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Something Old Something New 2018 (Susan Elkin reviews)

An annual revue presented by students at TheMTA at Bernie Grant Arts Centre, London

This lively show takes us from Gershwin to Stiles and Drewe and from Bricusse and Bernstein to Shrek the Musical with lots of other slick and energetic highlights along the way.

A firm annual fixture in the MTA’s calendar, SOSN18 is, I think, its best revue yet. Apart from one year when I had the temerity to be on holiday, I’ve seen every SOSN revue since the MTA was founded in 2009.

As usual the whole college is involved – both first and second years – but obviously this is primarily a showcase for the latter who become officially available to sign with agents after this event. In previous years every single student has been signed by the time the two-year course ends in the autumn.

Revue is a very effective way of showcasing young talent. A show which includes 27 numbers, involves over 250 costumes and uses the talents of nine professional choreographers, ensures that we see each performer in a whole range of different roles …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review http://musicaltheatrereview.com/musical-theatre-academy-something-old-something-new-bernie-grant-arts-centre/

 

It’s a very symmetrical play. And in the hands of director Marnie Nash for Unfolds Theatre the symmetry comes through strongly in a succinct, pared down 75-minute version. An accomplished cast of seven tell the story of three men who eschew the company of women for three years only to meet – guess what? – three enchanting women. It’s a famously deferred (or denied) happy ending and Shakespeare allows the trio of elegant, witty, intelligent women to retain the upper hand and makes the men look daft.

Nash makes nice use of the Rose Playhouse’s small, platform like playing space allowing the cavernous archeological site behind it to form a three dimensional back drop so that it feels as if we’re in the open air. And I like the way characters lean over the railings and gaze into the distance as if on a country estate. She sets the play at some point in the mid 20th century – women in pillbox hats with little veils and fishnet seamed stockings.

Joshua Jewkes delights as Berowne. He is sardonic, another Benedick in his initial rejection of the prospect of marriage, brighter than either of his fellow chaps but, of course, duped as easily as they are. And Jewkes makes it very clear that something has changed and he really is deeply drawn to Michelle Barwood’s engaging Rosaline. He is also excellent at staying in role – marching off stage muttering very effectively and appropriately.

Angus Castle-Doughty is fun as Longaville, presented here as pretty dim and a bit of a liability. Castle-Doughty has deliciously silly, expressive feet. Alec Bennie is suitably earnest as the King and moderately funny as Don Armado and there’s a strong performance from Nicholas Delvalle as Costard who more or less glues the unlikely plot together. Delvalle doubles as an engaging Boyet in a big moth-eaten fur coat too.

Jordan Leigh Harris has a magnificent speaking voice and deploys it well as Maria and Jaquenetta. Julie Cheung-Inhin is imperious as the French Princess when she needs to be but readily collapses into naturalistic giggles with the other women when the men aren’t there. It’s impressively plausible.

This Love’s Labour’s Lost is an enjoyable show but do wrap up warmly. It’s a chilly venue.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Love%27s%20Labour%27s%20Lost&reviewsID=3151

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s celebration of the transformational power of the arts in general, and theatre in particular, has never been more timely. And to present it in this imaginative, inclusive way (director: Fiona Buffini) using a diverse cast makes it even more moving and relevant. Thank goodness it has survived its association with the disgraced Max Stafford-Clark who commissioned it thirty years ago.

Ramps on the Moon is a consortium working with six theatres, including Nottingham Playhouse. One partner produces a show each year with an integrated cast including D/deaf, disabled, hearing and non-disabled people. The production then tours to the other theatres in the group. Our Country’s Good follows The Threepenny Opera and Tommy.

We’re in the Eighteenth Century and a group of convicts has just arrived in New South Wales. They are brutalised by the Marines who are nearly as miserable as their charges – thousands of miles from home in a hot alien arid place, dependent on erratic ships for supplies including food. Only the governor, Captain Arthur Philip (Keiron Jecchinis – nice performance) believes that the arts and kindness might, just might, improve things a little. So he encourages one of the officers to direct a play – Thomas Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer – with a convict cast.

Caroline Parker is terrific as Meg. This show is structured to include integral signing and interpretation. Parker is almost continually on stage. Her own role is fairly minor but she voices characters who are signing and signs for characters who are speaking. She does this with total conviction, effectively jumping in and out of roles throughout.

