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Me and My Girl (Susan Elkin reviews)

Chichester Festival Theatre

It was one those ovation-for-the-understudy nights. Earlier in the day Matt Lucas, due to play Bill Snibson, had seen a throat specialist who decreed that he needed to rest his voice. So we got Ryan Pidgen in the lead role on the opening/press night. He had rehearsed for just a few hours. The result was a warm, confident, accomplished performance as the gor blimey jack-of-all-trades from Lambeth who inherits a title and a fortune. Pidgen dominated the stage with his singing, dancing and all those punning one liners for every second he was on it. It was a bravura performance by any standards. Had it not been obvious (to most people) that this wasn’t Matt Lucas I don’t think anyone would have known that Pidgen was an understudy.

Me and My Girl is a gloriously old fashioned, feel good musical dating from 1937. Like so many of the best British comedies it’s a play on social class with more than a whiff of both Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, Kind Hearts and Coronets and HMS Pinafore which is substantially referenced in Mark Cumberland’s sparky orchestrations of Noel Gay’s score.

Caroline Quentin is terrific as the fierce, bossy (but of course there’s more to her) Maria, Duchess of Dene. She flounces, frightens and fulminates in a fabulously frumpy tweed skirt until the very end when, Katisha-like she succumbs to the charms of her old friend Sir John Tremayne (Clive Rowe – engaging). As her glittering daughter, Siubhan Harrison flirts, swarms and there’s a very polished, make-you-gasp dance scene with a group of men in which she is thrown into all manner of unlikely poses. Goodness knows how long it had to be rehearsed for.

And there’s splendid work from Alex Young as Snibson’s titular “my girl” from Lambeth who really isn’t very likely to fit in as Lady Hareford. In her woollen beret and spectacles she initially presents a homely figure who can also sing and dance “to the manor born” – as it were.

But the real star of this tuneful, uplifting show is the ensemble who drive the piece along with energy and panache – assisted by choreographic strokes (by Alistair David) of witty genius such as suits of armour which tap dance and a tango with beach towels, The big set pieces such as Doing the Lambeth Walk (which I’m still humming 12 hours later) and The Sun Has Got His Hat On are gloriously vibrant too. The former, of course, keeps shifting its key up in semitones as it gets faster – hardly an original idea but it works very well indeed here and looks great as the pearly kings queens dance to the stage through the auditorium.

Anyone who reads my reviews even occasionally will know I’m a sucker for a good band and the 11 musicians led my MD Gareth Valentine certainly come up trumps here. It looks a bit odd to see Valentine’s head protruding from a triangular down stage trap while the rest of the band is concealed from view under the stage. But the sound works perfectly.

Daniel Evans knows how to stage a spectacle and he’s in fine form with this one which could, I suspect, be Chichester’s next West End transfer.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-Me%20and%20My%20Girl&reviewsID=3255

Guildhall School of Music and Drama

It’s quite a privilege to enjoy what is arguably one of the best musicals of all time in one of our foremost conservatoires. They can of course, rustle up a magnificent orchestra (plus on-stage Klezmer band for the wedding and talented Nicole Petrus Barracks as the titular fiddler) with Steven Edis as musical director to play all those delicious accelerating minor key melodies. And because GSMD has one of the country’s best technical departments the sets and costumes, designed by Adam Wiltshire, are splendid too – especially the 3D lit up cottages upstage left to suggest the village of Anatevke and the angled walkway across the back.

And as for the cast you get 25 final year actors, directed by Martin Connor, giving their all and their “all” is generally pretty impressive. At the heart of the show is Alex James-Cox as Tevye. It’s one of those iconic parts (cf Lady Bracknell, Richard III, Dorothy and Fagin) which everyone associates with a single actor. The knack is to put those memories and images aside and make it your own which is what James-Cox does very ably. He sings with passion, delivers every laconic Jewish line with warmth and panache, has stage timing that many seasoned actors would die for and clearly has no difficulty playing twenty years over his own age. I particularly liked the way he dances/conducts expressively with his hands, adding an extra dimension to Jerry Bock’s lovely score It’s a very fine performance and I’m sure we shall be seeing a lot more of James-Cox very soon.

