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How buildings and facilities might inform your choice of drama school

Though the quality of teaching is a vital foundation for training, the standard facilities is a key factor in preparing for professional life. Susan Elkin profiles several schools that are upping their game with state-of-the-art amenities

Drama schools are in the middle of a building bonanza. LAMDA recently opened its £28.2 million extension, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts is planning to move into a £28.3 million building in Peckham next year and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama hopes its £16.7 million extension will be finished by September 2018.

Arts Educational Schools, having opened its Andrew Lloyd Webber theatre in 2013, is now planning a £16-18 million radical refurbishment of the rest of its building. And RADA’s Richard Attenborough Campaign …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage https://www.thestage.co.uk/advice/2017/buildings-facilities-might-inform-choice-school/

Grease is such an iconic show that the audience tends to arrive already drunk with endorphins even before the band plays the first note and so it was at Canterbury. On the opening night there was a near full house and a good atmosphere. And I really approve of the idea of showing the band – on an overstage platform in full light – and allowing each player to strut his (and yes, they were all men) stuff before we even start. It is, after all the 1950s music which defines Grease. It also makes it feel episodic and narratively weak because it’s really just a journey from one set piece number to the next then nobody seems to mind much.

The audience didn’t even seem fazed by the indisposition of Danielle Hope (and Oliver Jacobson). Warmest congratulations to understudy Gabriella Williams who normally plays Patty but was on for Sandy. She has a deliciously sweet, “clean” singing voice and – blonde and pretty in lemon yellow – finds all the right puzzled demureness for the first act and a half before relaunching herself as an in-your-face, full belt, all-American girl towards the end. Her scene at the drive-in with Tom Parker as Danny made me laugh aloud. Parker is suitably troubled and unsure of himself but covers it with hair slicked swagger and, like Williams, sings well both solo and in groups. Among other things Grease is a perceptive exploration of adolescence – groups of boys showing off to needy girls, for example

Natasha Mould (who normally plays Cha Cha) gives a delightfully irritating, often funny account of the pushy Patty and Alessia McDermott steps up from her usual dance ensemble role as Catarina to impress as Cha Cha. McDermott can effortlessly swing either leg into a vertical position so that her thigh brushes her ear. It’s a witty performance too.

The problem with these cast changes – which presumably arose at the last minute – is that the show began with weak hesitancy and for the first fifteen minutes or so it felt like a high school musical in every sense. The ensemble was clearly uneasy. It settled, though, and certainly in the second half the dance routines which make or break this show were slick and energetic. The jiving competition is good fun, as ever. And I do love a bit of Elvis-style hip gyration.

There is a problem, however, with sound and the spoken word. The broad-mouthed, twangy – faux, in most cases – Southern accents are quite high pitched, especially for women. Delivered at naturalistic speed, much of the dialogue is lost before it reaches the audience. This may be down to the unfamiliar (to the cast on their first night) Marlowe acoustic and/or a faulty sound balance. Let’s hope it improves in subsequent performances.
 First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Marlowe%20Theatre%20(professional)-Grease&reviewsID=3012

Judith Burnley’s stunningly well written, new two-hander play has more layers than an apfelstrudel. It’s 1991. The Berlin Wall has just come down. Germany is reunited and two Germans are in a flat in Belsize Park. They have much in common and much to divide them because their perspectives on the events of the preceding 60 years are very different.

Lottie (Issy van Randwyck) comes from an aristocratic family who stood out against Hitler and lost everything and everybody. She is far from being the Nazi that Otto (Clive Merrrison) initially accuses her of being. He is a displaced Jew, most of whose family went to the death camps. Otto, now frail and in need of help, is twenty years older than Lottie who has moved in as his new resident carer and he is deeply suspicious and resentful.

At one level this is a powerful, moving and immaculately observed study of the volatility and vulnerability of old age. Merrison conveys all the stiffness of a man recovering from a stroke with some mental impairment – one minute alert, the next vague, then fearful with frequent, abrupt changes of subject, random rants and occasional sexual lunges. His eyes dart as he shrinks into his chair, terrified of his immediate future because he wants to remain in full control of his life but knows he can’t. Then a few minutes later he stops telling Lottie she’s a bossy Nazi and offers her cogent wisdom and warmth. It’s a very truthful performance, graphically but gently punctuated with some of the more unfortunate physical realities of old age.