There’s beautiful work too from Gbemisola Ikumelo as the truculent Liz Morden who eventually becomes one of the colony’s most adept and committed actors. And Sapphire Joy provides an admirable counter balance as Mary Brenham who seems, from the outset, less coarse than some of the others. Garry Robson is yearning and unhappy as Harry Brewer, the midshipman, whose only ray of light is the troubled convict Duckling Smith (Emily Rose Smith) with whom he cohabits. Tim Pritchett brings patience and commitment to Ralph Clark, the officer attempting to create art with this motley crew.

It’s a big cast of seventeen which works slickly together to ensure that the storytelling never flags. The whole show is both captioned and audio described. It couldn’t be more accessible and it was good to see such a fine piece of theatre at a full house matinee alongside, mostly, school parties and groups of retired people. It was obvious that most of the former are studying the play and therefore know it well while most of the latter, I inferred, had come to it without any foreknowledge. One of the wittier lines in the play is: “People without imagination shouldn’t come to the theatre”. No problems on this occasion when the response was warmly enthusiastic – as indeed it should be, given the excellence of the production.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Nottingham%20Playhouse%20(professional)-Our%20Country%E2%80%99s%20Good&reviewsID=3132

Rarely have I been so moved in the theatre as by Luke Adamson’s Alzheimer’s play. And the reason – as anyone who reads my weekly blogs about my husband’s illness (at http://susanelkin.co.uk/articles/category/life/alzheimers-blog) will know is that the subject matter of this 80-minute piece comes very close indeed to home. Like, Adamson’s character Mandy (Julie Binysh), I am dealing with this in a dearly loved one on a daily basis. And I can assure you that the play, written as a tribute to Adamson’s late grandfather, gets it one hundred percent right.

Amanda Reed, as recently widowed Alice, is becoming forgetful. She can’t find the photograph albums she’s looking for and often can’t remember the day of the week or whether or not something has happened or is about to happen. Reed creates a very plausible character: sometimes worrying, often still brisk and for a long time she insists that there’s nothing wrong with her.

The thrust of the plot takes Alice and Mandy to Blackpool for a weekend so that Alice can dance in the Tower ballroom once more. Of course it doesn’t quite work out like that as we see Alice getting confused, lost, anxious, querulous – but sometimes bouncing back to normal.

Julie Binysh’s acting is beautifully natural and totally convincing in the intimate, quasi-televisual space of Greenwich Theatre’s studio. She gets angry, she weeps and she succumbs to an anaesthetising glass or two after her mother is in bed. Mostly, her character is patient and kind. Binysh finds a deeply truthful balance.

And there’s a fine performance from Julia Faulkner as the third member of the cast. She plays the hotel receptionist/manager in a faded Fawlty Towers-like establishment, speaking in a tortured attempt at distorted RP. It’s immaculately observed and her excruciating self conscious mis-pronounciation of croissant is a delightful touch. Then, as she gradually unbends she reveals a character of real anguish with a very sad – relevant – story of her own.

I enjoyed this play very much. And the ending is almost unbearably poignant – I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member in tears. It’s strong drama (well directed by playwright, Luke Adamson) with a simple but imaginative set mostly based on piles of cardboard boxes and strings of lights. I admire its overt agenda too. Adamson’s passion – as he said in the Q/A which followed the performance – is to get Alzheimer’s talked about openly as cancer now is. With that in mind, I hope he manages to get his excellent One Last Waltz touring again very soon.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Greenwich%20Theatre%20(professional)-One%20Last%20Waltz&reviewsID=3130

I often wonder how it would have felt to be in The Rose, The Globe or the Curtain four centuries ago when the great dramas of the day premiered. Imagine the audience anticipation and engagement when they heard, say Hamlet, Lear or The Duchess of Malfi for the very first time. The probably weren’t polite or deferntial but I bet you’d have got a raw, heartfelt reaction. Well, move on 400 years and you get a whiff of something similar each year at The Globe when 30,000 teenagers from London and Birmingham secondary schools get free tickets for a sparky, abridged version of a Shakespeare play – the annual Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank project.

This year’s play is Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Michael Oakley and – although the audience was smaller for an evening performance than for matinees I’ve seen in the past – the auditorium was, as usual, seething with excitement. Then the play started and, suddenly there was rapt silence apart from the odd gasp, appreciative “oooh”, spontaneous burst of applause and lots of laughter – they were being a real audience in the original meaning of the word. They were listening intently.

Ben Mansfield is a top notch Benedick. Looking like a young Colin Firth his acting is convincingly natural – whether he’s one of the famous spats with Beatrice (Fiona Hampton), wriggling round the stage pretending to be unseen during the gulling scene or dropping all pretence and being the decent chap that we know he is really at the horror of Hero’s (Aruhan Galieva) plight.

