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Working with weather and alpacas

Credit Alistair Muir

Last week I went to Open Air Theatre, Regents Park to review the revival of their outstandingly original and moving Peter Pan, predicated on the Lost Boys really being lost ten years later in the trenches. I saw it first in 2014.

It was my first open air production of the season  – apart from Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe, part of the Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank series in March but that is really something different.  I have dozens more outdoor shows booked in between now and September in various venues: some purpose built and permanent others cheerfully “pop up”.

Well, I wasn’t cold at Regents Park and never have been, even when the conditions are quite chilly, because the auditorium, like the Globe’s “wooden O” is a complete circle and there’s nowhere for the wind to get in. At the Globe I’ve often been damned uncomfortable (oh those backless benches!) but never cold. Nonetheless we routinely pack a rucksack with a rug, scarves and gloves whenever we head off to an outdoor venue because this is Britain and you never know. Even semi-permanent and covered venues such as the pavilion at Wormsley for Garsington Opera or the space used by Opera Holland Park can be jolly nippy.

Attending the first show of 2018 made me wonder, not for the first time, why we  mad Brits persist in doing outdoor theatre. This is not Verona, Seville or Avignon, after all. We live in a country which doesn’t seem to have a climate. It just has weather. I suppose staging an outdoor show is a Johnsonian triumph of hope over experience. Dr J was referring to his father’s second marriage but the same principle applies.

I fondly remember the good times. On a really warm Mediterranean type evening – and it happens three or four times a year if we’re lucky –  there is absolutely nothing like a fine open air show. Open Air Theatre, Regents Park is a sort of theatrical paradise when the weather’s right  but I also remember arriving there for a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in heavy rain a few years back. They played the first two acts, their trainers audibly squelching. Then rain stopped play when the stage manager aborted the performance for health and safety reasons. The Tempest in a tempest at Mount Ephraim Gardens in Kent stands out in my memory too as does a The Taming of the Shrew at Canterbury when it sheeted all evening. Ever tried making coherent review notes inside one of those polythene bag ponchos? Not easy.

I have also, several times, been so cold at unsheltered pop up open air venues (Leeds Castle, Boughton Monchelsea, Coolings Nursery, and Kensington Gardens among others) that my brain has numbed to such an extent I could think of nothing but getting away and getting warm – even in June or July.

The worst ever was a Christmas show – yes, Christmas so it was December – at Tom Thumb Theatre in Margate. To my amazement most scenes were staged outside. For part of the time it snowed, with the wind howling in from Siberia across the bay. I learned afterwards that the playwright lives in Florida. It presumably didn’t occur to anyone that what works for Christmas in Miami might be less successful in Margate. I was so cold that night that I was still chilled through even after driving 40 miles home with the car heater on full.

So staging outdoor theatre is high risk. And that’s part of the frisson. Neither company nor audience ever quite knows what’s going to happen with the weather or anything else. When I saw a touring production of Hamlet at Groombridge Place near Tonbridge, peacocks shrieking nearby, the set was a cart-size box enclosed at the back and sides like a mini proscenium arch. At about the moment when Hamlet is briefing the players a furry brown alpaca appeared at a gate just to the side and behind the set. Every audience eye swivelled. And there were chuckles.  We all knew that none of the actors would be able to see what we were looking at which made the situation even funnier. The beast stood there, apparently enjoying the play, until the interval when a staff member roped it up and led it back to where it was meant to be. Upstaged by an alpaca: it doesn’t happen at National Theatre or in the West End.

OAT (2)

 

 

Temple Church Choir, London, 24 May 2018

Temple Church, with its lofty fan faulting and intricate stained glass glinting in the early evening sunshine, is a magnificent setting for a concert. And this performance of Haydn’s colourful masterpiece, sung in English, certainly did it justice – in memory of Jonathan Hirst QC who died last year and whose chambers, Brick Court, sponsored the event.

Temple Choir, which has in recent years made quite a name for itself, is authentically male with 12 choir men and 18 choir boys. They were ably accompanied by Outcry Ensemble whose string work is commendably crisp. It’s an unusual idea to place the timps at the back of the choir so that the singers acted as a muffler but it worked.

