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Interview with Ashley Stillburn & Chris Peluso on The Woman in White

The first ever revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony and Olivier Award-nominated musical The Woman in White since its West End premiere in 2004 opens tonight at the Charing Cross Theatre. Susan Elkin caught up with two of the production’s stars…

It is during rehearsals between previews for The Woman in Whitethat I catch up with ASHLEY STILLBURN who plays Walter Hartright and CHRIS PELUSO who is Sir Percival Glyde. We’re in the bar at Charing Cross Theatre accompanied by Peluso’s rather engaging, very patient dog Peety.

“This is my favourite part of the process,” says Stillburn. “Each preview has – shall we say? – a character all of its own. Things happen sometimes spontaneously and then we rehearse them and work on them to see whether we’ll go on using them. Our director Thom Southerland is very relaxed and collaborative.”

Peluso agrees. “It keeps a show fresh if you’re innovative but it’s no good setting out to be ‘different’ for the sake of it. It’s essential that you remain true to your character and the situation he’s in.” …

Read the rest of this interview at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/interview-ashley-stillburn-and-chris-peluso-on-re-imagining-lloyd-webbers-the-woman-in-white-at-the-charing-cross-theatre/

I’ve been listening to Tchaikovsky all my life and I still marvel at how he does it: melody after soaring melody. And of course he’s at his sparkling best in ballet with all those waltzes, mazurkas, hornpipes, martial interludes and the rest, all sumptuously orchestrated.

However well you know it, and however popular it is, the Nutcracker score is, well, a cracker and it’s in very capable hands with Gavin Sutherland and English National Ballet Philharmonic in this production which dates from 2010.  After a slightly shaky, thin textured start on press night the orchestra quickly settled to produce a rich, crisp sound. Sutherland takes most of the set pieces in Act 2 at a slower tempo than many conductors which means that every little bit of orchestral detail is made to shine through. The rising scales at the beginning of Act 2, for example, pack real drama and the trumpet in the Spanish dance beams out. And he makes sure that we are all very conscious of the musical chemistry between the celesta and bass clarinet during The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Meanwhile there’s some very pleasing work on stage too. Wayne Eagling’s choreography and Peter Farmer’s designs give us a strong sense of the family home which frames the action – its exterior, inside for the Christmas party and the intimacy of Clara’s bedroom where the child falls asleep and begins to dream.

Shiori Kase is delightful as the adult Clara who becomes the lead dancer in the dream sequence. Her pas-de-deux with Guilherne Menezes (also excellent) is both spectacular and elegant – and, of course, accompanied by, arguably, the best music in the piece with that stupendous timpani roll at the climax, impeccably played here.

The children (from Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and English National Ballet School) do well too especially in the formation dances at the party in act 1. And they form a choir in a side balcony for the continuo section in the big Act 1 waltz. Of all the children Noam Durand as Clara’s naughty little brother, Freddie, is the most engaging.

Junor Souza is an imposing Drosselmeyer dancing with Clara – sometimes in a trio with the Nutcracker – but there’s a narrative problem. The whole point of the Act 2 set pieces is that it’s all a treat for Clara. If she’s off stage – as in this production – then you would be forgiven for wondering why Drosselmeyer suddenly morphs into a faintly menacing impresario. But it’s a minor grumble in a production which is full of colour – both visual and aural – and warmth and imaginative ideas.

No Christmas is complete without a good Nutcracker. And there are a number around at the moment. This enjoyable one will do me very well for this year.

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

 

I’ve seen more Christmas  shows than ever this year – about 25 at the last count and they range from dramatisations of stories to classical music and ballet, lots of work for very young children and, of course, pantomimes.

I wonder how many pantos I’ve seen in the twenty years or so that I’ve been reviewing? Three hundred perhaps – maybe more. I’ve certainly enjoyed/sat through (delete as applicable) enough to have learned a great deal about the form and to have come to some critical conclusions.

