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The Country Wife (Susan Elkin reviews)

Chichester Festival Theatre

Susannah Fielding as Marjorie. Credit: Manuel Harlan

Shakespeare, whose plays were written more than half a century before The Country Wife, is timeless. Wycherley is not. You can very successfully set Shakespeare in any period or place, as directors routinely do, and the material will always be topical.

But The Country Wife is a very different sort of piece, Dating from 1675 it relates entirely to the hedonistic reign of Charles II which followed eleven years of Puritan republicanism including the closure of theatres. Like dozens of other “Restoration Comedies” it is, in every sense, a period piece. It is absolutely of its time. Setting it in 2018 as Jonathan Munby does is theatrically disastrous.

Horner, who pretends to be impotent after catching “the clap” in France (Lex Shrapnel does his best with the role) so that he can seduce more women whose husbands will now trust him doesn’t work out of context. Modern women, even in this age of grooming, internet dating, Weinstein and the rest, are not controlled by their husbands. Most make free sexual choices and decisions for themselves. And the disco lighting, dances and bits of set (drinks cabinets, a burger barrow, a leather sofa et al) which whizz on and off are just wearily gimmicky, like the song which apropos of nothing in particular opens Act 2 although the fight which takes place in a kitchen with kitchen implements such as a hand held electric food mixer is amusing.

Oh yes, the humour. If you rip this play, probably the finest Restoration Comedy of them all, untimely from its creator’s context then it ceases to be more than mildly witty – occasionally. Done properly (the version Jonathan Kent directed at Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2007, for example) it is roll-in-the-aisles funny. And presumably Munby doesn’t like the famous china scene, which, laden with doubles entendres, should be a high spot of hilarity. It’s so woefully underplayed here that it passes almost unnoticed. There are problems with the language too. If a character in a raucously 2018 setting says “You intend to be honest?” or “She has gone abroad” it means something completely different from what Wycherley actually meant. (Honest meant chaste in the 17th century and abroad meant outdoors) so even the story telling suffers.

Of course – this is Chichester Festival Theatre after all – there is some good casting and commendable acting lurking in this tortuous, ill-judged distortion of a fine play. Susannah Fielding, dressed mostly in yellow, with a wheely suitcase to match, as the titular young wife brought to London from the country finds a compelling blend of innocence and guile in Marjorie. John Hodgkinson is twice her size as Pinchwife and is often – refreshingly – quite sinister rather than merely laughable in his fulminations. Scott Karim is fun too as a very camp Sparkish with an affected manner and nicely managed vocal tics.

This disappointing production, despite high-speed dialogue delivery and slick scene changes runs nearly three hours. Sadly, it seems a lot longer.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Country%20Wife&reviewsID=3237

Performance Preparation Academy – PPA

The Producers is an ideal choice of show for students in vocational training. It’s an entertaining book, beautifully written and brimful of interesting character parts so there’s plenty for everyone to do. And co-directed by Lewis Butler, who also choreographs and Nick Charters who also MDs, it becomes a strong showcase for talent of which there is plenty in this cast.

The piece works because it’s the theatre industry sending itself up. For anyone unfamiliar with the plot: two men decide that they can, if they cheat a bit, make more money out of a Broadway flop than a hit. Inevitably their attempt to stage a spectacular dud misfires and gets rave reviews. Along the way are a whole raft of engaging subplots.

Jordan Harrison is very watchable and the central character Max Bialystock. He is versatile and funny and his role is well sustained and skilfully developed to the end. I particularly admire his stillness in the court scene and his effective comic timing. His singing isn’t great but he holds his own.

Charles Camrose has enormous fun as the absurdly camp director/actor Roger de Bris. It’s outrageously funny but also carefully balanced especially when he’s ridiculing Hitler in the show which goes right but isn’t meant to. Jack Oliver is a fine, elegant Carmen Ghia, Roger’s lover and grounded sidekick. And Zak Lawrence squeezes every possible drop of humour out of the crazy Hitler-loving, pigeon-fancying playwright, Franz Liebkind.

Some roles are played by different actors at other performances because this graduating cohort is a large group of 35 students.

There is an occasional problem with diction. Mel Brooks’ words are glitteringly witty – as good in their way as WS Gilbert’s – and the audience should hear every single one of them. Delivery needs to be a little crisper than it sometimes is.