Roger Sayer, director of Temple Music, has a real passion for detail and the clear, revealing acoustic of the building allows him to fulfil it. From the first bar of the introductory Representation of Chaos, he ensured that we heard every note from every instrument. Later he and his musicians had such fun with Haydn’s witty sound  effects that the audience chuckled aloud at the “flexible tiger” and the stress on “long” and the evocative bottom E for the worm sung by bass, Jimmy Holliday. Another lovely moment was Holliday’s rendering of the descending fourths in Rolling in Foaming Billows with the flute weaving underneath.

Tenor Guy Cutting sang with lyrical warmth and terrific dynamic control especially in “In Native Worth and Honour Clad” and soprano Augusta Hebbert was  delightful in part three when she and Holliday sang their section as Adam and Eve with sparkling smiles to remind us that this is a freshly minted young couple in love. Their voices blended well because each singer was totally attuned to the other.

There was some fine singing from the choir too. Sayer clearly has a terrific rapport with them, conducting without baton and mouthing words. I particularly admired the way they did the Spacious Firmament fugue with energy that lasted right to the end and included a magnificent crescendo. It’s a testing sing for any choir and more often than not flags long before the last note.

Given the effort which had clearly gone into one of the finest – and certainly the most sensitively dramatic –  renderings I’ve ever heard of The Creation, it’s a pity they didn’t hire a harpsichord. Of course Greg Morris played the recit passages more than competently on piano but it sounded far too plummy for music of this period. It didn’t spoil it because everything else was so beautifully done but it would have been even better with harpsichord.

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

 

Marlowe Theatre and touring

Prokofiev’s lush score – with all its minor key melody and those evocative rhythms – dates from 1946 and part of it was written during World War II. Matthew Bourne’s idea of setting it in the London Blitz therefore makes sense, and the “Ball” in the Café de Paris – which was bombed on 8 March, 1941 – is beautiful, poignant and apt. And there are some lovely conceits, such as Cinderella (Ashley Shaw in the performance I saw) being whisked off to the dance by her angel (Liam Mower) on a white motorbike and sidecar. There’s a cinema framing device with lots of Pathe news footage too which works a treat.

This production, which has been around for a while, is currently touring nationwide and Matthew Bourne did a post-show question and answer session for the first night Canterbury audience.

Shaw first appears as Cinderella, drab in grey and bespectacled at home with Alan Vincent, her wheelchair-bound father. Given that this character doesn’t dance other than with his arms it might have been appropriate to cast a wheelchair user which Vincent isn’t – an opportunity missed?

She is bullied by a stepmother (Anjali Mehra – strong) and a chorus of individually characterised step-siblings, each of them good value in the way they convey greasy nastiness. Then, of course, she is whizzed off the glitzy Café de Paris, despite having been denied her invitation, in glittering white. Cue for some lovely muscular dancing by the men and, then for some very engaging duet work between Cinderella and her “prince”, Harry the Pilot who is styled to look like John Cleese but who dances with verve.

Like all the best ballet performances it’s an ensemble piece. The real star is Bourne’s spiky, fluid, story-telling choreography. There is no point work so the dancing feels very natural –  effectively a movement based, Brechtian drama. There’s a splendid scene, for example, when Cinderella is in hospital and her family visit – moving as one round the screens which form doors, pecking menacingly like a flock of vultures. The tiny visual subplot in which a pair of gay men fall for each other is nice too.

The second (but not by much) best thing in this show are Lez Brotherston’s stunning designs for sets and costumes. Most of the clothes are black, white and grey with filmy, flowing 1940s dresses for the women and various sorts of uniform for the men.  He provides a spacious family room at the beginning, a very convincing café de Paris amongst bombed buildings followed by shocking devastation at the end of Act 2. And we even get Paddington station and a rather good train.

This is the sort of show which could, I think attract new audiences to dance productions. Without a tutu or pair of tights in sight it feels much more like a moving piece of musical theatre than a “classical” ballet. Bravo!

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

 

Stage Traffic Productions. Trafalgar Studios

Katy Brand’s debut play shows a phenomenal talent for dialogue writing. And in the hands of three actors are talented as Anita Dobson, Debbie Chazen and Maisie Richardson-Sellers (with Oliver Greenall as the waiter) directed by Michael Yale, it’s a sure fire winner.