The first is that panto is for children. Yes, it’s “family entertainment” but it’s the children who should come first every time. After all the classic panto form of audience address is “Hello boys and girls” and I don’t think that’s intended to be a patronising throwaway to accompanying grandparents.

Now, children – for the most part don’t find filth and innuendo funny even if they understand it. Actually, neither do I if it’s there simply because it’s smutty. A joke has to be really clever to work for me and clichéd  sex/lavatorial gags rarely are. Filth for its own sake is a turn off.

A warm welcome then to Dick Whittington in the Paul Robeson Theatre at  Arts Centre Hounslow this year. It’s a funny little place in desperate need of TLC – the seats are literally crumbling away and “low tech” is a polite word for the equipment. Nonetheless  the  low budget show, directed by Jonathan Ashy-Rock who runs the venue and plays Dick, is slick and clever. And dirty jokes are conspicuous by their absence. My six year old granddaughter, at her very first pantomime, laughed until she rattled – and that is the finest possible indicator of success.

Aladdin at Tunbridge Wells (Martin Dodd for UK Productions) is also clean as a whistle and the show at Marlowe Theatre Canterbury tends to be the standard against which I measure all others. This year’s Peter Pan is a very fine show – well up to standard with a lot of imagination and freshness and very little innuendo.

Second, what about the music? Well, if you can afford a live band you will almost always get a better show. This year Tim Hammond’s three piece band does a fine job in Cinderella at Orchard Theatre Dartford for instance. So does Sean Green for Sleeping Beauty at Central Hall Theatre Chatham (Jordan Production). Chris Wong, MD at Canterbury has been working with Paul Hammond, the producer and the two cast regulars, Ben Roddy and Lloyd Hollet for years and it shows.

Good panto uses a wide range of music styles. Relentlessly re-working of recent hits is boring, unimaginative – and common. Churchill Theatre Bromley’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (played by full sized actors – another gripe) is a case in point this year – one hit after another. Ideally you get old songs from earlier in the twentieth century, a bit of music hall, some folk, circus music, maybe classical and songs very familiar to children such as Nelly the Elephant or Yellow Submarine. The whole point of panto is that it’s a crazy mish mash. It isn’t meant to be a second rate pop concert.

Third, pantomime is a form of musical theatre, telling a story. It isn’t a variety show. Yes, I know that if you’ve got, say, a champion ice skater or a magician in the cast it makes sense to exploit his or her talents but it should be grafted in not bolted on. The Tunbridge Wells Aladdin has Jess Robinson in the cast as the Fairy of the Ring. She is a very talented mimic and there’s plenty of that in the show but only as an incidental when she’s on stage as part of the story telling. Pantomime should never be just a series of clever acts.

Fourth, even children get tired of hearing the same old jokes. And it’s lazy scripting to keep churning out the same ones year after year. It would be a wonderful treat, for instance, to see a kitchen slosh scene which came up with something funnier than the weary old currants/rabbit dropping gag. And does anyone find the ubiquitous Cinderella joke about cleaning the fluff our of the ugly sisters’ navels funny any more? That is why I sit up and take notice when I hear something new (to me, anyway) and genuinely funny the first time you hear it, such as the line about Darth Vader’s brother Taxi Vader in this year’s Tunbridge Wells Aladdin

Fifth, despite everything I’ve said, if panto is to work it has to operate within a traditional framework. There has to be a Dame and a clown sparking off each other, a slosh scene, a ghost scene, goodies, baddies, rhyming couplets and lots of well choreographed dancing – among other things. The trick is to inject freshness into the formula. If only every producer understood that.

Image: Peter Pan cast, Marlowe Theatre, 2017

Elgar’s In the South, written in 1904 and the oldest work of the afternoon, was a resounding opener in this all twentieth century programme. Barry Wordsworth dug out plenty of nostalgic silkiness, especially in the impressively clear string sound. He exploited the big rit just before the end too, so that it rang out with real Elgarian grandiloquence.