Issy van Randwyck works well with him. There’s a strong sense of two accomplished actors listening – really listening – to each other as their respective, horrifying back stories gradually emerge. Crisply voiced and classy (lovely clothes – designed by Emily Adamson and Neil Irish who also provide a winningly realistic set), van Randwyck makes her character kind, competent and calm but profoundly troubled by her past. Then she bakes a roast chicken and Merrison’s character reacts with unfathomable violence. A climactic soliloquy (no spoilers here) finally tells us precisely why this musician and successful designer won’t have anything that flies in his home.

Above the level of the problems of old age this play is about loss. Otto is under pressure to sign papers applying for compensation for property taken from his family by the Nazis so that his daughter and granddaughter far away in Israel can benefit. Both characters have lost loved ones in hideous circumstances. Otto now faces the loss of his independence and he’s already lost the ability to play the viola.

It’s a very compelling 90 minutes of theatre.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Anything%20That%20Flies&reviewsID=3007

 

Alzheimer’s is an unpredictable business. Last Friday I left the house at noon to interview an author in North London. Then I went to Jermyn Street Theatre to review Anything That Flies (very good, by the way). Because it’s a short, 90 minute show, I was home just after 10.00pm. That means that My Loved One and his unloved, ever-present companion Ms Alzheimer’s were alone to do their own thing for ten hours. There’s nothing unusual about that, of course. I have to work and at the moment he’s perfectly OK at home. He can assemble simple food for himself quite capably, although I don’t now leave him at home overnight on his own.

Usually I come in to find MLO and catus domesticus asleep on the sofa pretending to listen to Schumann or Elgar. Not this time. During my absence MLO had brought in all the washing – big load – in from the garden and sorted it. He’d collapsed the rotary line neatly and put the cover on – having claimed for weeks to have been utterly baffled by the new one I’d bought. Indoors, he’d neatly stashed underwear and so on in the airing cupboard and ironed and hung up the shirts and blouses to air. He’d even put the iron and ironing board away in the right place. As if that weren’t enough, he’d found a pair of shoes I’d dumped without discussion in the kitchen, intending to deal with them later. He’d polished them.

As a performance it was almost as good as the one I’d seen at Jermyn Street Theatre. And I was astonished.  Ms Alzheimer’s was evidently having a day off.  Of course a couple of years ago MLO would have done all this and more. Neither of us would have thought anything of it or commented. We used to be a team. Now t he often spends whole days simply reading his Kindle or nodding off over newspapers, completely forgetting simple tasks we’ve talked about. Friday’s achievements therefore seemed very surprising although ten hours is a long time and I suspect he worked very slowly. I said something to the effect of “Goodness! You’ve been busy. Thank you” – with a grateful hug.

He replied cheerfully: “Yes I was very pleased with it too. I’ve felt really quite well today.” The sad, tragic even, thing is, of course is that we’ve reached a stage that we have to get excited and congratulatory about a bit of routine ironing. Not so long ago some of my Twitter followers would regularly tease me, and by extension, MLO about his dedication to, and expertise in, ironing. Those were the days.

Even when Ms A is backing off a bit and MLO is saying things like “I feel a bit of a fraud – everything seems almost right at the moment” there’s the tiredness to deal with.

Now that we have our “new” (we’ve been here 13 months) house more or less as we want it inside, I’m trying to sort the garden. So, several times recently, after a few hours’ essential desk work I’ve put on old clothes, repaired to the garden and got busy with clipping, nipping and unearthing the detritus, such as car batteries and bricks, which our eccentric predecessor saw fit to bury in the flower beds. Well it wouldn’t occur to MLO and Ms A to go out and start gardening independently but if they see me out there with a rake or hoe in my hand, they find a pair of dirty-jobs trousers and wander out to join me.

Then he tries to be helpful and is – provided I issue very clear instructions. one task at a time. I find myself saying things like “Go and get the small saw from the big shed. It’s on the third shelf down on the right.” It might take him ten minutes to find it and I might have to repeat the instruction but eventually he’s by my side with the requisite tool and I say “Saw this branch off – just here, please”. Cutting bits off trees brings out his inner George Washington and he quite likes it. Thus our gardening can be quite congenial for an hour or two.

But Ms A soon starts leaning on him and heavy weariness sets in. I can see him visibly flagging. “Why don’t you clean up and go and lie down for a bit” I say. Next time I see him, when I come in from the garden myself, he’ll be fast asleep on the bed as if it were two in the morning.

