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Our House (Susan Elkin reviews)

Our House continues at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley until 28 October and then tours until 25 November.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Creating a 1980s jukebox (ish) musical from Madness’ hilarious, sparkily observed, high octane songs seems an unlikely proposition. Yet, with Tim Firth’s poignant, perceptive, thoughtful book, and directed by James Tobias, it works quite well.

There are puzzles, though. Why, for example, at a moment of poignant drama towards the end do we get a variation of ‘Three Blind Mice’ played on a quasi-church organ? Why do we need quite so much rotating of front doors on stage flats?

At the centre of the plot is the titular house which Kath Casey …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review http://musicaltheatrereview.com/our-house-churchill-theatre-bromley-and-touring/

JASMIN VARDIMON COMPANY

This show is rivetingly original. Staged in the sort of dim light usually reserved for puppetry, it includes a silhouette sequence, work with trapeze, bungee and flying. A fascinating sequence involves six performers, hands linked, rolling in turn slowly through 360 degrees to represent a huge cog wheel. Then there are two people chatting animatedly in a restaurant – their faces painted on to feet with toes waggling expressively and hands (two other performers behind?) acting like mad. Moving lights work to terrific effect too and ultra violet technology may have been around for a long time but it still impresses – here three pairs of ultra-violet lit hands represent a huge talking face.

Pinocchio is, of course, a puppet and Jasmin Vardimon has returned to the unsentimental tenor of Carlo Collodi’s original 1883 book rather than allowing herself to be side tracked by any of the many interpretations since, including Disney. This Pinocchio, whose movements remain floppy and puppet-like throughout – as he is manipulated by almost everyone he meets – is discovering what it means to be human rather than turning into a real boy.  And Vardimon choreographs exquisitely. No one who sees this show is going to forget the monster tormenting Pinocchio formed from the linked undulating arms of a line of performers.

The music which accompanies all this is borrowed from many sources to suit the mood of each episode. We leap effortlessly from Beyonce to Shostakovich and from The De Leeuwin Dutch Street Organ to accordion music from the Faroe Islands among many other things. Steven Glasser’s recorded narration grates, however. The movement in this show tells the story expertly and needs no words but it’s a minor objection

Jasmin Vardimon must be one of Britain’s most talented choreographers and educators. Her company, based since 2012 at the Jasmin Vardimon Production Space at Ashford, Kent, is supported by Ashford Borough Council, Ashford Leisure Trust and Arts Council England. And Pinocchio is co-produced by Gulbenkian Theatre and Kent County Council along with Sadler’s Wells. It is most encouraging to see such a splendid dance company getting the support it so richly deserves. I was also delighted to see hundreds of enthusiastic dance students and young dancers in the audience at Sadler’s Wells.

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

CAMBRIDGE THEATRE COMPANY

One of the many advantages of staging Les Misérables with a youth group – and using the generous playing space in the theatre at The Leys school – is that you have a huge cast for crowd scenes and a superbly large stage to direct and choregraph them on. And Director Chris Cuming and his assistant Emma Olley, both of whom are skilled choreographers, bring the best out in the cast for every big scene. And of course, the whole show, fizzes with energy and enthusiasm because these are young people having a ball on stage.

It’s a fine choice of show for a group like this too because there are lots of small parts and plenty for everyone to do. Amongst the principals, Jasmine Cairns is outstanding as Fantine, singing with the control, finesse and passion of an experienced professional singer twice her age. She is clearly one to watch. Daniel Lane is excellent as Javert too, He has a deeply resonant bass voice and brings all the angry tenacity that the role needs. Then there are the Thenardiers, expertly played by Joseph Beach who is a fine character actor with oodles of stage presence and Emily Glasser whose singing and timing (“But there’s not much there …” delivered as well as I’ve ever heard it) seem as natural as you know (hope!) that they’re not. And Toby Hadden as Gavroche, always a tricky role to cast, finds the all the loud but diminutive strength which makes it such an entertaining and poignant cameo. I liked Riley Williames’s work as Eponine too.

