Press ESC or click the X to close this window

ALRA North, 2018 graduate showcase (Susan Elkin reviews)

Directed by Chris Hill, this no-frills showcase started with a short  film before offering us fifteen quite meaty duologues featuring this year’s 30 ALRA North graduates in pairs. Of course I can see the rationale behind this format but it creates an hour of rather heavy theatre without much pacing or rhythm. Personally, moreover, I’d rather see each graduate in more than one role so that we get a sense of him or her having a playing range and I’m pretty sure that most casting directors and agents would feel the same.

Nonetheless we saw some talent in this group.  Winnie Southgate as Fi and Beth Nolan as Alice, for example are enjoyable in Rotterdam by Jon Brittain. They’re a gay couple but Alice has now realised that she is innately male and needs to transition. The two actors listen intently to each other and the text asks a whole series of difficult and complex questions which they handle with thoughtful sensitivity.

Or take Daneka Etchells in Simon Stone’s Yerma. She twinkles with disingenuous ignorance as her partner Colin Hadfield struggles to tell her that he ejaculated in the bath before she got in it and that if she’s pregnant that may be why. Of course she knows perfectly well what he did and whole thing is just a wind-up exploiting his embarrassment and biological ignorance. She feigns crossness nicely with loads of dramatic irony: the audience suspects the truth but Hadfield’s spluttering, awkward character does not.

There’s good comedy – also based on embarrassment – in the extract from Luke Norris’s Growth. The comic timing as Jack Wagman as Tobes persuades Conor Ledger’s very reluctant Joff to check his testicle is skilfully played for laughs with commendably naturalistic acting. Wagman and Ledger change the mood adeptly too when they, and the audience, realise that Tobes really does need to see a doctor – as soon as possible. Suddenly it’s no longer a joke.

I liked the work of Elen Benfield (Suse) and Megan Wolfe (Jude) in Sadie Hasler’s rather sparky Pramkicker too. They are sisters. Jude is in serious trouble for dangerously aggressive behaviour. Suse speaks for her like a very reasonable alter ego. It’s a good choice for a showcase (much less familiar than many of the other extracts here) and the two actors play off each other rather well.

Chay February finds plenty of warmth in Barry trying to make his younger brother (Corey Weekes – truculently angry as Mark)  see sense in Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads by Roy Williams – another pair of actors who complement each other.

Trafalgar Studios is a surprisingly good venue for a showcase. The steeped raking ensures that every audience member is close and the smallish playing space means that the two actors on stage at any given time are not lost in vast emptiness. The enclosing set for The Grinning Man, under which the showcase took place, adds intimacy too. All this means that you can see the whites of these young actors’s eyes at quasi-televisual distance. And that’s a bonus.

PICK OF THE BUNCH: Director, Roman Stefanski chooses Daneka Etchells

I used to review large numbers of graduating student showcases for The Stage. Then last year an editorial policy decision was made at the Stage not to cover them any more. So I didn’t go to a single one in 2017.

Then withdrawal symptoms set in. I really missed seeing the industry’s newest recruits in action. I also felt it was a useful way of keeping hands-on contact with drama school staff and students and I didn’t want to lose it. Showcases are like mini-parties too. I meet lots of people there I know – and over the years I’ve got to know several people quite well having originally met them at showcases.

Well I’m freelance and therefore completely free to do my own thing. I am, therefore, now reviewing as many student showcases as I can get to here on my own website. So if you’re drama school staff or student and would like me to cover yours then contact me. There’s only one of me, obviously, and sometimes the dates don’t work. But give me as much notice as possible and I’ll do my best.

Meanwhile Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Graduating Actors 2018 which I saw last week at The Criterion was a real corker. What a lot of sparkily individual talent!

And of course, while there, I ran into several mates including casting director Richard Evans whom I hadn’t seen for ages. Cue for warm hugs because it was lovely to see him. Updating each other on news, he told me that all his books now have new websites. QED. Showcases have a wonderful secondary networking function. Richard’s Auditions the Complete Guide (Routledge) is a bit of a bible for anyone (a graduating student, for example) who needs to nail parts and there’s lots of additional free advice on the related website. http://www.auditionsthecompleteguide.com

 

 

The standard was very high – as you’d expect from BOVTS. None of the 27 graduating students is less than very good so when I single out a selection to mention it really is a case of highlighting exceptional moments.