Suzanne, 40 (Chazen) is to marry tomorrow. Her generous, decent fiancé has paid for her to have a night in an expensive hotel with her mother (Dobson) and eighteen year old daughter (Richardson-Sellers). The play then spends its 80 minutes – which feels like much less – exploring the complex relationship between the three of them and unravelling a great deal of family history and baggage along the way.

It’s strong too on the opportunities women had, have, might have – or not – ranging from Dobson’s character recalling her grandmother who campaigned with the suffragettes to Richardson-Sellers as Laurie idealistically anticipating a gender-free future for the human race. Billed as a comedy, 3 Women is belly-laugh funny in places. It’s also a very thoughtful play which eventually becomes deeply moving.

Dobson is an extraordinary actor. She did the best wicked queen in Snow White I have ever seen at Tunbridge Wells. I still measure all other wicked queen’s against hers. And she was a fine Gertrude in Hamlet as well as her EastEnders role and masses of other theatre. In this show her character is brittle and she drinks. On the surface she’s an ordinary 60 something widow left reasonably well off and definitely not “letting herself go”. Gradually we realise that she has felt unfulfilled all her life and is desperately disappointed in the daughter who has, in her mother’s view, wasted her opportunities. Dobson has a wonderful knack of delivering bitchy lines with deadpan rapier timing. Yet she also gets our sympathy. At one point she turns away from the others and stares into the corner of the auditorium with audience within an arm’s length, silent and shaking. You can see her thoughts on her face. Then she weeps. She even manages to smudge her mascara. It’s a masterclass in convincing acting.

Chazen plays off her beautifully. She is, in contrast to her mother, bosomy, comfortable and “into” new age life style and counselling. But she too has demons to deal with including having grown up with her difficult mother and having had a child as the result of the very brief relationship when she was 22. Chazen’s silent looks often convey as much feeling as half a dozen sentences of dialogue.

Meanwhile Richardson-Sellers is very calm, poised and mature as Laurie – trying to keep the peace between her mother and grandmother. We then see a different side to her when first when she tells her mother something she knows Suzanne would rather not hear and then when – nice bit of sit com for light relief – she has a quick one with the waiter. It’s a nicely nuanced interpretation of character.

Because Trafalgar Studios’ Studio 2 is so small and intimate, 3 Women feels in scale almost like fringe theatre until you remember that you’re in the heart of the West End, watching a top notch cast and sitting alongside three household name critics. It is actually a play with real weight and I predict that it has a rosy future.
 First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-3Women&reviewsID=3214

 

Birmingham Repertory Company. Marlowe Theatre and touring

It’s encouraging to see a revival of Terence Rattigan’s fine 1946 play which really allows this modern classic to shine. Rattigan was an exceptionally good dialogue writer and his plays – The Winslow Boy in particular – respond well to the sort of direction and acting you see here from Rachel Kavanaugh and her strong cast of eleven.

Based on the real life Georgie Archer-Shee case, The Winslow Boytells the story of an alleged theft of a postal order by a boy at a naval boarding school run by the Admiralty. Convinced of his son’s innocence, his father brings the rest of the family to near ruin in trying to prove it through the courts.

As the boy’s father, Arthur Winslow, Aden Gillett is plausible, reasonable, determined and affectionate. He is also gradually succumbing to arthritis and other illnesses which worsen during the two year trajectory of the play. Gillett’s performance is both convincing and moving. He is well matched by Tessa Peake-Jones who plays his wife as a motherly, homely sort – in an Edwardian middle class way – until, at last, she loses some of her poise and confronts her husband about his recalcitrant stubbornness and that’s impressive to watch too.

There is also some splendid work from Dorothea Myer-Bennett as their daughter Catherine, a sardonic supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. Myer-Bennett gives us an intelligent character who is variously amused, socially conventional, and desperately upset and it’s pretty compelling. So is Timothy Watson as Sir Robert Morton the very expensive lawyer who, intially seems terrifying and very unpleasant but who turns out to be much more human and humane that anyone thought. It’s a gift of a part and Watson makes a fine job of it especially in the last scene when he and Catherine discover they have a rapport.