Sue Pearson’s excellent costumes included lots of grey and beige dresses, with pinafores for the children, and some nice uniforms, It looks very authentic, assisted by the lighting, designed by John Moore and Martha Gregg with lots of crossed beams, patterns on the floor and plenty of gloom especially in the green-tinged sewers. The twelve piece band, led by MD Graham Brown, sounded tentative – fluffed brass entries, bum notes and the like – in the first half but settled to sound a great deal better after the interval. This is technically difficult and complex music and it didn’t always come together although the reeds in the Thenardiers’ big number did a lovely job.

I know that lighting designers love stage smoke – dry ice, liquid nitrogen or whatever – because it looks so effective through light but there’s so much of it in this show that it loses impact and begins to feel like a lazy cliché. And I suppose if you have a double revolve to play with then it would be silly not to make use of it. Characters are whizzed round and round so much in this show that I was feeling quite giddy by the end.

These are, however, very minor gripes about a very high standard achievement and I congratulate everyone involved with it – especially the young cast and the young people who worked backstage. I am now eagerly looking forward to CTC’s James and the Giant Peach at Christmas.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Cambridge%20Theatre%20Company%20-Les%20Mis%C3%A9rables:%20School%20Edition&reviewsID=3018

We’re old fashioned, my Loved One and I. Most days start with a sit down breakfast during which we don’t talk much. It’s newspaper time. We both like proper paper copies and we still have them delivered early in the morning exactly as our parents and grandparents did.

Well, so far, Ms Alzheimer’s doesn’t seem to have touched MLO’s reading ability or appetite for the printed word. One breakfast time recently there was suddenly an excited grunt from across the table as he pounced on something.  So I looked up. The strapline in The Times magazine, which I read upside down, was “Do [sic] this couple have the cure for the Alzheimer’s Time Bomb?” and then “They think so”.

I could also see a photograph of a very serious looking man and woman in white coats. “I bet they come from California” I said sceptically because most whacky ideas about health, medicine and cures fly sunnily across the Atlantic from The Golden State.  So he read on a bit before confirming that I was right. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, both neurologists, work at Loma Linda University Medical Centre. It’s sixty miles north of Los Angeles and the town is dominated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church whose vegetarian members don’t smoke, drink or use caffeine but they’re keen on exercise.

Later, when MLO had finished reading it, I read the piece myself. And all the time I was doing so I was thinking about the late, great John Diamond. He was a journalist married to Nigella Lawson who died of head and neck cancer, aged 47 in 2001. He wrote most movingly about his illness both in the Sunday Times and in two books. I remember him crossly telling readers to stop sending him cranky miracle cures. If, he wrote, drinking three litres of beetroot juice a day or sitting in a cold mud bath flavoured with turmeric  (or words to that effect) would see off cancer then the whole of the medical establishment would be seizing on these ideas and be busily curing everyone’s cancer. But they’re not.

Diamond was right and exactly the same thing applies to Alzheimer’s. If the Sherzais really had found a cure then it would be being applied worldwide – it wouldn’t be just a couple of thousand words in the Sunday Times magazine.  As journalist Ben Doyle who wrote the piece, reminds us bleakly, by 2050 an estimated 155.5 million people will have dementia. It is therefore urgent, to put it mildly, that we find a cure PDQ. No economy is going to be able to cope with it unless something gives.

The Sherzais have studied thriving Loma Lindans  (all that healthy Seventh Day Adventism pays off, apparently) and compared them with their chronically unhealthy neighbours in nearby poverty-stricken San Bernadino. Their conclusion is that lifestyle changes can prevent 90% of Alzheimer’s cases and even reverse its effects in some existing patients.

Well, that’s a pretty dramatic claim given that most doctors (including our consultant in south London) say that the condition is incurable. So what lifestyle changes are the Sherzais advocating?

It’s more or less the same formula that you read for just about every other illness – avoid processed foods, sugary drinks and cakes and biscuits, not to mention alcohol. The Sherzais also condemn processed meat, red meat, chicken and cheese so that means adopting a more or less vegan diet. At the same time they recommend an active lifestyle, getting a good night’s sleep, doing puzzles, having an active social life and practising some form of meditation such as yoga preferably in the open air.