I know bands are pricey but this show would have done even greater justice to Mel Brooks’ fine score (with its references to Wagner, the German National Anthem, Irish dance, Rule Brittania and much more) if it had been accompanied by live music. And while we’re on the subject of music why, oh why, didn’t someone who knows coach Jack Osmond in how to how to hold a violin convincingly? As the blind fiddler, he is otherwise strong in the role so it’s a shame for it to be marred by a technicality.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Performance%20Preparation%20Academy%20-%20PPA%20(student%20productions)-The%20Producers&reviewsID=3231

Little Angel Theatre

This charming little show celebrates Literatura de Cordel, a musical style of performance poetry from Northeastern Brazil.

I’m glad I don’t have to stage-manage it because, simple as it looks, we see lots of drawings on cards which become quasi puppets and it must be quite a challenge to get them in the right order. The traffic jam in San Paolo (largest city in South America with a population of 20 million we learned in passing) with the whole audience hooting while the drawings of vehicles harassed each other is great fun. And it sets the tone for a delightful story which manages to be very folksy as well as making fun of mobile phone dependence.

Justina is sent to the country to spend the summer with her grandmother. She is initially resentful but, sent on a quest, she eventually realises the joys of the jungle and that there are more interesting, real things in life to identify with. She meets, for example, a lion, a beautiful bird, a sprite, a spider and more – all, like Justina, puppets nicely made by Judith Hope.

Directed and co-written by Rachel Warr, Stories on a String features four talented performers. Co-writer, Rachel Hayter narrates and plays several musical instruments, her sound – especially on flute – blending well with Camilio Menjura who is the main musician. Puppets are, mostly, in the hands of Jum Faruq and Ajjaz Awad, whose teamwork is striking. Both are actors and singers who perform through their puppets whose voices and facial expressions they project. Faruq, in particular, gives us a totally believable Justina, variously cross, scared, entranced and innocent.

It’s an engaging hour of theatre. Take anyone over three.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Little%20Angel%20Theatre-Stories%20on%20a%20String&reviewsID=3229

Chichester Festival Theatre

Simon Higlet’s delightful set is what I shall remember most vividly about this revival of Enid Bagnold’s 1955 play, written when she was already in her mid sixties with National Velvet long behind her. It’s a garden room with conservatory at the back and we’re close to the sea on the Sussex coast. There’s lots of shingle, arranged in scallop pattern around the edge of the playing area. The room itself is full of retrospective 1950s clutter from magazine racks and rugs to sprawling sofas and a big garden work bench. It looks lovely and feels convincingly homely. Emma Laxton’s seagulls and other atmospheric sounds place the piece very firmly too.

The play itself, however, is wordy and wooden, especially in Acts I and 2 which provide a longish first half. It moves on a little more after the interval.

Mrs St. Maugham (Penelope Keith) has charge of her teenage granddaughter, Laurel (Emma Curtis) and employs a companion, Miss Madrigal, (Amanda Root) for her. Then Laurel’s mother, Olivia (Caroline Harker) decides to remove her child. Other characters include a Judge (Oliver Ford Davies) who’s a family friend and Maitland (Matthew Cottle) the man of all work. There is very little action in the quasi present. Instead we get a great deal of talking as various bits of back story emerge – I began to long for Hedda Gabler with her father’s pistols or Malvolio in yellow stockings and cross garters.

Penelope Keith is, of course, terrific as Mrs St. Maugham. She delivers those rapier thrust put-downs as well as Maggie Smith does except that Keith, as ever, does it with a disarming twinkle rather than a glare. That’s the deal with Keith. She is always the same – invariably cast in these bossy patrician (matrician?) roles. It’s enjoyable enough but don’t expect any surprises.

Exactly the same applies to Oliver Ford Davies. He does elderly, urbane, anguished judges, bishops, statesmen and the like, pretty well but it’s a very predictable performance.

The most interesting acting in this show comes from Amanda Root as the initially enigmatic Miss Madrigal. Her character has a pretty dramatic past, a great deal of unexpected knowledge, expertise and learning and is a complete contrast to other characters. Root finds a thoughtful, tense, unsmiling stillness in her so that we know almost from her first stiff-backed appearance at her job interview that there is a great deal more to this woman than meets the eye. Root makes her very intriguing and her silences are splendidly eloquent.

