary. Quite often he notes things down on the wrong date and then gets anxious about them, I tell him over and over again that he’s made a mistake and usually end up correcting it in his diary myself. Every morning I tell him what day of the week it is and what’s going on today but it doesn’t stick for long – information is now for MLO what one of the educationists I studied at college called “plasters on the mind”.

Sometimes, I suppose forgetfulness is a mercy. What you can’t remember can’t upset you. I even hanker for a bit of it myself. Instead I’m blessed (cursed?) with a razor sharp memory. If you want to know the name of the dog who lived next door to my grandparents in 1960, I’m your woman. Ask me what I was reading on 9/11 or what grades most of my students got and I’ll tell you. Journalistically it’s useful.  I write most reviews and interviews without looking much at the copious notes I’ve made. But when it comes to reflecting on MLO and life with Ms A it’s distressing territory because the decline is so clear.

Two years ago we were preparing to move from our big house in Sittingbourne to a much smaller one in Catford – which we eventually did at the end of September. In July MLO was routinely driving up and down the M2 to see estate agents, sort out temporary accommodation for the cat and lots more. He also went more than once to Ramsgate to deliver paperwork to our solicitor. At home he competently joined me in packing/wrapping sessions – by the time we actually left we had filled many boxes with our most precious things ourselves because I didn’t fancy the removal men doing it. Saucepans are one thing. My collection of Wedgwood is another. He was perfectly able to talk to estate agents, solicitors and the like on the phone too.

And if I went to London for work he would routinely lock the house and come up on the train to meet me for an evening show – we’d agree a convenient meeting place. We did that hundreds of times over the years and it never failed until one occasion the week we moved when he couldn’t find me.  At the time (probably wrongly with hindsight) I put that down mostly to stress.

Well, thank goodness we moved when we did because he wouldn’t be able to do a single one of those things now. If I take him into town as I did last weekend for a show at The Old Vic and then a Prom (both review jobs for me) I have to lead him by the hand so I know where he is. I also help him on and off trains and down steps.

Much of the time he seems very vague about where we are and where we’re going. “We’ll go to Waterloo East because that’s handy for The Old Vic” I said several times, seeing off repeated enquiries about London Bridge and Charing Cross. On the tube – especially if he’s across the carriage – I keep mouthing the name of the destination station or counting them off on my fingers for him as you would for a child. These days it’s very tempting to suggest that he stays at home – which he’s more than happy to do because he finds going out a huge effort. I’m ashamed of the thought but life is, of course, much easier when I’m out and about on my own.

When we came out of the Albert Hall at the end of the evening on Saturday he said he was very tired (too tired to walk the ten minutes to South Kensington tube station?) and I had to get a taxi to take us back to Charing Cross. Where has my lively, energetic, healthy husband gone? Forget him not.

I’ve written about audition fees many times before and make absolutely no apology for doing so again. I shall keep relentlessly banging this drum until something changes.

It is quite wrong for Higher Education Institutions of any sort to charge audition fees.  Students wishing to apply for performing arts courses should be as free to do so as their friends who apply for courses in, say, maths, business studies or biochemistry.

As it is students who want to act, sing, dance or perform are disadvantaged and penalised almost before the UCAS form is completed. Somehow we have allowed a culture to develop in which it has become acceptable for students to be charged anything from around £40, and it’s often a lot more, merely for the “privilege” of applying to a drama school or specialist vocational university department. Yes, they get invited in for a face-to-face audition but too often, at first round stage, it’s a fiasco and applicants are dismissed after only a few minutes. But the institution has pocketed the fee.

A student who lives in, say, Newcastle, Truro or Aberystwyth will probably have to travel to audition much at all. Most of the drama schools people aspire to are in London and the South East. If Emma Bloggs from Shropshire wants to apply to four drama schools the chances are that three of them will be in London. That means that Emma has three expensive rail or bus trips on top of, maybe £200 in audition fees. If she doesn’t have handy friends or relations in London whose floor she can sleep on, and her audition is in the morning she may well also have to fork out for overnight accommodation. And before she knows where she is, Emma has run up a four figure bill and all she has tried to do is to apply.

Many students and their families simply can’t afford this. They are not necessarily “poor” and likely to get much benefit or charity but their disposable income is limited and they can’t stump up an “audition budget”.

Yes – before anyone jumps down my throat – some schools such as LAMDA now operate an audition waiver scheme whereby trusted organisations refer a quota of talented but impoverished applicants who then audition without charge. A number of schools conduct some first round auditions around the country and some are experimenting with allowing applicants to send in a video in lieu of a first audition. It’s a start but it’s not enough. No school should be charging for auditions at all.

I am totally convinced that many drama schools use the whole auditions procedure as a useful income stream. Consider this scenario: The (fictional) Southwark School of Theatre Arts, which is a top drawer establishment, charges £50 per audition and gets 2000 applicants.  A modest supposition. Many get far more than 2000 hopefuls. That is £100,000 which SSTA has just grossed. Large schools run several big oversubscribed courses so you can often multiply the £100,000 a few times.

Well, I accept that there’s a cost to running auditions. Many schools bring in and, presumably pay, freelance assessors. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it pays them £200 a day and I bet it doesn’t because all pay rates are low in the performing arts industries.