One, for example, comes when Anna Munden and Jyuddah Jaymes give us part of Chris Thompson’s Of Kith and Kin. Anna Munden’s Esme is reluctantly handing over a baby she has borne as a surrogate for Jaymes’s Daniel and his partner. She is brittle, tearful, naturalistic. Jaymes finds a dignified stillness for his character who desperately wants the child but is deeply fearful of saying the wrong thing and frightening her off again. It’s both powerful and moving.

Later in the showcase both actors show their versatility in a contrasting monologue. Munden gives us an impassioned account of a girl at her viva voce exam (Alexandra by Jon Welch)  and Jaymes transforms himself into a flamboyant Californian (Topdog/Underdog by Suzi Lori Parks).

Another one to watch is James Schofield who brings oodles of personality to an extract from Honest by DC Moore in which he describes confronting a group of Clapham-based young banker types and it’s very funny.  He’s also noteworthy as a  young primary school teaching assistant desperate to develop further his relationship with Kate Reid’s Lara who’s a teacher five years older and rather more worldly. This comes from School Play by Alex MacKeith.

Charlotte Wyatt catches the eye too. She has one of those neutral faces which can do a great deal – and she knows how to use it. In Rachel Cusk’s Medea, A New Version she brings tears, anger, anguish and truth, all well controlled. She does impressive things with her voice too which is pitched much lower here than for her duologue with Charlie Suff in in Romona Tells Jim by Sophie Wu. They fancy each other but there’s a lot of nicely caught awkwardness and both actors are focused listeners making the best of pauses.

This was a long and complex showcase – a bit of a rollercoaster with 41 separate scenes in 90 minutes. Each actor took part in a duologue as well as having a short (very short in some cases) solo spot so it was pretty even handed. I liked the concept of including three ensemble numbers too. The movement piece at the beginning was slickly percussive and the choral singing of Henry Purcell’s A Round was very fine at the half way point. The finale number (from Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown) highlighted dancing and singing skills as many individuals sang solo lines. Jyuddah Jaymes continued to shine for example.

All in all this was an enjoyable showcase featuring 27 pretty talented individuals. The bittiness of it was more than compensated for by performance quality.

PICK OF THE BUNCH: Tony of David Padbury Associates chooses ANNA MUNDEN

Luke Adamson’s play One Last Waltz has just completed its run in the studio space at Greenwich theatre. I hope he manages to get it out on tour as soon as possible because Ms Alzheimer’s is the central – invisible but palpable – character and the play needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

Luke invited me first because I am a seasoned (or something) theatre critic and second because I am – a role I never sought – becoming ever better known as an Alzheimer’s commentator. One Last Waltz is a meeting of my two worlds.

When I mentioned, en passant, to My Loved One that I’d agreed to review a play about Alzheimer’s he said, quite brightly by his standards, “Well I suppose I ought to see that too. Can I come with you?” So I contacted Luke again to explain and, of course, we were both welcome.

To be honest I wasn’t at all sure it was a good idea for MLO to see it. Plays and films about Alzheimer’s (remember Iris and Still Alice?) tend to be pretty devastating because they focus on an inexorable downward trajectory and can end only one way. I try to keep MLO as chirpy as possible and I don’t encourage him to reflect on the possible (probable/inevitable) ghastliness of the future. In our situation it’s healthier to dwell in the moment and take each day as it comes.

I needn’t have worried. One Last Waltz tells the story of Alice (played by Amanda Reed). She has memory problems and her daughter is beginning to worry. The three person play, written as a tribute to Luke’s late grandfather is about coming to terms with the illness and seeking help – which means admitting that there are problems. Oh yes, MLO and I have been there, done that and are collecting a whole drawer-ful of tee-shirts.

We I grinned at each other in recognition several times during the 80 minute piece because Luke’s observations are uncannily truthful. Yes, it’s difficult to be sure what day of the week it is when your world is steadily narrowing. And that means you have little idea whether the appointment you’re fretting about is today, tomorrow or next week. Of course, you struggle to remember where you’ve put things which makes you irritable even with yourself. Then there’s the general getting annoyed with yourself and others because you’re not as you were – and disbelief when someone else puts you straight.

And we empathised a lot with Alice’s decision to go to Blackpool for a last waltz in the place she used to dance with her husband who has recently died. MLO has recently mentioned several things he’d like to do again and places with happy memories that he’d like to revisit. That’s why we’re going on holiday to Northumberland next month. He wants to go back to Cragside which has long been our favourite National Trust property. Fortunately he’s no dancer.

Of course One Last Waltz is poignant. It has one of the most powerful final lines I’ve heard in the theatre in quite a while. I had to mop up tears several times. Seeing it was, however, more cathartic than upsetting.