All a bit disappointing really. I’m sure you’ve heard it all before as we have. Not particularly way out or “Californian”. It’s sensible advice for healthy living although many people would find the veganism a bit difficult. But are we really to believe that living like this could cure Alzheimer’s? I can almost hear John Diamond’s refuting voice of reason and commonsense.

And anyway, as I have described before in these blogs MLO has been doing most of this all his life. He became a vegetarian in 1977, has never smoked, walks quite a lot, drinks little and is quite keen on code words etc. Fat lot of difference it has made. Ms A is with us, anyway – with a vengeance. There are good days and bad days but her grip is gradually tightening.

 

Am I going to buy the The Sherzais’s book The Alzheimer’s Solution (Simon and Schuster, £14.99). No. Am I going to clutch straws by attempting to push MLO from vegetarianism to veganism and denying him his beloved cheese and scrape of butter on his toast? No. Do I have any faith at all in any miracle cure which is unacknowledged by almost every medical practitioner? No.

 

Would I like to see MLO in full health and Ms Alzheimer’s dead and rotting in the gutter outside? Oh yes … but it isn’t going to happen, whatever Californian neurologists may argue.

 

Few bits of theatre news have delighted me more this year than hearing that Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, has taken possession of the Poor Priests Hospital in Stour Street – a large, iconic history-filled 14th century (in parts) building which until recently housed the rather lacklustre Canterbury Heritage Museum. The Marlowe will use it for all its excellent youth, community, outreach work and creative projects from April 2018. Its new name is the Marlowe Kit. It’s to be a skills toolkit named after Kit Marlowe – get it?

Led by charismatic Andrew Dawson, the Marlowe’s creative programmes reach hundreds of children and young people every week. There are youth theatre at several levels and community (yes, lots of adults are involved too) some of which take promenade form around the city. There are writing workshops, partnerships with schools and links with both the RSC and National Theatre The Marlowe’s NT Connections play The Monstrum was picked to play in the final South Bank festival this year. There is an enormous amount going on and, of course, there will scope to do even more in a few months’ time.

The Marlowe Kit will also be open to the public and host a mix of theatre, exhibitions, music, poetry, conversations and storytelling, all exploring and celebrating the city’s rich literary heritage. Youth theatre participants are already using some of the rooms while the rest of it is being substantially refurbished.

The project has been jointly developed by Canterbury City Council’s teams in the Museums and Galleries Service and at The Marlowe, supported by funding from the National Great Places scheme.

I’ve known the Marlowe Theatre for forty years. When we first moved to Kent in 1977 with a young family we went to several shows and concerts at the old, old Marlowe – a converted cinema where the Marlowe Arcade shopping centre now stands. I especially remember taking our elder son, then nearly 6, to a Wizard of Oz  panto there the first Christmas we were in Kent.

Then came the new old Marlowe – another converted cinema but much bigger and better. That was on the site of the current Marlowe and stood for 25 years. I saw all sorts of shows there including Shakespeare, musicals and other things. The new Marlowe opened in 2011 – after a no-Marlowe interval during which I reviewed at least two pantomimes staged in a massive temporary marquee.

And things continue to change and develop rapidly at the Marlowe too. Today it “receives” many large scale touring shows including War Horse which began its national tour there earlier this month. It also produces some work of its own in both the main house and the Studio which it acquired in the new building.

Mark Everett has been at the Marlowe for 23 years as director and has overseen and masterminded many of these developments. He is now retiring and the Marlowe is to be reborn as a charitable trust. That will mean the appointment of trustees and a trust chairman who will, eventually appoint a new artistic director.

The Marlowe seems to be a place which never rests on its laurels. No wonder you can feel the buzz as soon as you walk through the door. And I’m sure the Marlowe Kit, which I look forward to seeing round very soon, will be the same.

Things have changed for me too. I’m no longer based in Kent seventeen miles up the road from Canterbury. The Marlowe is 55 miles from my new home in south London but it’s still well worth travelling to and I’m there frequently. Next up, for me, is the panto (Peter Pan) at the end of November.