Matthew Cottle is quite engaging as the servant, who also has a past – which is not a secret but I’m afraid Emma Curtis is unconvincing as a curious, disinhibited, somewhat damaged teenager even for the 1950s.

Bagnold was a self indulgent writer and, I gather, many of her more flamboyant lines were coaxed out by her American editor. I’m glad, though, that “It’s time I looked at boys or I shan’t get the hang of it” and “Judges don’t age. Time decorates them” survived the cuts.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Chalk%20Garden&reviewsID=3228

society/company: Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre (professional productions) (directory)
performance date: 25 May 2018
venue: Regent’s Park Open-Air Theatre

It’s been a while since I cried in the theatre but I defy you not to at this intensely poignant, deeply moving take on Peter Pan which marks the end of World War One.

The premise is that the John and Michael Darling and the Lost Boys really would have been lost a few years after the premiere of Peter Pan in 1904. Most would have perished in the trenches.

So directors, Timothy Sheader and Liam Steel set their production in a field hospital where hideously injured men yearn for letters from their mothers. Gradually the imaginative power of story telling takes over, the beds move and morph into other things (set by Jon Bausor) and the dreamlike story of Peter Pan is acted out using far more of JM Barrie’s words than most versions do. But it’s anchored. We never leave the hospital and the front – soldiers march in and out, often singing hauntingly evocative WW1 songs. The movement work is fabulous.

There’s a three-piece band, out of sight, at the back and singer Rebecca Thorn, costumed as an elegant Edwardian lady, wanders round the set singing arrangements of numbers such as Keep the Home Fires Burning across the action. It’s a very thoughtful and thought provoking device.

One of the many strengths in this outstanding show is the puppetry (directed by Rachael Canning). Every puppet is formed from items which might have been lying about in a trench or hospital. Tinker Bell (beautifully puppeted by talented Elisa de Gray) is an angry oil lamp, snapping, spitting, farting and laughing gleefully. The mermaids are lamps with corrugated iron tails. Nurse’s dresses become fishes. And the crocodile is a snapping step ladder.

Cora Kirk who starts as an overworked junior nurse and then becomes Wendy is delightful. She brings touching warmth and wisdom to her role and her last line (no spoilers here) is a real tour de force. She uses a homely northern accent and, as Wendy, perfectly captures that transition between childhood and womanhood – shifting frequently from one to the other.

Sam Angell gives us a very child-like Glaswegian Peter Pan jumping about, having fun but vulnerably searching for what he can’t have or is afraid to take. He becomes a tragic figure at the end. There are no weak links in this fine cast (complete with “extras” from East 15 and ArtsEd) but Caroline Deyga is exceptionally good value as the larger than life matron who becomes Smee and there’s really lovely work from Lewis Griffin as Tootles and from Dennis Herdman as Hook, really a disdainful WW1 officer.

The bungee work which allows flying works well with ladders at the side of the stage up which other actors move up and down to counter balance it. It allows characters to fly all over the playing area and quite a distance into the auditorium.

One of the final scenes is set much later – maybe in the 1980s – when the few survivors, presumably at a reunion, tall each other what their lives have been since. It’s intensely powerful and leaves you wondering, as of course, you’re meant to, just what on earth this war was for.

First staged in 2014 to mark the beginning of the centenary, this revival has developed a lot. It’s now a marvellous show, one of the best I’ve seen in a very long time – don’t miss it.
 
 First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Regent%E2%80%99s%20Park%20Open%20Air%20Theatre%20(professional%20productions)-Peter%20Pan&reviewsID=3221
 
 
 
 
 

Working, performed by the Royal Academy of Music’s Musical Theatre Company and Orchestra, continues at the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, London until 17 June 2018.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Working is a strange show. Based on interviews by American journalist Studs Terkel with ordinary people from all walks of life, it consists of a series of unrelated monologues and songs.

Plot-less and with little in the way of cohesion it is part revue, part concert and feels oddly like a student showcase at times. In fact, I’m sure many of these numbers will soon find their way into student showcases if they haven’t already. Some of them would make useful audition pieces too.

That said, it includes some quite imaginatively choreographed (Aline David) use of ensemble to back soloists and provide visual interest.

