★★★★

[Above: Clare Burt, Joanna Riding, Mark Meadows and members of the company as Dior models in FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS at Chichester Festival Theatre. Directed by Daniel Evans Designed by Lez Brotherston Lighting by Mark Henderson. Photo by Johan Persson]

Mrs Ada Harris (Clare Burt) is a char lady working hard and loyally for “my clients” in the austerity of 1947. She has kept herself modestly since her husband (Mark Meadows) died at Passchendaele although he lives on, and ages alongside her in her mind and on stage. Then, in this gentle story, based on a Paul Gallico story and written by Rachel Wagstaff, Mrs H sees a photograph of a Dior dress, saves up and, against considerable odds, travels to Paris to buy it.

This show opens with dialogue and only gradually segues into rather hesitant music led by Tom Brady whose conducting hands protrude from a hole in the floor at the downstage apex of the playing space. Most of Richard Taylor’s score is unassuming, in a lilting conversational way. Much of it works like naturalistic recitative and there are few songs in the conventional musical theatre sense. It takes a while to get used to this and, frankly at the interval, I had this marked down as rather plodding two star show with far too much pointless marching round CFT’s revolve. By the end of the incomparably better second half it had acquired a couple more stars.

The scene in which Mrs Harris finally sees a parade of Dior dresses sweeping on models down a central staircase is as theatrically effective as, say the masques in The Tempest or, in a different mood, the procession of kings in Macbeth. There is something mesmerizingly magical about it and we are as stunned as Mrs Harris is. What fun, designer Lez Brotherston must have had with this. Then there’s the ending which moved me to tears because this is actually a story about happiness, friendship, helping others and moving on. It’s marvellously upbeat without being remotely sentimental or cloying.

Burt catches Mrs Harris’s rueful sadness tempered with a lot of kindness and wisdom perfectly and her wistful singing voice works beautifully here. And when she smiles for Mrs Harris it’s like the sun coming out. Claire Machin is hilarious as Mrs Harris’s supportive, lumpy friend and neighbour and outstanding as a French cleaning lady with a splendid morose Gallic shrug. Meadows does well too as the kindly dead husband so often present to advise when Mrs Harris is on her own.

There is some impressive doubling here because there is a new set of characters in Paris. Louis Maskell, for example, is entertaining as the ill-at-ease Dior employee who conveys his unspoken passion for Laura Pitt-Pulford’s Natasha mostly with his knees. He and Pitt-Pulford (who is also good back in London as one of Mrs Harris’s more self-obsessed clients) work well together especially in French.

Daniel Evans, who directs this thoughtful show, first staged it in 2016 in his former role as Artistic Director at Sheffield. It’s a rather lovely thing for him to have revived at Chichester and adds a different mood to this year’s pleasingly varied season after Me and My Girl, Copenhagen and other delights.

[Below: Luke Latchman (Wireless Commentator) and Gary Wilmot (Major) in FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS at Chichester Festival Theatre. Directed by Daniel Evans Designed by Lez Brotherston Lighting by Mark Henderson. Photo by Johan Persson]

★★★

Above: Eleanor Wyld (Eliza Prentice), Susan Tracy (Leonora Carrington – older) – Photo: Robert Workman

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a surrealist artist and a rebel. Famously, she had a three-year relationship with fellow artist Max Ernst in the 1930s.

Alice Allemano’s neatly structured, four-hander, debut play presents Leo (Susan Tracy) in old age being visited by an uninvited young journalist (Eleanor Wyld) who wants to talk about the older woman’s life. Carrington lived for many years in Mexico City where these scenes are set. The love affair with Ernst (Nigel Whitmey) took place in France which we see as flashback scenes with Phoebe Pryce as the younger Carrington.

At the heart of this thoughtfully directed (Michael Oakley) piece is an outstanding performance from Susan Tracy who combines physical frailty with mischievous feistiness and vulnerability with lucid determination. Tracy makes Carrington’s hands and eyes tellingly expressive. She works beautifully with Eleanor Wyld too whose character is nervous but trying to be grown up. Their dialogue together is delightfully naturalistic.

The 1930s scenes are less compelling although Pryce finds appropriate flashing passion in her role and Whitmey is reasonably arresting as Ernst – attractive enough, at least, to persuade a woman half his age to turn her back on her family and move in with a married man.

Less successful are the visions, preceded by blackouts (although they’re done slickly enough) in which Carrington is haunted by images from Ernst’s paintings with animal masks. They are meant, I think, along with her obsession with horses, to connote her state of mind. In fact – like the use of radio broadcasts to remind us that this is 1939 and war is being declared – they feel a bit clumsy and awkward.

There’s a fundamental flaw in what the play is trying to say too. It’s called About Leo but that’s misleading. If it’s intended, as it claims, to bring her own life and considerable personal achievements into the public eye then it shouldn’t be almost entirely focused on her time with Ernst. In defining her by her relationship with a man it does little to redeem Carrington from being a mere footnote in the history of art.