Phoebe Marshall finds mature warmth in Tzeitel, the eldest daughter who chooses to marry Motel (Finlay Paul – another pleasing performance), a poor tailor rather than succumb to the matchmaker. Tallulah Bond is strong as Golde, Tevye’s long suffering wife, especially in her duet with him Do You Love Me?which really does sound like a spontaneous musical conversation.

The company plays villagers, Russians and a whole range of minor roles with Georgina Beedle especially memorable as Grandma’s ghost on stilts. There is a minor problem in that this is, by definition a young cast and they don’t always convince as old or older people. Poppy Allen-Quarmby, for instance, does her best as the matchmaker but she’s clearly just a young woman pretending as is Harry Harrington as Lazar Wolf.

But the quality of singing and dancing more than makes up for it. Interestingly these are acting, not musical theatre students. This fine show demonstrates how well they’ve been trained. The big ensemble moments – the opening, the wedding and the dream for example – zing along with some imaginative choreography, including the famous bottle dance and lots of vibrantly rhythmic dancing – are spectacular. The ending is as moving as I’ve ever seen it.

I’d advise you to see this show except that – understandably – it is sold out

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Guildhall%20School%20of%20Music%20and%20Drama%20(Student%20Productions)-Fiddler%20on%20the%20Roof&reviewsID=3252

220px-Broadway_Theatre_-_CatfordI reviewed a show at Broadway Theatre in Catford last week and it’s a venue with which I go back a very long way.

Having grown up in the Borough of Lewisham I came “home” two years ago to live back in Catford after four decades elsewhere. What we used simply to call “The Town Hall”  has been familiar all my life. We went there all the time, years ago.  It was very much what we would now call a community space.

I sang there at least twice when I was still in primary school. Choirs from local schools came together to present a concert programme of songs they’d all learned with their own teachers – Mr Oliver James in my case at Rathfern Road School

I was taken to shows at The Town Hall too both by my parents and at least once in a party from primary school – often musicals and especially Gilbert and Sullivan. The ones presented by our local community companies: Lewisham Operatic Society and Eldorado Operatic Society were especial favourites. And by the time I was about 12, if parents were too busy, I just went with a friend.

And I remember at, maybe 16, going with a friend to hear a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass in The Town Hall. To my astonishment my violin teacher, Miss Barbara Strudwick, was leading the orchestra. It had never occurred to me that she had a life as a freelance musician beyond teaching. She was utterly delighted when I told her the following week that I’d been in the audience.

We had our school speech days at The Town Hall too. So I attended, and took part in, eight of those during the years I was at Sydenham High School including one in the term after I left, to collect certificates. As I progressed up the school I sang in senior choir and played in the school orchestra at those Town Hall speech days. We used to get ready to file to our places in the small hall downstairs now converted to the studio theatre where I saw Artform’s enjoyable Sweet Charity last week. It used also to be a space for hire. I once attended a 21st birthday party (older brother of a friend) down there.

Once I’d left school, been through teacher training college and returned to south London to a teaching job, I joined the Lewisham Philharmonic Orchestra. Musically they were a ropey lot, saved by stiffeners from the Royal Artillery on concert days. But we played some good stuff and I don’t have to tell you where the concerts were held.

Known for a long time as Lewisham Concert Hall, it’s a rather wonderful, curved art deco building dating from 1932 (architects: Bradshaw, Gass and Hope) originally built on the site of an old fire station as an extension to the existing Victorian gothic town hall next door and incorporating a performance space. That means that my father, born in 1922, and his father born in 1896 and both Lewisham men, must clearly have remembered it being built but I don’t recall either of them ever mentioning it. Even I remember the old town hall next to the concert hall which wasn’t demolished until 1965. John  Betjeman did his best, I gather, but failed to save it.

In 1987 the small hall was converted to the 120 seat theatre it is now. I’ve seen several shows in there in recent years and it works well. You can still see the elegant woodwork and floors which characterise the building. And in 1993 someone had the sense to get it listed – Grade 2 status means that it’s pretty well protected from institutional vandalism.

In the early years of the millennium there was a £2.3 million refurb which restored some lost art deco features. It was then renamed Broadway Theatre in 2003.