Also enjoyable are Soo Drouet as the well meaning but untrained and over familiar Violet, the family servant and an entertaining cameo from Sarah Lambie as a patronising but penetrating journalist.

And it all takes place on Michael Taylor’s delightful set – the sitting room of the Winslows’ house – complete with a huge mahogany bureau, dark wood chairs and lots of pictures on the walls, some of which are taken down by stage crew as the Winslows begin to feel the pinch. Taylor also designed the gorgeous Edwardian costumes including attractive dresses for the women. Peake-Jones, in particular wears several pretty, fitted outfits with sweeping long skirts.

This production is high-quality theatre. What a pity, therefore, to see the matinee I was at so sparsely attended. The Marlowe was less than half full. I hope other performances there and elsewhere during the tour have attracted the numbers this show deserves.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Marlowe%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Winslow%20Boy&reviewsID=3211

West Wickham Operatic Society at Churchill Theatre, Bromley

Cats is a unique musical. You simply can’t discuss it by comparing it with anything else. Arguably, it has the strongest score Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever written and it’s effectively a ballet with dramatic songs. It dances eclectically from music hall to be-bop, to hints of Mendelssohn and Wagner, interspersed with the odd anthem and much more. And you get T.S. Eliot’s slick, funny words, bonded here and there with a bit of clever Richard Stilgoe. It requires terrific dance technique – which tends to mean a youngish cast – and a great deal of imagination. The rights holder, The Really Useful Group stipulates that sets, costume and direction must be different from the original professional production.

No wonder very few amateur companies have, so far, taken on this challenge. West Wickham Operatic Society, however, has tackled it with expertise, talent and aplomb and it’s a fine evening in the theatre by any standards. It pulses with energy from the first note to the last.

Of course, because I saw the show on the opening night there were a few very minor teething problems with radio mics and lighting cues but I’m sure these will be sorted for subsequent performances. Full marks to the company for sailing on though the hiccoughs with unfazed professionalism.

The setting is a derelict 1920s funfair with lots of flashing lights, and, a neat device, silver foil curtains for characters to duck beneath. The costumes – mostly tight fitting lycra suits with long tails at the back and other bits added to personalise each cat – were bought from one of the few amateur companies who’ve done this show and adapted. WWOS designed individual make up for each cast member and they all worked on their own wigs. The result is, visually, as good as I’ve seen anywhere and I think I’ve seen this show performed professionally five times, including with the original cast at London Theatre, Drury Lane which included Brian Blessed, Bonnie Langford, Wayne Sleep and Elaine Paige.

The show itself is, paradoxically, episodic and well as seamless. WWOS sets the tone at the beginning with a big chorus of Jellicle Cats pounding the rhythms. Choreographer Danielle Dowsett is highly skilled at making the very most of the talent she has at her disposal and the company has managed to cast enough young or youngish performers to provide an impressive central dance corps, many of whom also have solo spots because that’s the way this magnificent ensemble piece is structured. On the edges are other dancers who are slightly less agile and/or haven’t had dance training. And I gather from the programme that there’s another group of older WWOS members singing in the wings.

Michael Flanagan and Carrie-Louise Knight are show-stoppingly engaging as the spirited Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, playing off each other and dancing athletically together as a duo. Thomas Fitzgerald delights as the kilt-wearing Skimbleshanks rocking his way to Scotland by train, spitting out every witty word. And Tracy Prizeman gives us a really impassioned, throaty account of Memorybefore she eventually disappears into the “Heavyside layer” (the flies) in a circus hoop. Justin Jones is strong too as Bustopher Jones with his lovely musical hall-type number

You can’t miss Robert Sharples either. He’s an outstanding professionally-trained dancer. As a black and white cat, he contributes a huge amount to the ensemble and finally comes into his own as the leaping, spiralling Magical Mr Mistoffelees.