I’ve said before that one of the best ways of fighting Ms Alzheimer’s is to confront her openly, fearlessly and proactively rather than treating her as an unmentionable horror. Part of Luke’s agenda is to help to get Alzheimer’s freely discussed without stigma. “After all,” he said to me before the show, “Cancer used to frighten people so much that they couldn’t talk about it. Now they do and it’s much better. We have to do the same with Alzheimer’s”.

The most moving moment of all – for me at least – came after the play had ended. We stayed for the Q/A but listened rather than contributing. Then I popped off to the ladies which is up a few steps at Greenwich Theatre and told MLO to wait for me in the foyer at the lower level. When I emerged, I could see MLO down in the foyer, deep in conversation with Amanda Reed. I didn’t want to interrupt or affect the dynamic so I lurked behind a shelf of leaflets and watched quietly.

He was telling her, I think, how much he’d identified with her character in the play. Alice gets lost in Blackpool. MLO was describing the horror of getting lost in a large shopping centre on holiday last year. She was listening intently – an actor observing life, I suppose. And his dignity was intact because she was allowing him to communicate like a fully fledged human being despite the stumbles and hesitancies. What surprised and pleased me most about it was MLO’s finding the confidence spontaneously to share a few feelings with a stranger. That’s how much the play had freed him up.

Of course, on the way home I asked “Well? Was that the right decision? Are you glad you saw that?”.

“Definitely” he replied.

Never underestimate the power of drama. I’ve said/written that a few hundred times in other contexts, but it applies forcefully to Alzheimer’s too.

Ramps on the Moon is consortium of six National Portfolio Organisation theatres with a mission to create work centred on D/deaf and disabled performers and creative team members.

The six partners are New Wolsey Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse,  Theatre Royal Stratford East, Sheffield Theatres, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse. And they work with Graeae Theatre Company – long established leader in the field of breaking down barriers, challenging preconceptions and boldly placing D/deaf and disabled artists centre stage.

Each year – this is the third –  one of the partners takes the lead in presenting a play which then tours to the other venues in the group. I was hugely impressed with Tommy which I caught last year at Stratford East. But I think, Our Country’s Good, which I travelled to Nottingham Playhouse to see last week is, if anything even better. Catch it if you possibly can during its forthcoming tour.

Director Fiona Buffini and her advisers have made Our Country’s Good as accessible as it could possibly be in a comprehensive way which would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago. Every word of the script is simultaneously  projected at the sides of the playing area or upstage behind the action. At the same time there’s audio description (by a cast member) for audience members who need it. The entire show is integrally signed too so that if a character is speaking, someone somewhere on stage will be interpreting it in BSL – and occasionally the speaker him or herself will be doing both. If the character is communicating in BSL then, similarly, someone else on stage will speak those lines and in many cases the switching is balletically slick – and part of the theatrical joy of the show.

So much for meeting the needs of the audience, who also – incidentally –  have access to a touch table in the foyer with fabric and set samples to feel.

At the same time around sixty per cent of the cast have disabilities of various sorts. In this context their diverse impairments are an enhancement rather than any sort of disadvantage. Garry Robson, snarling and yearning, from his wheelchair, for example is the most convincing Midshipman Harry Brewer I’ve ever seen. And Will Lewis who plays John Arscott uses his distinctive voice to poignant effect. Emily Rose Smith as Duckling Smith signs her anguish when Harry dies so passionately that we all share it. And Caroline Parker who does a lot of interpreting in this show – switching effortlessly between BSL and speech is terrific to watch.

The whole thing is a glorious celebration of the talents of these people and it goes without saying (or at least it should do) that there is absolutely no sense in which this is any sort of sub-standard theatre. Actually, it’s cutting edge.

So Ramps on the Moon  is living up to its wonderfully optimistic  name. It really is creating  ramps – ways in – to fabulous, moon-like opportunities to talented people of all sorts. Bravo! I’m looking forward to the next show, already.

Ramps on the Moon is consortium of six National Portfolio Organisation theatres with a mission to create work centred on D/deaf and disabled performers and creative team members.

The six partners are New Wolsey Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse,  Theatre Royal Stratford East, Sheffield Theatres, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse. And they work with Graeae Theatre Company – long established leader in the field of breaking down barriers, challenging preconceptions and boldly placing D/deaf and disabled artists centre stage.

Each year – this is the third –  one of the partners takes the lead in presenting a play which then tours to the other venues in the group. I was hugely impressed with Tommy which I caught last year at Stratford East. But I think, Our Country’s Good, which I travelled to Nottingham Playhouse to see last week is, if anything even better. Catch it if you possibly can during its forthcoming tour.