The lovely old place, so full of personal memories, still seems to be a bit underused, and faintly unloved though (the main house was dark when I was there last week, for instance) and it would be excellent if it were to become a receiving house for, say, some mid scale touring shows. As it is there’s a thriving youth theatre, an annual pantomime, a diverse range of one night stands and short runs including community companies such as Artform which has a residency there. The activities, events and shows are varied and interesting but there need to be more of them and Catford needs classier stuff alongside the mainstream. Last year’s Shakespeare Festival – Catford on Avon – was a good start. It’s a fabulous building and I’d like to see it become an integral part of people’s lives as it was for me when I was a Lewisham child.

lewisham-town-hall-oct-1954

The old town hall in the centre with the new extension, more or less as it is today, on the right. Given the crowds this may be the opening ceremony for the extension.

 

When someone can process only part of what is said, normal conversation becomes impossible. The sort of casual remarks which human beings make to each other all the time get misunderstood and/or distorted when you’re involuntarily shacked up with Ms Alzheimer’s.

For example, if I say “I’ll put the bins out in a bit but I need to empty the inside ones first” then a few minutes later I’m quite likely to find My Loved One toiling out to the front with the bins. When I remonstrate he’ll say: “I’m sure you mentioned bins?”

One day recently I had to take my passport to the sorting office (ridiculous but there you go) in order to collect a parcel. On my return I removed the passport from my handbag and put it on the shelf on the upstairs landing to remind myself to put it away in its accustomed drawer when I next went downstairs.

“What’s this passport doing here?” asked MLO. “Oh, can you put it in the drawer in the dining room if you’re going down? I said, as if he were a normal person. Cue for Big Panic half an hour later when I checked and said passport was not in the drawer. I did find it in the end but Ms A hiding things is beginning to be a problem.

I know exactly where everything is in this house. He doesn’t. If he moves things then neither of us will know where they are we’re really in a pickle. And as I keep telling him all he has to do is to listen to instructions and not to fiddle with things – but of course it’s nothing like as simple as that.

Take the two big bags of bark chippings I brought home from the garden centre last week. I managed, with difficulty, to lever them both out of the car boot, rest them against the back of the car and then to drag one round to the back garden but it was really too heavy for me. “Is there any way you could bring that second bag round?” I asked MLO because he is still probably a little stronger than I am – a male body etc. He tried but told me he couldn’t shift it. “OK, leave it where it is” I said. “I’ll think of something”. When I later went back to the front the bag was missing. The silly twerp had, most unhelpfully, humped it back into the car boot.

We had a pretty graphic example of sequential failed understanding at Pease Pottage services on the way to Chichester this week – which ended up with me in tears of despair. I asked too much of him thereby managing to upset us both. Well done, Susan.

The problem is that I routinely overestimate what’s do-able and as the situation worsens I suppose it will get ever harder to adjust. On this occasion I shoved him into the Costa queue and told him to buy two bottles of water while I shot into next door M&S to buy sandwiches. Five minutes later MLO appeared beside me while I was paying for the sandwiches at a self-service till. “What are you doing here?” I demanded rather too crossly. “GO INTO COSTA AND BUY TWO BOTTLES OF WATER – please”. Well he wandered off but when I went to join him in Costa, sandwiches in hand, he had completely disappeared. A worrying five minutes later I spotted him in the M&S queue trying to buy sandwiches.

Well I’m afraid I don’t have the patience of a saint …Furiously, I dragged him to a table, sat him down and forbade him to move while I went and bought two bottles of water. When I got back he was anxiously examining the packets of sandwiches I’d bought because he was afraid he’d accidentally shoplifted them. That was the point at which I broke down and cried.

It is all very wearing as well as dispiriting and I’m ashamed to admit that it’s considerably easier to do jobs such as reviewing in Chichester or central London on my own. Then it’s quite therapeutic to be out working like a grown up and, at present (long may it last) he’s OK at home by himself. If I take him out with me the whole experience is, increasingly often, as stressful as it is upsetting.

I have “coffee shop offices” all over London and quite a few in other towns and cities. I’m drafting this blog in a one which is new to me – the quite nice coffee shop inside Lewisham Hospital which has delightfully friendly, cheerful staff and they make a decent cup of tea. After a frustrating four hour wait beyond our appointment time, MLO is – at last – upstairs in theatre having the carcinoma removed from his face. Fingers crossed that the anxiously anticipated surgery is going well. Pease_Pottage_signs_1

 

 

What with Brexit and the football I suppose there’s never been a better time to bury bad news. Of course there was no gushing, flowery press release to announce what I have found quietly posted on the Gov.uk website. This, copied and pasted verbatim, is what it says:

The Professional and Career Development Loan scheme is closing. You must apply by 25 January 2019. This will not affect your existing loan.