How many students can SSTA then process in a day? Well I know one prestigious school which brings in 150 in the morning and another 150 in the afternoon so let’s go with that. It means they need to run seven or eight audition days to get through the 2000 applicants. More sums. Once they’ve paid three assessors, heated and lit the building and had the loos cleaned let’s allow a very generous £1000 costs per audition day – that’s a total of £8,000 if they run eight of them. It isn’t much of a dent in that £100k is it?

Audition fees are a scandal. And I’ve long been puzzled about why more people aren’t making more fuss about it. Does the DfE actually know what’s going on? Isn’t there a case for making such rampant exploitation illegal?

If it costs, say, £10,000 (I’m generously rounding up again) to run a year’s auditions for a single course then this should simply be budgeted for in the normal way. But “free” auditions would mean increased numbers of applicants which would make the system unwieldy, I hear the schools bleating thereby tacitly admitting that audition fees are a disincentive to potential applicants.

That’s easily solved.  Colleges, schools and departments could simply cap audition numbers making it clear that the earlier you apply the better because the number of available auditions is limited. Serious applicants, well advised by their secondary school teachers, youth theatre leaders and so on, will be there – although I’d also like to see some financial support from somewhere to pay travel costs for potential drama and other performing arts students applying to institutions a long way from base.

I’d also like to see a code of practice whereby every drama school had to give every applicant a decent audition experience. These nervous youngsters need time to warm up. The best schools offer workshops, informal Q/A sessions with current students and feedback. Someone who has travelled to Southwark from, say, Berwick especially for an audition deserves more than five minutes’ attention irrespective of whether a fee has changed hands.

A version of this article was first published in Ink Pellet http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/

 

 

 

Sometimes things go well. Good. My Loved One deserves a bit of luck occasionally. Hooking up with Ms Alzheimer’s when he was still only 71 was definitely not part of his life plan so anything which offsets the horror of that, even a tiny bit, is to be warmly welcomed.

Last week a nice surgeon (who chatted to me about how much he’d enjoyed War Horse as soon as he sussed me) whipped MLO into an operating theatre at Lewisham Hospital and got rid of the filthy, hideously prominent, plum sized, purple lesion which was growing on the side of his nose. I expected him to return looking like Dick Bruna’s illustration for Miffy Goes to Hospital and probably with “two lovely black eyes.” I also thought he’d be pretty shaken up. Not a bit of it. He emerged quite cheerfully with a very neat sticking plaster across his nose and as soon as we got home, ebullient with relief, tucked into a large bowl of muesli washed down with peppermint tea. Despite the decision to go for a local anaesthetic they insisted that he fast for 6 hours first and then kept us waiting for four hours when we got there so it really was a very long time since he’d eaten.

Five days later I removed the plaster, as instructed, cleaned him up a bit and apart from a small healing wound, more or less concealed by his glasses, MLO looks as good as new. It hasn’t hurt at all. He hasn’t needed so much as a single paracetamol. Let’s hope the medics are as pleased with it as we are when he goes back for the follow up appointment.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, two days later came his 73rd birthday. For obvious reasons the family decided that we should celebrate and make a big fuss of him. It will be a long, uncertain 12 months to the next one.

The day started a bit oddly. After I’d given him my present and the cards which had arrived in the previous day or two, he rummaged about and then presented me with an envelope. It was a Golden Wedding anniversary card. Oh dear. He had clearly remembered that there was something to celebrate but couldn’t quite remember what. Our Big 50 is next March. I swallowed hard and said “Oh how lovely. Thank you. It isn’t quite our anniversary yet but we’re in our 50th year so it’s spot on”. He replied: “I tried to work it out but couldn’t quite.”

I took him to see David Haig’s Pressure in the afternoon as a birthday treat. I’d reviewed it at Park Theatre earlier in the year and was very taken with it – so, of course, were lots of other people which is why it has transferred into the West End. I was pretty sure MLO would like it too and I was right. Despite the time it now takes to walk him through Covent Garden – his has only one speed: trudge – he seemed to be engaged and pleased to be there. When the play was over I bundled him into a taxi and whisked him off to Blackfriars as fast as possible for the train home.

He had some idea that our elder son was coming although I’d been very vague, telling him that we were going out for curry when we got home probably on our own although ES and his wife might join us. In his now customary compliant mood he didn’t ask me why there was a hurry to get home.

In fact I knew that both sons, their warmly supportive partners and our younger two  granddaughters, aged 7 and 3, were all at home busy festooning the house with streamers and balloons. MLO arrived home to find six people eagerly awaiting him, table laid, beer in the fridge and food pre-ordered by our younger son. All he had to do was to sit down and open his presents. It was all extremely jolly and a real pleasure to see the “patient” being relatively with it as pater familias and clearly feeling cherished. And I’m really grateful for all the effort which went into that.

Let’s hope MLO is still able to enjoy the planned celebrations when March 2019 finally arrives. We’re all (sons, wives, GDs et al) going to spend a weekend in a very big, rented house in Kent so that we can mark the occasion all together. Other family members will join us on the Sunday. No doubt there will be balloons.

Meanwhile an article in Daily Express reports on an American study which helpfully finds that the best ways to fight Ms A are dancing, gardening and swimming. Hmm. I took him dancing earlier in the year and I have to say it was very hard work. His idea of gardening is to stand in the middle of the grass and watch me do it. And he’s a non-swimmer. Next idea, please?