Director Moira Buffini and her advisers have made Our Country’s Good as accessible as it could possibly be in a comprehensive way which would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago. Every word of the script is simultaneously  projected at the sides of the playing area or upstage behind the action. At the same time there’s audio description (by a cast member) for audience members who need it. The entire show is integrally signed too so that if a character is speaking, someone somewhere on stage will be interpreting it in BSL – and occasionally the speaker him or herself will be doing both. If the character is communicating in BSL then, similarly, someone else on stage will speak those lines and in many cases the switching is balletically slick – and part of the theatrical joy of the show.

So much for meeting the needs of the audience, who also have access to a touch table in the foyer with fabric and set samples to feel.

At the same time around sixty per cent of the cast have disabilities of various sorts. In this context their diverse impairments are an enhancement rather than any sort of disadvantage. Garry Robson, snarling and yearning, from his wheelchair, for example is the most convincing Midshipman Harry Brewer I’ve ever seen. And Will Lewis who plays John Arscott uses his distinctive voice to poignant effect. Emily Rose Smith as Duckling Smith signs her anguish when Harry dies so passionately that we all share it. And Caroline Parker who does a lot of interpreting in this show – switching effortlessly between BSL and speech is terrific to watch.

The whole thing is a glorious celebration of the talents of these people and it goes without saying (or at least it should do) that there is absolutely no sense in which this is any sort of sub-standard theatre. Actually, it’s cutting edge.

So Ramps on the Moon  is living up to its wonderfully optimistic and assertive  name. It really is creating  ramps – ways in – to fabulous, moon-like opportunities to talented people of all sorts. Bravo! I’m looking forward to the next show, already.

When My Loved One was finally given his devastating, condemnatory diagnosis 11 months ago, I had great difficulty holding on for the rest of the consultation. Kind and helpful though the doctor was, the dreadful words “My husband has Alzheimer’s” kept rattling round my head and my face wouldn’t behave itself. It was only my trusty old friend “Professional Mode” which kept me speaking articulately for a further 20 minutes or so although I’ve no idea what I said.

When we eventually got out of that room we staggered over the road, literally holding each other up, to a coffee shop where I let go. I cried and cried and cried – which probably didn’t help MLO very much. He, after all, had just been struck with a metaphorical sledgehammer and told that he must surrender his driving licence immediately. In that first hour I think he was in such shock that he didn’t really take in the whole truth and it was a case of his comforting me rather than the other way round.

Well, somehow we got numbly through the rest of that day. I had the presence of mind to inform close family:  our sons, my sister and my dearest friend, who’s effectively another sister. All four of them came back immediately with supportive warmth – which, as I’ve said before, is immeasurably sustaining.

Then the next day my habitual practicality began to surface and I found myself thinking: “OK. Ms Alzheimer’s is here to stay. Crying isn’t going to get rid of her so just how are we going to deal with this monster?” My automatic instinct, as a writer, was to get it into words. But of course you can’t write about someone else’s illness – even someone who’s been as close to you as MLO has to me for half a century – without his permission.

“How would you feel about me writing a piece – and then maybe following it up with subsequent pieces – about all this?” I asked him tentatively. He’s always been a pretty private person and I expected him to say no unequivocally. To my astonishment he said. “Ok, why not? You’ll do it very well and perhaps it will help other people. Can I read them as you post them?”

So that’s how these blogs began. Starting on 8 June last year and posting weekly since there are now 35 or so in the archive and a body of about 30,000 words and counting. Perhaps eventually there’ll be a book in this. I know my little offerings really have helped others because several people, in a similar position to us, have told me so and thanked me. The writing has also cemented friendships and, in some cases, created friendships out of former acquaintanceships. Moreover – for reasons I struggle to analyse but it’s a well documented phenomenon – it helps me to cope.  Writing it all down as it really is, is oddly cathartic. I suppose it gives me some sense of being in control. I can’t evict Ms Alzheimer’s but I can write.

There’s more to “going public” than blogging, of course. It’s a whole attitude of mind. Neither of us dissembles with anyone, ever. MLO has learned to say to people when he’s in difficulties:  “Can you help me please? I have Alzheimer’s and I can’t find my way back to where my wife is” (That actually happened last week at the Coliseum where we saw Iolanthe. I shouldn’t have let him go off to the loo alone in an unfamiliar building). Then, inevitably, once the words are said, people are wonderfully helpful.