Ravel’s piano concerto written nearly thirty years later is, of course, a complete contrast. The opening and closing movements in particular often sound like Gershwin crossed with Shostakovitch. Melvyn Tan is a most engaging performer, eyes and body turned to the conductor and orchestra all the time and his left foot beating time in the jazzier Bolero-like sections – every inch a team player. He has a way of striking the keys rhythmically thereby reminding us that the piano is actually a percussion instrument. The middle movement in 3/4 with its long song-intro from the piano and then the duets with horn and cor anglais was beautifully lyrical – as was Tan’s encore: Liszt’s Bells of Geneva. Ravel, Tan told the audience, studied Liszt intensively and would almost certainly have played this piece.

Barry Wordsworth pointed up all the mournful but tuneful melancholy in the opening section of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony highlighting the similarities to Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony and the Russian-ness of it all. Then came the scherzo, at a nippy enough tempo to provide all the requisite fireworks and contrasts. To make this symphony work, you really need to milk Rachmaninov’s beautiful melodies for all they’re worth and that’s just what the conductor did in the last two movements. The finale, for instance, has a lot of lush string work but in this performance it was enjoyably joyful rather than heavy – serious music with a spring in its step.

Congratulations to BPO’s cor anglais player who worked very hard in this concert both in the Ravel and the Rachmaninov. She provided some especially attractive solos.

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

On Sunday I played (violin) in a little Christmas concert in Folkestone alongside my sister, a fellow fiddler. We had made complicated arrangements for her husband, who is much older than My Loved One, MLO with Miss Alzheimer’s attached, and Jean, an elderly friend of my sister’s. They were to come to the venue from her house by taxi. There was an afternoon rehearsal and so, as performers, we had to be there much earlier.

Despite our misgivings, it all went according to plan, thank goodness. By the time our three audience supporters took their seats half way up a steeply raked auditorium I was sitting in my playing position on the stage. So I watched MLO. Jean, who is in her eighties, but “with it” and well, had him carefully by the hand. She was facing him and walking gently, kindly and tactfully backwards while he shuffled towards her. Eventually Jean got him into his seat. From where I was sitting he looked like a helpless, lost old man. It was as if I was seeing him afresh and it wasn’t nice.

I don’t understand, incidentally, why he now takes short steps which make his gait look old and hesitant – there is nothing wrong with his knees or hips. It must, I suppose, be something to do with those knocked out brain cells that are affecting walking confidence, especially in confined spaces.

There’s nothing like Christmas – when you tend to do the same things every year –  for assessing progress, change or deterioration over the preceding twelve months. When we did that that same concert a year ago MLO drove three people from my sister’s house to the venue and then took over from me halfway home to London because I was tired. And of course he also got himself in and out of his theatre seat effortlessly and chatted confidently to people he knew. What a difference a year with Ms A has made.

The Christmas card writing ritual was another rather pitiful exercise. For 48 years we have sat down on ether side of the dining table with the list, address book, stamps, pens – and an appropriate CD, such as Messiah. And last year was no exception.

But this time Ms A was firmly and squarely perched on the table like some kind of evil harpy getting fatter as she feasts on MLO’s brain cells.  “You write this one to Don and Phoebe” I said. Now Phoebe, a relation of mine, has been part of MLO’s social circle for over half a century. He has written dozens of Christmas cards, post cards and the like to her over the years. He started to write. Then painstakingly, letter by letter, asked me how to spell her name. I gulped and helped him although we had to bin one card he’d messed up. Then he wrote one to his own cousin. I had to read out the address and spell Faversham, where she lives.

Realising what was happening, MLO then understandably got very upset along the lines of “I can’t even do the simplest thing any more” and, in this situation, there isn’t an answer to that. In the end I hugged him and said “OK, let’s have a hot drink to cheer ourselves up. Then I’ll write the cards and you put the stamps on” I’m left hoping that the cards we sent to friends in Australia and continental Europe had the right value on them. Sorry folks, if they don’t arrive. I did my best.