 

 

This is a strange show which never seems quite to decide what it’s meant to be. Based on a movie, it is effectively a jukebox job with songs and lyrics by Dolly Parton, some of them – such as the title song – very familiar indeed. Yet the book (by Patricia Resnick) is a strong one. It’s funny but makes many serious points about feminism and women in the workplace in the 1970s. It flopped on Broadway but did reasonably well on tour both in the US and the UK. Today it is hugely popular with non-pro groups and it’s easy to see why. It provides lots of excellent roles for women, makes good use of ensemble and there’s plenty for everyone to do.

In the hands of Gillingham Dramatic Society it fizzes along energetically. The numbers, tuneful as they mostly are, sometimes feel like one set piece after another but that’s a flaw the show itself and nothing to do with skilled director Rachel Ann Crane-Herbert and her accomplished cast.

At the centre of the action are three women – all of whom work in the same office – who are eventually driven to take extreme action to sort out their appalling sexist boss. Jeni Boyns is outstanding as Violet, the widowed typing pool manager concerned about her teenage son at home. Her acting is very natural and therefore convincing – whether she’s chatting in the office, pulling faces at the boss, dealing with home issues or at one glorious, hair-letting down moment smoking pot and having a relaxed laugh with her friends. Boyns creates a really rounded, fully developed character and she sings well too. Laura Dee finds all the right qualities for the frothy but feisty Doralee who is happily married, sick of being groped by her boss and really wants to be a country and western singer. There’s fine work from Claire Scholes too as jilted Judy who eventually finds her own independent identity and sings like a nightingale.

Glenn Atkinson makes a pleasing fist of playing the boss Franklin Hart Jnr who is the “baddie” in all this. He is a lecherous, embezzling liar – but pretty plausible until he gets his final comeuppance. Atkinson conveys the sliminess of the man adeptly. I love that subtle tug on the waistband to readjust his trousers after patting Dee’s character on the bottom. And he sings with tuneful conviction.

Nicely played support roles include Marianna Allen as the unhappy alcoholic worker who eventually turns herself round, Liz McSherry as Roz, the older woman with the hots for Hart and Lewis Matthews as the fresh faced young accountant trying to court Violet.

Supporting all this is a ten piece band, including two percussionists, led by Owen McColgan. After a slightly shaky start on the opening night, they quickly settled to produce a rich, well balanced sound – and those songs range over a number of styles which it’s good to hear played with panache.

I think this show is a clear case of GDS triumphs again.
 First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-GDS%20Productions-9%20to%205:%20The%20Musical&reviewsID=3000

Evan Placey’s fascinating ‘version’ of the familiar Jekyll and Hyde is much more a topical. intelligent, thoughtful, feminist take on Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novella than it is a dramatisation of it. And it’s rollicking good theatre – frank, uncompromising, fresh and often quite confrontational. Why, for example, is it acceptable for men in pubs to joke about women’s cunts, pussies, holes and the like but if women, at least, in the late Nineteenth Century, spoke openly about their vaginas and vulvas they were sneered at for filthy talk? Good point.

Placey’s play operates at lots of levels and in different worlds. In Victorian England, Dr Jeckyll has died and his widow Harriet is trying to continue his work which results in her developing an alter ego as a violent, forthright prostitute who isn’t going to be exploited by anyone – cue for some terrific nightclub scenes, some horrifying violence and another group of middle class women who are campaigning suffragette-style for women’s rights relating, for instance, to the Contagious (code for sexually transmitted) Diseases Act. In a completely different world a twenty first century girl is arrested for blogging a story (about Harriet Jeckyll) and using it to incite rebellion and public violence against patriarchal decisions relating, for example, to abortion. Then there’s a carefully woven in little sub plot about a senior 19th century judge and a rent boy. And the whole thing, as the prologue makes clear, is at yet another level, an exploration into the power of narrative. It isn’t straightforward but by golly, there’s plenty here to think about.