The variability is curiously unsettling. Yes, it’s wonderful to have my Real Husband – the one who lovingly cleans my shoes until they gleam without being asked – back for a few hours but it’s hard to adjust when he’s so different so soon after. Take each day as it comes?  Much  easier to say than to do.

I’m often invited to drama schools – to see shows, meet students, admire premises, chat to staff or whatever. I’ve been to all the twenty or so which are regarded as “top” schools because they have formal accreditation and/or are part of, or accredited by, universities. These are the ones whose students are entitled to funding in the form of loans or sometimes DaDA awards

I’ve also spent plenty of time in schools which are not part of this group. You don’t have to attend GSMD, Birmingham Conservatoire, Oxford School of Drama or one of around seventeen others to succeed in this industry although, in practice, most do. The funding issue is often what swings it.

Of course there’s much to be said for tried and tested training – with decades of alumni (and funding). On the other hand things and times change and there are plenty of newer schools doing things differently but worth considering even though they don’t yet qualify for funding so students have to be self financing.

The most recent of these to invite me in was Emil Dale Studios in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where I spent a couple of hours last week.

The eponymous Dale grew up the child of a single, immigrant parent on a council estate and, at one point lived in a hostel. So there was absolutely so money to invest in starting a drama school.  Now 33, he trained at ArtsEd, “didn’t much like performing” and started a weekend school for children and teenagers in Hitchin in 2009. It was very successful and his business has built up fast on the back of it. Today he has over 300 young weekly participants and another 100 in Cambridge.

He has nicely refurbished premises on an industrial estate on the edge of the town and is currently converting a second nearby building. He runs an “academy” which he started in 2014. This is a full time Level 3 extended Diploma in Performing Arts for 16-18 year olds, in partnership with Knights Templar School at nearby Baldock. For this, because it’s further education, there is some government funding. At present there are 35 students on the first year and 41 on the second.

Then – Dale is nothing if not entrepreneurial –  came the  idea for a “Gap year course” which is a full time foundation course at the end of which some students get work, some go on to drama school and, as you’d expect, others go off and do something else.

This term, because there seemed to be a “niche in the market,” Dale and his four full time colleagues launched a three year vocational diploma course. 37 students are enrolled on it. “We’re attractive to parents” Sarah Moore, Dale’s Operations Manager, tells me. “It’s not London so rents are lower and we can keep fees down to £7,500 a year. We teach 33 weeks a year and they have 36 hours of contact time each week so the training is comparable with a degree.”

I can’t fault any of the work I see. Teachers are mostly part-timers and many of them also work in the industry or have done until recently and guest tutors are invited in. I like the diploma singing lesson I hear part of and a dance class we pass through as I’m shown round.   But I worry more than a little about the numbers and the speed of expansion.  Most new colleges struggle to find an initial high quality intake because they have no proven outcomes so any student who enrols is taking a big gamble.

Emil Dale has managed to sign up 37. Now, some of those will have come up though his other courses, but I can’t help wondering just how stringent the auditions were and how many of those 37 will find work at the end of three years. And there will be another intake next year and the year after until the whole three year course has over 130 students. The industry is already saturated with talent.

Emil Dale Studios

I have promised to see an Emil Dale Studios show before too long. They use their own on-site studio theatre (Factory Playhouse, Hitchin) and the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage. “The shows are commercial and bring in income which helps to keep fees down” says Moore adding that in recent years EDS students have staged Grease, West Side Story and Hairspray. They did a successful Les Miserables in May, this year. I shall be interested to see the quality of the work.

I am now a carer. Or so they tell me. Thanks Ms Horrible Alzheimer’s. You have forced something onto my CV which I never sought and for which I have no qualifications, scant experience and nil inclination. I loathe, detest and abhor the c-word with a vengeance.

Nonetheless this is the position fate and Ms A have forced me into so I have no choice but to knuckle down and get on with it. My Loved One is increasingly dependent on me for more and more “services”. I am, for example, his chauffeuse. This week he has told me first that he’d now be frightened to drive up hills and second, on a different occasion, that he still can’t understand what all the fuss was about and of course he’d still be perfectly OK driving. I tried not to comment but …

I am also his secretary – arranging his appointments and ensuring that he gets there. Every day I find for him the things he’s “lost” (he hasn’t) and administer his pills. I lock the house when we go out or at night and manage the burglar alarm. These days I also do the laundry and shopping (mostly online) – all things he used to do. And these are just examples.