In just three sentences, that stark announcement shatters the training prospects of hundreds of potential performers who want unadulterated vocational training or any form of “alternative” training – as opposed to anything called a degree offered in a drama school or university whose students are entitled to student loans.

Some people have used PCDLs to pay for foundation courses or postgraduate degrees too – but now they can’t.

PDCLs are (were) offered by banks, usually Barclays or the Co-op. They would lend over-18s who fulfilled UK residency criteria anything between £300 and £10,000 at a reduced rate of interest to pay for career-advancing courses and training. They were available for careers of all sorts but, obviously it’s performing arts I’m concerned about here.

The government paid the interest while the borrower was studying. Well, I have no figures so I don’t know what this arrangement cost the tax payer but since we are talking interest only for a relatively small group I can’t believe that, in the scheme of things and in national terms, it was a huge amount. This penny-pinching decision smacks of ignorance and anti-elitism. I can imagine some civil servant and/or junior minister who knows nothing whatsoever about the performing arts industry, apart from taking his/her kids to panto each year, saying “What do they need career development loans for?  Let’s axe them. They can go to university and get a student loan if they want to train.”

Everyone in the industry is working  proverbial socks off to be inclusive. We want performers (and theatre technicians) to emerge from backgrounds of all sorts. Eddie Redmayne and Damian Lewis (both from privileged backgrounds)  are excellent actors but we need Patterson Joseph and Michelle Dockery (both from working class families) as well. A decision to end PCDLs will make it even more difficult for wannabe performing arts professionals whose families are unable to support them.

There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all training. Of course drama school and university is the right route for some although many families, often debt-averse all their lives, are very doubtful about tuition fees even though they don’t have to be paid back until quite a high income threshold is reached.

But there are some students who want a different sort of training – perhaps with an independent provider. Others take an ill-advised university course, realise at the end that they’re not industry ready and have to train vocationally elsewhere – but they’ve already used their student loan entitlement on the degree.

PCDLs were a lifeline for students like these. Now that such loans have gone many of them will simply not be able to pursue the career they want – irrespective of how talented they are. There are a few scholarships about but “few” is the operative word.

And if some talented young people fall at the first hurdle because they can’t fund their training they will have no option but to go away and do something else. And the industry will be a poorer – less diverse – place. Made so by a short-sighted government decision.

Theatretrain – Special Measures – Sadlers Wells Theatre

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Styling itself “the company that loves to perform”, Theatretrain is a part-time children’s training organisation with branches all over the country.

It makes a specialism of bringing together groups of branches to stage big scale shows which they’ve rehearsed back in their weekly sessions.

Special Measures, the first of two shows at Sadler’s Wells, featured 400 children from Theatretrain branches in Basingstoke, Bristol, Maldon, Basildon, Southampton, Cambridge, Loughton and Reading ….

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/theatretrain-special-measures-sadlers-wells-theatre/

 

De La Warr Pavilion, Sunday 1 July 2018

An hour with Rodgers and Hammerstein is, on a glorious summer evening by the sea, a welcome reminder of just what a skilled melodist and sophisticated orchestrator Richard Rodgers was.  No wonder so many of his songs are right under our collective skin and deep in the loyal Bexhill audience members who enthusiastically filled the De La Warr Pavilion to the gunwhales for this concert.

The first half took us through well chosen extracts from Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, Carousel and South Pacific – in a whole range of moods and formats. Rene Bloice-Sanders, a fine operatic tenor whose resonance and intonation is spot on, sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and “Some Enchanted Evening” with carefully controlled warmth and nicely managed dynamic. Lucy Ashton’s smiling personality comes through as strongly as her rich soprano voice and she seemed to be enjoying “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” as much as the audience and choir were.

The Bexhill Festival Choir, trained and led by Lorraine Barry, meanwhile did a sterling back-up job. Mostly they achieved a rich tone – with only occasional thinness in the more challenging bits – and it’s encouraging to see amateur singers working with such verve, heads and eyes up.