Hampton’s Beatrice works well too. In this modern dress production on which all the “noble” characters are clearly toff-types. she struts crossly about the stage in holey jeans, a magnificent red dress for the party and an elegant frock (Designer: Andrew D Edwards) for the abortive wedding. She has a delightful way of throwing out her verbal barbs and then waving at the audience every time she scores a point. Eventually she shows us that most of it is an act and is really moving in her concern for Hero – and the eventual acknowledgement that, after all that, Benedick really is someone she can fancy.

Galieva is suitably bland as the maligned Hero. And she left me wondering even more than usual in this troubling play why on earth she forgives Claudio (and her father) for the appalling way she is treated. I had to clamp my mouth shut to prevent myself yelling out “Oh walk away , you silly girl. Go and find yourself a man who will trust you”. Cue for much discussion back in all those secondary schools I’m sure – the conventions of semi-arranged marriage are still alive and well in our 21st society, after all.

The supporting cast are strong and every word of the pared down dialogue – whether in prose or verse – is a clear part of the story telling. There’s a band on the upper gallery (it leads Tyler Fayose as Don Pedro in through the groundlings at the beginning too) Witty work on the sousaphone, courtesy of musician, Richard Henry is a high spot. It enhances both the dance scene and the traditional end-of-play jig – except that here it’s a cheerful hip hop, choreographed by Etta Murfitt to use the Globe’s big playing space entertainingly.

This Much Ado is a jolly good 90 minutes of theatre which sparkles with humour while, but at the same time, doesn’t buck the big questions. And it’s a joy to see a young audience so attuned.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Shakespeare%27s%20Globe%20(professional%20productions)-Much%20Ado%20About%20Nothing&reviewsID=3124

EM Forster’s most famous novel, based on the author’s observations in India, firmly damns colonisation and colonisers. If anything, Simon Dormandy’s adaption – nearly a century after the novel was published in 1924 – condemns the Raj even more unflinchingly.

Mrs Moore and Adela Quested are in India visiting Mrs Moore’s son, the local magistrate to whom Adela will soon be engaged, The relationship with local educated Indians is unequal and uneasy but Dr Aziz is determined to make friends. The famous “incident” in the Malabar caves puts him on trial, the outcome of which pleases nobody. It’s a popular novel, often set for A level and of course David Lean’s 1984 film introduced it to many people too.

In this version – from Royal and Derngate, Northampton – fifteen performers, including three musicians, form an ensemble which tells the story on an almost bare stage. The costumes are evocative and in period (it’s set before the First World War) but props are minimal.

This show runs on physicality and there are some fine theatrical moments such as the scenes in which the whole cast present echoes in chorus. India was and is a mysterious, mystic place and there are many echoes both literal and metaphysical which are made much of here. Then there’s the ensemble turning itself into a elephant, a boat, a train or a pair of horses. And long poles, one for each cast member, form a range of symbolic barriers. It’s enjoyably imaginative stuff.

Also highly atmospheric is Kuljit Bhamra’s music played on an Indian cello, flute and by the composer on very colourful percussion on a side balcony above stage left.

Liz Crowther puts in some finely nuanced work as Mrs Moore, determined, troubled, kind, reasonable and eventually just wanting to go home. Asif Khan is spot on as Aziz – enthusiastic, decent at heart but gratingly inappropriate as he struggles, and fails, to meet the British on their own terms. And Nigel Hastings is excellent as the angry, dictatorial Turton, appalling by today’s standards but probably respected by his employers back in London in his own time. The whole cast is well gelled and it is in the ensemble scenes that this show really comes to life.

It is, however, too long by at least half an hour. I’ve always thought that Forster’s novel was floppily structured and Dormandy’s attempt to give it more shape strays dangerously close to protracted self indulgence as it proceeds. There are more false endings to the whole play even than to the song sung by Ranjit Krishnamma as Gobole to good comic effect in the first half.
 

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Park%20Theatre%20(professional)-A%20Passage%20to%20India&reviewsID=3118

The star of this witty, perceptive show is James King as Chop – a dog. Clad in a ruff and a sort of dog’s bottom/tail trouser garment he barks, rolls over, whimpers, digs for bones and munches treats – It’s very convincing canine method acting with more than a whiff of Brecht. Then, even better, Robin Hooper’s script gives him sardonic comments in a human voice so that he also has an observational narrative function. It’s both clever writing and impressive acting.