Among the older cats, Kevin Hayes is good value as the Elvis-esque, hip-gyrating Rum Tum Tugger and Terry Gauntlett is appealing as the elderly, paw quivering Gus the Theatre Cat. In this version the younger Gus, recalling the play about the Growltiger adventure on the Thames is played – with lots of humour and panache – by Philip Netscher. Kevin Gauntlett, who also directs the show, plays the fatherly Old Deuteronomy and sings his big number The Ad Dressing of Cats with suitable bass gravitas.

I arrived at the theatre wondering what on earth WWOS was going to do about a band for this ambitious show. I needn’t have worried. A ten-piece orchestra, conducted by David Bullen, and out of sight, took the bull by the horns and ran a musical marathon with it. It sounded terrific, with a lot of very clear work by individual instruments especially cello and horn.

We don’t give stars in this publication but if we did my finger would be hovering over a fifth star for this show.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-WWOS%20(West%20Wickham%20Operatic%20Society)-Cats&reviewsID=3208

So it’s Alzheimer’s Awareness Week. Well, yes please, we need plenty of that.

I’ve also just spotted, in newspapers and on the Tube, adverts for the “Alzheimer’s Show” at Olympia next month as if Ms Alzheimers’s hapless victims were like Ideal Homes, yachts or fancy cars. An Alzheimer’s joke? We don’t get many of those. In all seriousness, there’s not a lot that’s “showy” about this horrible illness but I suppose it all helps with awareness.

Meanwhile back at the sharp end I find myself worrying increasingly about balance. All the advice from experts is that you should keep your Alzheimer’s person doing as many normal things as possible for as long as you/he/she can – even if it means that tasks aren’t done properly. Well it makes sense but I suspect the advice comes, in general from people who, well meaning as they are, don’t actually have to live this illness 24/7.

I am trying to get our “new” (we moved into our present house 20 months ago) garden into shape. Among other things I bought a bottle of bug spray and a bottle of weed killer. “Here you are” I said to My Loved One, handing him the latter. “This is a present for you. Now you can sweep the brick paving and spray between the cracks on the drive way.”  He’d mentioned several times that it needed doing and it was always his job to keep the brick paving tidy in our old house.

On Sunday afternoon I put my old clothes on and went out to do some serious weeding. Ten minutes later MLO was hovering nearby. This is the usual pattern these days when I start any domestic job. He stands and watches me. I can never decide whether it’s because he’s critical of the way I’m doing something (emptying the dishwasher for example) which he used to do and no longer can, merely curious or suffering from some sort of anguished envy.

Anyway, there we were in the back garden. The next time I looked up from the dandelions he was trying (and failing, fortunately) to open the weed killer spray. Opening almost anything is a problem these days. “I’ll just spray those aphids on the roses” he said. “NO!” I shrieked which led to a quite cross rejoinder: “Why do you always shout at me when I try to help?”

Well, I know I’m supposed to let him do things but that certainly isn’t going to include passively allowing him to spray weed killer onto the plants I’m trying to nurture. In the end I opened both sprays and got them working and sent him firmly round to the front with weed killer where he made an adequate job of the tidying up. It took him all afternoon, he was exhausted at the end of it and I later found two little piles of leaves and bits which he’d forgotten to sweep up … but never mind. I haven’t bothered to try and explain that we have two sorts of pest – weeds and bugs aka as flora and fauna – and they need treating differently. In the old days, of course, he would have known that as well as I do.

He still manages a bit of shopping with one of those geriatric four wheeled trolleys. I get all the groceries delivered and just send him to choose fresh fruit and vegetables which is genuinely useful and I feel virtuous for facilitating it. The walk – about a mile each way – is doubtless good for him too. It takes him well over two hours but he’s not exactly time poor. He does other single task errands too such as walking to the post office with a packet or collecting one from the sorting office – as long as I’m there to let him in when he gets back because he can’t operate keys in locks.

And he’s obsessed with going to banks for statements. I’ve told him repeatedly that I now have everything online and he has only to ask and I will tell him or show him the balance and transactions on any of our accounts. But I suppose getting a statement for himself makes him feel independently grown up  and, I frequently have to remind myself, that’s very important.

It’s still jolly difficult, though, to strike a loving balance between enabling that independence and getting everything done when you’re jolly busy – as I am, coping with all this at home as well as working full-time.