The National Theatre, which commissioned this play (I’m sure it will have a life beyond this production) has, as usual, enrolled a highly talented bunch to form its sixteen-strong Rep Company. There is, for example, outstanding work from Jenny Walser as Florence, the 21st Century blogger. She is naturalistic, convincing and utterly compelling especially in her long police cell interrogation in the second half. She is my hot tip for the ‘next’ Anna Maxwell-Martin. In those same scenes Joanna McGibbon excels as a decent police officer and there’s nice work from Douglas Wood as DC Lawrence as he batters away at Walser’s stunningly bright character, in an attempt to break her down. Elizabeth McCafferty makes a fine job of the shift from feisty but fairly conventional Harriet and the blood bespattered wild Flossie Hyde – and she hovers at the side of the stage during the 21st Century interludes.

This Jeckyll and Hyde is, however, first and foremost an ensemble piece and in that sense it forms a fine show case for the talents of every cast member – there’s a terrific range of accents, for example, all carefully used to demark character including lots of tiny, very effective cameos. And there’s humour too. Mohammed Mansaray is very funny as a preachy, sanctimonious 19th Century priest who occasionally and briefly slips – without a flicker – into 21st Century rap and bop. That must have taken a lot of rehearsal.
 First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-National%20Youth%20Theatre%20of%20Great%20Britain%20(NYT)-Jekyll%20and%20Hyde&reviewsID=2998
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This version of Othello takes us to a thuggish world of gang warfare, ruthless competing for girls and a great deal of violence with rounders bats and knives. Adapted for Frantic Assembly by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, this Othello relies heavily on physical theatre which almost becomes dance drama to support and propel the narrative and it’s very effective. It opens, for instance, with a long wordless sequence at The Cypress (stands in for Cyprus – get it?) where everyone swarms around the snooker table. Back stories are revealed and we see Othello (Mohammed Mansaray) and Desdemona (Rebecca Hesketh-Smith) meet for the first time. It’s so vibrant, noisy and theatrically exciting that it’s almost an anti-climax when we suddenly hear these people saying things such as “O, sir content you’ or “Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom” but of course it soon settles, our ears adjust. and the succinct, fast paced two hour (including interval) piece is both riveting and profoundly shocking.

Mansaray’s Othello is a fairly benign gang leader with natural authority. Carefully voiced in a South London accent seasoned with a hint of Jamaican this Othello sounds curiously childish and hesitant when he’s being gentle. Later when he’s angry and bent on revenge his voice deepens and, whites of his eyes spinning, he becomes both frightening and pitiful. It’s a well judged performance by a promising young actor. Hesketh-Smith is delightful and very natural as Desdemona, an ordinary girl whose “misfortune” is to fall in love with a charismatic man of a different racial background. This play may have been first performed in 1604 but the issues it explores are as topical as ever. Hesketh-Smith gets the horror beautifully as she realises he really is going to kill her and a gold star to whoever thought of positioning their bodies in exactly the same way for the strangling as for the lovemaking earlier in the play. The snooker table, by the way, doubles as a bed – another imaginative idea – this time from designer, Laura Hopkins. On several occasions her set moves – to denote Cassio’s (Eddie-Joe Robinson – good) drunkenness for instance and the roof lowers during the strangling which is an ingenious way of making us experience the action from the characters’ point of view.

Lighting designer Amy Mae ensures that we never forget that this is a very dark play either. At the end of the first half we see Jamie Rose’s half crazed Iago crouched on the snooker table with his evil, plotting face lit white in a surrounding pool of near black. Rose never makes us understand quite why Iago is hell bent on destroying Othello but he finds plenty of stealthy thuggery and cunning in the role. In real life his character would be dragging a very ugly, thick set terrier to add to his street cred. It’s strong work. Megan Burke is good as Emilia too, especially when she rumbles Iago, stops being just a friend and commits herself totally to getting justice for Desdemona, Then Burke becomes a real tour de force.

I saw Othello just two days after seeing the same sixteen young actors, who form the NYT’s 2017 Rep Company, in Jeckyll and Hyde. Taken together the two shows are an excellent show case demonstrating their versatile talents and I hope lots of agents and casting directors were there to snap them up.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-National%20Youth%20Theatre%20of%20Great%20Britain%20(NYT)-Othello&reviewsID=3003