We’re at Wilton, Wiltshire – the ancestral home of the Herbert family, the Earls of Pembroke. It’s autumn 1603. James I (James VI of Scotland) has just acceded to the throne. And Walter Raleigh, lover of the widowed Countess of Pembroke, is in prison with the likelihood of execution for treason. In order to persuade the visiting king that Raleigh should be reprieved she, herself a wannabe writer and actor, invites Shakespeare and his players to put on a new play – which the audience quickly realises is going to be As You Like It.

Cue for some very sharp, often funny, mostly ribald dialogue between the boys who play the female roles in the play. Maybe they really did sell their favours to men with money – moonlighting as rent boys. Were most of them gay anyway? And James 1, after all, is known to have preferred pretty boys to his wife. With nine in the cast there is scope for a lot of complex jealousy and tension which Hooper exploits effectively. Director Matthew Parker makes pleasing use of the Hope’s very limited space against Rachael Ryan’s atmospheric set which connotes Jacobean oak panelling and lots of cloths.

Thomas Bird is a compellingly charismatic actor. His gently corpulent, sensitive but pragmatic character Rob is drawing the attention of several characters within the play and he has the same effect on the audience. Olivia Onyehara delights as the feisty, smiling maid Peg and Clare Bloomer finds the right haughty disdain offset by lust and artistic ambition for Mary, Countess of Pembroke. The traditional Jacobean end-of-play jig is great fun too.

It’s a play with legs but they should drop the incongruous nightclub-style racket they use to orchestrate the (nippily done) scene changes. It’s very loud, very distracting and very unnecessary.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Foul%20Pages&reviewsID=3114

Just occasionally Ms Alzheimer’s presents me with a little bonus – something that’s actually quite useful as opposed to destructive.

It’s reasonably well documented that changing taste in food is a fairly common Alzheimer’s symptom. And My Loved One is definitely an example of that. Quite an extreme one in fact.

I married the fussiest, faddiest eater on the planet. (I blame his mother, naturally). He wouldn’t eat tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, cooked cheese, mayonnaise anything with a sauce on it, casseroles and about a million other things.

And I mean wouldn’t eat. Being invited out was a nightmarish embarrassment. I really don’t like pears but if a pear dish is put in front of me in someone’s house – and it has happened –  of course I eat it out of politeness. Not MLO.  If he was served something on his lengthy “don’t eat” list well then he just wouldn’t. End of. And when we both became vegetarian in the late 1970s in some ways it was even worse because when people obligingly, kindly try to cater for you they tend to dish up all the things MLO refused to countenance. He was effectively a vegetarian who wouldn’t eat (most) vegetables and you really can’t expect people to work round that. I seemed always to be apologising for him.

At home I had decades of making quiches with cheese on one side only, mincing onion and mushroom to make it invisible, always doing stir fries in separate pans, lying about the provenance of redness in dishes  and getting annoyed with him in restaurants when he said loftily: “There’s nothing on this menu I can eat” even when there were three or four veggie options.

Then, about ten years ago it all began to change. He realised he liked leeks, beetroot, parsnips and lots of other previously rejected things. He even started to eat macaroni cheese and lasagne with their dependence on lots of lovely cheese sauce.  Most odd of all, a life long tea hater, he’s decided that green tea is OK so we now routinely share a pot at breakfast time which still seems hilarious given how he used to be. With hindsight I suppose that those changes were early Alzheimer’s indicators although at the time I just marvelled and rejoiced gratefully.

Today I rough chop onions in the normal way and they go in casseroles and other dishes along with dried tomatoes, tomato puree and anything else I fancy adding. He’s just chomps away at the result, usually has a second helping and says he’s enjoyed it. For a long time I said nothing because half the battle has always been keeping the truth about ingredients from him.

Then I stopped pretending. Instead I just tease him, saying: “It’s taken me nearly 50 years but you’ve become a normal eater. There really isn’t much you won’t eat now. What a pity it took you so long!” He grins back “Just don’t give me cauliflower!”. Little does he know that I quite often chop up the loathed brassica  and sneak it into burgers, pies and other things.

Last week when I was heading out on one of my frequent evening review jobs I fried some onion and red pepper in a frying pan with some tofu, then added a pot of red (tomato) pesto. All he had to do was heat it through and eat it with pitta bread.

When I got home MLO said: “Well I don’t know what that sauce was but it was absolutely delicious”. Gotcha!  Thanks, Ms A. It’s very rarely that I’m grateful to you so you’d better make the most of it.