On the plus side Christmas also brings time with family which he always enjoys – partly, I think, because he feels less threatened and more confident when surrounded by people who know him well and understand where he is and what he’s up against. He’s also always better when I’m there and not going anywhere because he knows, like a child with his mother, that whatever goes wrong I’ll sort it out. So he worries less. And for a few days before and after Christmas I shall be out working less than usual so that will probably help to allay Ms A, or at least the havoc she wreaks, a little. Maybe.

(Names changed)

 

 

 

Written by Lou Stein with music by Dave Carey and developed by the cast. Produced be Chickenshed Theatre
society/company: Chickenshed (directory)
performance date: 30 Nov 2017
venue: Rayne Theatre, Chickenshed

Cecil B DeMille has nothing on Lou Stein, director of Chickenshed. This, his gloriously, joyfully inclusive second Christmas show, works with a cast of 800. Of course they operate in four teams (I enjoyed the work of the Blue Rota on press night) but that’s still a staggering 200 bodies to manage on stage. There are lots of large scale, beautifully choreographed chorus numbers and tableaux vivants which make excellent use of the performance space and Lucy Sierra’s mysterious, cavernous red set. And Andrew Caddies’s lighting ensures that your eye is always drawn to the right spot. It’s an enormous undertaking (“Oh yes, rehearsal schedules are completely mad” Stein tells me cheerfully in the interval) and it comes off with aplomb.

It’s a very original take on the Rapunzel story too. Written by Lou Stein with music by Dave Carey and developed by the cast, it has elements of The Winter’s Tale, The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz within a completely fresh concept. Hazel (Cerys Lambert) is reading to six children she is looking after. As they fall asleep we are led into a dream sequence in which Hazel becomes Rapunzel and we’re, along with her in her tower, in an enchanted wood complete with hordes of goblins, dryads, hinky punks, spiders and sleep fairies. Meanwhile The King (Michael Bossisse) amd Queen (Sarah Connolly) are searching for their lost daughter and their kingdom includes artisans, royal servants, traders, troubadours and urchins. Yes, this is inclusive diverse “theatre changing lives” with an almost unimaginable number of roles and plenty for everyone to do.

All the cast are Chickenshed members. Some are very young attenders at weekly sessions. Many are teenagers. Several performers are engaged in or have completed one of Chickenshed’s further or higher education programmes and some are on the staff. The diversity, in every sense, is remarkable. And the integrated signing, a Chickenshed trademark – mostly by Loren Jacobs and Belinda McGuirk in this show – is a joy to watch.

Cerys Lambert’s pure singing voice is nearly as golden as her hair and she gets exactly the right blend of feistiness and sweetness. Dave Carey gives her a quasi leitmotif on a descending arpeggio which rings out through the forest even when we can’t see her and that’s effective.

Nathaniel Leigertwood gives a delightfully spiky performance as the cat who is supposed to be looking after (guarding) Rapunzel. He yawns, stretches and moves with terrific litheless. His voice work is spot on and he’s funny.

And there’s an outstanding performance from Gemilla Shamruk as the Witch. She is glitteringly attractive rather than pantomimically villainous. She really makes us think too, in this abuse-alert age about just how sinister are her tactile, possessive demands on Rapunzel’s hair. Her Ella Fitzgerald-like jazz number “Don’t Mess With Me” which ends the first half is a real show stopper.

Meanwhile, accompanying a stageful of enthusiastic, well directed, strong performers is Dave Carey’s nine piece band perched on an upper stage mostly just out of sight. Most of these players, who make a really terrific sound, are Chickenshed members and Carey, such a talented composer, has been on the staff for thirty years.

I doubt that I shall see a more uplifting, spirited, ambitious and successful show this Christmas.
 This review originally published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chickenshed-Rapunzel&reviewsID=3056
The Woman in White
Music Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics David Zippel. Book Charlotte Jones. Produced by Patrick Gracey, Steven M. Levy and Vaughan Williams by arrangement with The Really Useful Group Limited.
society/company: West End & Fringe (directory)
performance date: 04 Dec 2017
venue: Charing Cross Theatre, The Arches, Villiers StreetLondon WC2N 6NLAndrew Lloyd Webber’s 2004 grandiose Victorian melodrama has been scaled down to fit into the modestly sized Charing Cross Theatre with a neat ensemble cast of three (plus a child) supporting seven principals accompanied by a nine piece band – and it works a treat under Thom Southerland’s direction.