Below: Phoebe Pryce (Leonora Carrington – younger), Susan Tracy (Leonora Carrington – older) – Photo: Robert Workman

★★★★

I have rarely shed so many tears in the theatre – mostly of laughter but quite a few of the other sort as well – as during this glorious, joyous musical version of Calendar Girls.

There can’t be many people who aren’t familiar with this upbeat, true story about a group of Yorkshire WI members who posed for a nude calendar in aid of a memorial for a friend who had died of cancer. Tim Firth’s film was terrific, as was his “straight” stage play. Now comes this musical version in collaboration with Gary Barlow (they’ve been friends since childhood) which ran to great acclaim in the West End last year and is currently touring.

It’s the laughter I shall long treasure. I remember the film and play as being amusing but not hilariously funny. But Karen Dunbar’s bottom flash, the line “you can’t get pregnant after a curry” one character telling his wife that he didn’t marry her for a “smooth path” but for “crazy paving – and much much more – kept me chortling all evening.

Yes, the book is beautifully written with real character depth and lots of emotion worn, for the most part, cheerfully. But what really drives this along are Gary Barlow’s songs and the commensurate skill of a large cast. Under director, Matt Ryan, the whole edifice purrs along with warmth and slickness.

Barlow provides a character song for each lead actor at some point. Ruth Madoc, for example, is sparky as the elderly retired teacher and her vibrant singing voice in What Age Expects of You, once she gets going, is like operatic honey.

Dunbar, as the organ playing vicar’s daughter and single mother, does a very enjoyable medley of “alternative” Christmas carols, her voice a powerful alto and her “naughty” personality sparkling through everything her character says and does. She has a knack with innuendo.

Rebecca Storm as Chris sings supremely well too. Her full belt is – well – full and her portrayal of her irreverent, witty, sometimes troubled Chris is fine acting.

I also like the way Barlow has created opera-style recitative for Annie, impressively played by Anna-Jane Casey. She has to deal with widowhood and is, at times, very sad. The thoughtful, sung emotion works very effectively. Casey adeptly manages the development of her character as she gradually sinks herself into the challenges on the new project too.

Also noteworthy is the use, in this version of the story, made of the tension between the generations in the community. Two teenagers in the village (Tyler Dobbs and Danny Howker – both good)) somehow have to cope with what their mothers are doing and it’s both well observed and very funny. There’s good work from Isabel Caswell as the girl they team up with too.

It’s cheerful fun, ably supported by a six piece live band with Tony Higgins as MD. There’s plenty of brass in the score to remind you that this is Yorkshire. Nostalgia and comic timing are a powerful mix. You leave the theatre feeling uplifted and with lots of tunes in your head. What more could you ask for?

★★★★

Illyria’s trademark physicality, humour, multiple roles and unapologetic hamming up works well for The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s a also a good choice for open-air theatre because you can have fun with darkness and light when you’re on the moor or in the mire – none of it, of course, taken seriously.

Conan Doyle’s most famous novel presents Watson (and clandestinely, Holmes) going to Devon to investigate a suspicious death in a landed family. There’s an old family legend about a terrifying dog out on the moor but Holmes believes only in science and reason. Cue for lots of complicated plotting and shennanigins about inheritance, cads, bounders, jilted girls, wives pretending to be sisters and lots of dogged canine references.

Four actors work wonders with this creaky old story with some very slick acting and gloriously chirpy gender-blind casting. Lee Peck, in particular, is very adept indeed leaping between characters with a delightful range of gestures and voices. He trained at East 15, renowned for character work, and it really shows. He’s great fun and very impressive to watch.

Liv Spencer, thought to be the only woman to have played Holmes on a tour of this size, plays him more mannishly than most men, pipe in hand and using her height to dominate the stage. Like every one else in this show she enunciates each final consonant like a singer which means that the entire text is fully audible and clear despite the acoustic drawbacks of playing in the open air, including aircraft.

Nick Taylor’s Watson is bluff, funny and the foil to Holmes he has to be. Rachel O-Hare’s voice work is splendid from the Southern States drawl she finds for Sir Henry Baskerville to the anxious, abused Laura Lyons and other roles.

The transport is entertaining in this show too. Director Oliver Gray repeatedly uses the old knocking coconuts for horses’ hooves and does it on stage with characters rocking in the carriage – wittily effective. When a train draws out of a station it’s the person left on the platform who sashays sideways. It gets a laugh every time but it works. And there’s a lot of walking on the spot. It looks absurd but actually it really does convey what it’s meant to.

All in all it’s an enjoyable evening’s theatre – despite the chill which set in on the night I saw it. I’ve seen Illyria in action three times this summer and this was the first time I didn’t get soaked. Hurrah!