The final number …

Read the rest of this review at Musica Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/royal-academy-of-music/

When I interviewed Emma Troubridge, ROH’s Head of Scenic Art, recently, she told me that this Swan Lake is the biggest show she has worked on in twenty years in the job. Having now seen it, I understand what she means. No wonder the audience of 2000 primary school children with whom I shared the experience gasped audibly and applauded spontaneously when they saw the massive, grandiloquent sets for Acts 2 and 3 (designed by John Macfarlane). The costumes – especially for the Spanish dance which is all swirly red, black and sequins – are stunning and choreographers Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Liam Scarlett use every inch of the vast playing space. Everything is on a grand scale.

Seated by the press officer in a stage right box (with slightly restricted stage view) I had an unusual overview of the orchestra in the pit below me along with its conductor Valery Ovsyanikov. With my accustomed technical interest I could even see which positions the leader was using in the violin solos. It is, of course, a great joy to see this famous, beloved ballet accompanied by a full orchestra – hurrah for ROH production values – complete with four trumpets, plenty of strings including five double basses. This is what Tchaikovsky’s wonderfully powerful score needs but, sadly, doesn’t always get. Here it sounds sumptuous – especially in the final few pages with the brass sounding fortissimo tragedy and despair.

On stage, meanwhile, there’s plenty to admire too. Yasmine Naghdi is a fine Odette/Odile with suitably sustained pirouettes and plenty of fluid swan-like “flying” – leaving the ground with apparent effortlessness when dancing with the men: Nehemiah Kish as Prince Siegfried and Gary Avis as Von Rothbart, for example, both of whom have high levels of stage presence and all the lithe strength their roles require. The dance of the little cygnets is neat and appealing and the set pieces in Act 3 are a joy – especially the Neapolitan dance for which they use Frederick Ashton’s choreography. And the big “numbers” when many are on stage, especially the corps de ballet swan sequences look terrific because they’re angled and grouped so imaginatively. As a piece of theatre it’s also highly emotional and pretty moving.

The essence of good ballet is, of course, interpreting the music in a way which drives the story forward and doing so holistically. The potentially disparate elements have to be tightly integrated. This one ticks all the boxes.

I first encountered La Traviata when I was about nine. My father, who wasn’t actually a great classical music man, saw it at Royal Opera House with my mother and fell in love with all those fabulous Verdi melodies. So he bought “new fangled” LPs of La Traviata to play on his recently acquired three speed record player. For a long time the house resounded to Verdi’s rich and lovely tunes – many of them in lilting triple time – and I soaked them up like blotting paper. A lifetime later, of course, I’ve learned to appreciate this take on Dumas’s La Dame aux Camelias, in turn based on a true story about hedonism, passion and illness, rather more thoughtfully.

In Opera Holland Park’s new production Lauren Fagan gives a sensitive, intelligent account of Violetta. She took a little while to warm up on press night (nerves?) but once she got there it was a magnificent performance: passionate, convincing and thrilling with some stupendous top notes. Her Alfredo, Matteo Desole, an impressive tenor likewise rapidly got better after a lacklustre start. By the time they reach the deathbed scene in Act 4 their rendering of that supremely simple duet over pizzicato strings was beautiful.

There is strong support from bass Stephen Gadd and from  Laura Woods as Flora. The latter has a glorious wine dark voice, effectively an old fashioned contralto, which is a striking contrast to Fagan’s soaring soprano.

Sterling work from the orchestra under Matthew Kofi Waldren’s baton underpins the whole. This music is full of colour and Waldren allows us to see and hear it all – assisted by the clear acoustic in this venue which places the orchestra on the level in front of the stage. The work from the brass during the deathbed scene is especially noteworthy. It’s surprising how well the sound works here when you consider that the auditorium is open to the elements at the sides and you can hear the odd peacock, goose, aircraft or park reveller.

Director Rodula Gaitanou makes interesting dramatic use of a large chorus and ensures that the story telling is clear. I like Cordelia Chisholm’s ingenious set too. Built on a huge saucepan shaped quasi joist angled across the stage it offers an adaptable intimate space beneath the “pan” and more public area for parties and so on along the length of the “handle.”

It is altogether an enjoyable production which does the piece real justice. My father died in 1997. He would have been 96 this month. I think he would have approved.