That confidence was at least in part due to Ken Roberts who is an assertively supportive conductor – giving the choir almost full attention when they’re singing. He also coaxed a pretty good sound out of the 40 musicians in the orchestra although there were signs that some of the music was under-rehearsed. The Carousel Waltz is a medley and every musician knows that these are some of the hardest things to bring off because the joins are so tricky – and in this performance the trickiness sometimes showed. Elsewhere in the concert some of the instrumental solo work would have benefited from a bit more work behind the scenes too.

Ken Roberts – whose link chat was arguably unnecessary anyway – really should cut the ageist jokes too. I’ve heard him before making unfunny comments about age and it does not go down well – probably the only moments in the whole evening when there was a momentary sour note.

The second half provided the party that most people in the audience had come for, having bought or brought their little union flags ready to wave. Now, to be honest, all that jingoistic stuff, however tongue-in-cheek, isn’t my cup of tea. I identify strongly with Elgar who loathed  Benson’s words to Pomp and Circumstance March No 1  (although it didn’t stop him enjoying the royalties). Nonetheless it was good to hear Coates’s nostalgically familiar Calling All Workers played with crisp affection. It’s fun too to hear Henry Wood’s Sea Songs played live because the orchestration is so colourful. And the audience was having a whale of a time.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=4454

Intermission Youth Theatre, St Saviour’s Church, Knightsbridge

This is a pacey, engaging version of Othello for now. Darren Raymond’s version, developed from workshops with members of Inter-mission Youth Theatre, sets the play in a gym using a boxing ring as the focus for intimate in-the-round theatre. Othello (Kwame Reed) is a champion boxer. Other characters are part of that community. Even the title is multilayered because here it’s a ring (not a handkerchief) which leads Othello to his fatal final act of jealousy.

The text uses modern colloquial English seamlessly interspersed with Shakespeare’s language and that works beautifully and sometimes wittily. The idea of Brabantio (Tristram Anyiam) becoming incensed because Othello and Desdemona (Esther Odejimi) having been seen together in Nandos is funny but it works.

Also fascinating is that this is a predominantly black cast. If none of the main characters is white (and you manage the text carefully) the racism simply disappears from the play. Instead it becomes a tightly focused, universal tragedy about jealousy. And I loved the ending which, by borrowing a little something (no spoilers) from another Shakespeare play, presents an even more devastating conclusion than the original.

Baba Oyejide is an understated but chillingly effective Iago. There’s no malevolent leering at the audience when he’s lying to other characters. Instead he is flanked by a pair of commentators (Nyomi Wright and Tammi Blake – both good) who voice and echo his thoughts – a device which sits very successfully here. Oyejide makes Iago seem shockingly plausible. It’s fine acting.

Reed’s performance is intelligent and moving as he works the shift from an innocent quasi boyfriend to a girl he really loves all the way to a possessive, violent, crazed, jealous man. He speaks the lines – both sorts – with naturalistic conviction and is a good actor to watch.

Lovely work from Odejimi too as a confident Desdemona (Dezzy) mad about Othello and really puzzled when he turns against her. The strangling scene is one of the most convincing I’ve ever seen.

And they’re ably supported by a strong cast consisting of a mix of current Inter-mission Youth Theatre members and former members, many of whom are now working professionally.

Inter-mission Youth Theatre was founded ten years ago by Bishop Bob Gillion, his wife Janine and Darren Raymond. It operates from St Saviour’s Church, Knightsbridge which is still a functioning place of worship as well as a theatre. Inter-mission Youth Theatre is an arts-based youth mentoring programme, now including outreach activities. It works with 16-25 year olds from across London who are “lacking opportunities, at risk of offending, ex-offenders or aspiring young actors”. Darren Raymond, an inspiring man and role model is artistic director, having discovered Shakespeare in 2004 when as he says: “I was not in a very good place”.

Mark Rylance, about to play Iago at The Globe is Inter-mission Youth Theatre’s patron was supportively in the audience the night I saw Ring of Envy. A former IYT member is cast in the forthcoming Globe production and was also in the audience.

In short this is an admirable initiative which has changed the lives of over a hundred young people in the last decade. It is also the creator of some jolly good theatre. Ring of Envy is a good show by any standards.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Intermission%20Youth%20Theatre-Ring%20of%20Envy&reviewsID=3249