Wilkie Collins’ 1859 novel, upon which this opera (sorry, “sung-through musical”) is based, has a complex, convoluted, multi-faceted plot using eight multiple narrators so that you get different points of view and lots of “insider” information. That isn’t easy to convey in a linear format but Charlotte Jones’s book simplifies the action and makes the story pretty clear as we see Laura Fairlie coaxed away from the love of her life into a “good” marriage which, of course, is anything but. Eventually, as you’d expect, good triumphs over evil and most characters, with one notable exception, are either happy or have got their just deserts by the end.

David Cullen’s “supervised orchestrations” of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music are both beautiful and wide ranging. Often lyrical and beautifully sung in close harmony, it’s also frequently dramatic. And, a joy for me as a string player, the scoring includes a lot of work for a viola and two cellos. The lyrics (by David Zippel) are imaginative too and often funny after the style of WS Gilbert.

Equally lovely – and clever – is Morgan Large’s set based on an archway at the back of the stage, surrounded by attractively lit (by Rick Fisher) wrought ironwork and a pair of doors which slide across each other to provide a centre stage entry and exit point. And of course it’s all very darkly lit because we’re in pretty gothic territory.

Carolyn Maitland is magnificent as Marian Holcombe, Laura’s half-sister who tries so hard to support her. She ranges from witty, flirtatious and insouciant to full belt weeping. She finds admirable resolution in her character and sings like a nightingale especially in her duets with Laura (Anna O’Byrne) and trios with Anne Catherick (Sophie Reeves) who haunts the plot with her secret before we eventually reach that time honoured plot device of who fathered whom.

Chris Peluso is all too plausible as Sir Percival Glyde, the totally amoral, gambling, violent husband who wants Laura’s money. He is attractive and charming and the audience has no trouble seeing why Marian and the women’s uncle regard him as a suitable match. Then we are shown him as he really is and it’s powerfully convincing. Ashley Stillburn, as the contrasting good guy, is warm, troubled, determined and both men sing well.

Even more striking is Greg Castiglioni as charismatic Count Fosco, a character often made utterly grotesque in dramatisations of Collins’s novel. Castiglioni makes him charming as he schemes subtly and, for a long time, dupes the women.

High spots in this enjoyable, touching show – which stresses, and objects to, the expected, unquestioning subservience of women in the mid nineteenth century – include the Rossini pastiche number You Can Get Away With Anything. It’s Lloyd Webber at his sparkling, witty best and Castiiglioni has great fun with recasting his Italian character as an opera singer. Then there’s the piano which Laura and others “play”. It’s just an empty skeleton like a Handspring puppet. There’s a pretty dance at the wedding too choreographed by Cressida Carré. And the emphasis on trains, just coming into their own in Collins’s time – is good. Rural stations are, lonely mysterious places at night and trains are powerful smoke belching dragons when comeuppance is required.

http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-The%20Woman%20in%20White&reviewsID=3058

 

Miracle on 34th Street – A Live Musical Radio Play continues at the Bridge House Theatre, London until 23 December.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

This clever show takes us to a radio studio in 1947 where six actors and their narrator accompanist are performing a musical play.

That means that we can enjoy the fun of the impressively versatile Jamie Ross doing sound effects – such as pouring liquid and closing doors – from his keyboard. That’s when he’s not intoning intros in gloriously strangled 1940s RP.

Often he talks and plays piano accompaniments at the same time. And he sings to thicken up some of the ensemble numbers too.

The play within a play is about a kindly, elderly chap (Richard Albrecht who doesn’t sing …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review http://musicaltheatrereview.com/miracle-on-34th-street-a-live-musical-radio-play-bridge-house-theatre/