It’s not unlike looking after a small child – the one who says brightly “Can I help?” when you’re in the middle of something and you say “yes” to humour the child but it would be much quicker to do it solo. When I change the sheets on our very large bed, for instance – a Sunday morning routine – he invariably appears and starts “helping”. I then have to issue a continuous flow of instructions such as “Can you pull that hem straight please” and “Now tuck it in your side” as well as racing round the bed to show him when he doesn’t understand. I could finish it in half the time if I were just allowed to get on with it. But there’s MLO’s self-esteem to manage too. And, incidentally, I really never dreamed I’d be comparing him with a pre-school child when he’s still only 72.

I continue to do what I can to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s – this week in particular. I think I’ll give that show at Olympia a miss, though. Cosi Fan Tutte at Opera Holland Park and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Watermill, Newbury – both booked for MLO to come with me next month –  look like a lot more fun. Music and drama are probably a better way of keeping an ailing brain active than constantly thinking about your own illness.

 

 

Do you have to be paid a fee by a publication in order for your review to be critically valid?

Personally I don’t think it matters in the least whether you’re writing for a national newspaper, your own website or a small organisation which doesn’t pay for reviews.

The important thing is that you can, and do, provide an informed critical assessment of the show.

Age and experience are advantages, of course, but we would all do well to remember that even Michael Billington once saw Macbeth for the first time. And I expect he formed an opinion, even then. The industry needs a mixture of seasoned critics and young fresh ones.

I review three or four shows (and concerts) most weeks. Some of the outfits I work for, and with, pay a fee and others do not.

For me it’s all work and I make no distinction. Fortunately I get enough paid writing work to enable me also to accept some voluntary reviewing. I do every job as professionally and promptly as I can irrespective of who the client is.

I review amateur theatre, including student shows, sometimes too. Why not? Companies and colleges are often welcoming of rigorous, honest, professional feedback. They can learn from it and it shows they’re being taken seriously.

In many cases the fee for reviewing is so modest that it’s almost an irrelevance, anyway. The Stage, for example, pays £25 for a standard review – even less for pantomimes and certain other sorts of show. And it isn’t alone.

By the time you’ve travelled say, two hours to the venue, watched a two hour show, travelled another two hours home and then used at least an hour to write the review you have spent 7 hours working for around £3.50 an hour –  less than half the national minimum wage.

And yet, in the opinion of some critics who have shouted quite loudly on social media in recent weeks, working even for a derisory fee makes you a “professional” and therefore worth heeding.

I review theatre and other performance mostly because I like doing it and it forces me to see a wider range of work than I probably would if I were simply choosing shows for pleasure.

And it’s always good to have your horizons widened. Don Giovanni in a gay nightclub with all the genders reversed, for instance, Freud the Musical and, only a week or two ago, a debbie tucker green double bill at Chichester.

I’m also keen to support worthwhile organisations such as Musical Theatre Review and Sardines magazine which are run by just one or two very committed people who need some professional contributors – and there’s more to “professionalism” than the size, or existence, of the fee.

What bothers me far more – so I’m very strict about it –  is the relationship between me as a critic with the producer of the show and its PR machine.

It is standard to be given one or two tickets, a programme and often a drink. Accepting that is part of the deal and no one should ever feel under any obligation to review favourably because of it.

The producer, directly or indirectly, invites critics and has to take on the chin what they write.

So I get very cross indeed if they carp afterwards. I have, almost unbelievably, several times been approached and asked if I will change negative or condemnatory opinions. Well of course, I won’t.

If I’ve misspelled a name or something then that’s fair enough, let’s correct it. Otherwise I stand by what I wrote. Always.

And sometimes I’m asked, by producers, to attend shows in very inconvenient places or at difficult times. So I explain that although I have publications which would probably take a review I cannot justify the time and expense.

Occasionally that has triggered an offer of a rail fare, accommodation or both. Well no, I’m not going there. I will review only if I’m totally at liberty to be completely disinterested and impartial.

If I’d accepted further freebies from the company I’d feel awkward if its show forced me to write a hatchet job.

I am A Professional. And I’ve capitalised it deliberately. So are many other reviewers who aren’t necessarily always paid a derisory fee.