“Please could my husband have that seat? He has Alzheimer’s and he’s shaky on his feet”, I say to people casually on the Tube. And I order for both of us in restaurants so that waiting staff can see what the problem is – he usually forgets what he’s decided to order by the time he has to say it aloud.

“Sorry, that’s how I am now” he will say to anyone we spend any time with when he loses his way in a sentence.” And he’s learned to be matter-of-fact about the things he can’t do anymore such as the paperwork relating to my business. “I used to be an administrator but now I can’t work out what I have to do” I’ve heard him say several times to people who don’t know him very well. And he’s got used to the oddness of meeting strangers who know quite a lot about him because they’ve read the blogs.

Denial really doesn’t help Ms A’s victim or anyone else. “I think we’ve made a really sensible decision to be open about my problems” MLO remarked the other day, apropos of nothing in particular, in a rare, bright and positive moment. “Once people know, and realise that it’s OK to talk about it, they can react honestly without having to pretend that they haven’t noticed how I am. It’s so much easier for everybody”.

Meanwhile, I’m amused to note, that for a man who’s always tended to introversion, he seems actually to enjoy being the centre of attention. “Have you written anything about me this week?” he’ll ask, childlike and hopeful. And of course when we’re out everyone we meet (and I know hundreds of people in the performing arts world) makes a point of asking him how he is and allowing him to answer with dignity. And that would have been much harder if we hadn’t been truthful.

Everyone in our (unenviable) position has to find his/her own way of dealing with it. We’ve come a long way in eleven months.

Three very different shows I saw last week reminded me, yet again, just what a gloriously diverse industry ours is.

Much Ado About Nothing at The Globe is this year’s Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank play. Directed by Michael Oakley, it’s vibrant and funny. Ben Mansfield as Benedick wriggling round that huge stage on his stomach during the gulling scene is a particular high spot. And poor Hero (Aruhan Galieva) gets to wear the prettiest wedding dress I’ve ever seen on or off stage.

These shows – this is the twelfth year of the project – give free tickets to thousands of secondary school students from London and Birmingham. What I love about them is the freshness of the audience response. They chatter like excited starlings until the play starts and then listen, really listen, with a raptness you rarely experience in theatre anywhere else. They also gasp, laugh, boo and applaud spontaneously. Presumably this is what the groundlings did at the original Elizabethan premiere so it’s heady stuff. No orange peel throwing when Teacher’s watching though.

Next up was TheMTA (it stands for Musical Theatre Academy but like M&S, its branding means that it mostly goes by initials) in their annual revue Something Old Something New at Bernie Grant Arts Centre. What a show that was too. Thirty six students – nineteen graduating second years and seventeen first years – presented twenty seven numbers and wore, between them over 250 costumes.

The standard is extraordinarily high in this little school, founded in 2009 by principal Annemarie Lewis Thomas, which could give the big players such as ArtsEd a run for their money. With choreography by a team of nine professionals, we zinged along from Gershwin and Sondheim to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Styles and Drewe with extracts from shows such as Shrek The Musical and Made in Dagenham along the way. Evidence of talent, good teaching and industry readiness in abundance.

Iolanthe at ENO is, of course, something quite other and G&S is Marmite stuff. For those of us who like the Savoy operas (and Marmite) this production is terrific fun. It makes fine use of the Coliseum’s vast stage with lots of whacky ideas such as making Captain Shaw (Head of London Fire Brigade, present in the audience on the first night back in 1882 and serenaded in Gilbert’s text) into a character and treating us to on-stage farm animals, a dog puppet and much more surrealist, English nonsense. The motley, simpering, randy fairies look like feminist drama students trying to be outrageous and I loved the sets which include creating the House of Lords debating chamber on stage complete with Woolsack. And if some of the singing seems a bit distant and diction not always quite clear well, it doesn’t really detract from the pleasure of the evening. It’s good to see (and hear) G&S done with such imaginative freshness in a way which doesn’t jettison the traditions. We even got a couple of encores –  in the time honoured way.

It was also a week in which I attended and took part in two music rehearsals and went to two classical music concerts – one to review and one just for pleasure and to be supportive of local musicians. It’s all part of the same mix of course: performing arts alive well and working their magic whether it’s a magnificent pro show in a huge space like the Coliseum or a handful of indifferent enthusiasts enjoying themselves in an Ashford church on a wet Monday evening.  The downside of all this is that I’m not in enough to see much TV – but, as “they” say, you can’t have or do it all.

Rejoice with me at the sheer breadth, energy and healthy eclecticism of it all – especially if you’re feeling gloomy about the arts and their future.