Well, no one is indispensable of course but it has occurred to me recently that this caring malarkey is quite a responsibility. Supposing I become ill and can’t look after him? It’s all very well my dear clergy friend (we were at school together) telling me with warm wisdom in her eyes: “You would find a way”. I’m not in with her loving God and am bleakly convinced that there is no benign presence in the sky on hand to bale me out if things go belly up. It behoves me, therefore, to stay as well as I possibly can.

I’ve always been pretty fit, actually, and never had a serious illness but there’s always (inevitably?) a first time. Vegetarian food, never using the car for journeys of under a mile, taking the stairs, not smoking and going very easy on booze have paid off for me, so far, although the same life style doesn’t seem to have done much for MLO.

Two things have recently given me pause for thought.

First, I caught the worst cold I have had in decades while we were on holiday in Greece last month. For three full weeks I felt really unwell – first the streaming, then the blocked sinuses and pain all over my head then the residual … well I’ll spare you the revolting details. Suffice it to say it was so tenacious and unpleasant that I really did begin to wonder if I’d got something worse than a cold.

Second I phoned a relation who is 80 and usually bounces about playing bowls and attending energetically to his garden. “I’ve had pneumonia” he told me lugubriously adding that he was so weak he collapsed trying to climb the stairs to bed and was hospitalised overnight. That was three weeks earlier and he’d been told to allow at least another three weeks to throw it off completely.

Alarm bells. I pretend to be 22 but the truth is that I am no longer in the first flush of youth. Suppose that were me? How on earth would MLO cope? He might manage to make me a cup of stewed tea with too much milk in it and he’d feed the cat but beyond that he wouldn’t be able to look after me and the household would collapse about our ears. I expect one of our long suffering, and wonderfully loyal sons would do his best but they both have demanding businesses to run in cities 60 miles away from us.

I’ve always been a bit chary of vaccines after a nasty experience with one in the 1980s. But I have to be grown up now – thanks to the arrival of Ms A in my household. Last week I took myself to the practice nurse and asked for both the flu and pneumonia jabs. “Oh yes, we do recommend them for carers” she said brightly thereby rubbing salt into the wound of my incredulity. Me? A carer? No, you’ve confused me with someone else. I’m a journalist, author, bloody good former teacher, wife, mother and grandmother but I never signed up for that c-word thing.

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We all want to see lots of young people in theatres. And having got them there of course, in an ideal world, we’d like them to be fully engaged and attentive.

If only it were that simple. The problem is that there’s a very fine line between enthusiastic engagement and disruptive behaviour. And if one person’s enjoyment of a show spoils someone else’s by, for instance, making so much noise that neighbouring audience members can’t hear the actors, then that’s not on.

Last week I was at National Youth Theatre Rep Company’s Jeckyll and Hyde (by Evan Placey) at Ambassadors Theatre and it is excellent – catch it if you can. The school party behind me (and their teacher, who was fulminating in the loo afterwards) were clearly expecting a “straight” dramatisation of Stevenson’s novella to support their GCSE English studies. What they got was a highly intelligent, very entertaining, twenty first century response to the text complete with the sort of vocabulary they’re not allowed to use in school, gay sex on stage, frank feminism and some very in-your-face asides. The 15 and 16 year old boys in the group couldn’t believe their luck as they whooped with incredulous delight, showing off both to their female classmates and, of course, to their teachers. Their enjoyment, was all a bit much for the rest of the audience, frankly, although there’s no doubt  that these kids were fully engaged in what they were watching and having a whale of an afternoon.

It set me thinking, not for the first time, about theatre etiquette. Can it be taught and, if so, should it be? I was fortunate enough to be taken to the theatre quite a lot as a child and was told firmly by my parents that you must never talk when performers are working on stage or make other sorts of noise such as rustling sweet papers, that you clap at the end or when other people do, and that it’s fine to laugh when it’s funny. You join in or call out, only when invited to do so by someone on stage. None of that prevented me from thinking that live theatre was wonderful and loving every minute – especially when it was Brian Rix in one of his farces. (Yes, I know that dates me).

Later I took hundreds of school parties to the theatre. And in almost every group there were children and young people who’d never seen live theatre before so what did I tell them before we went? First, that you must always remember that you’re sitting close to lots of other people and be considerate. Second, that you are part of an audience and you’re there to hear what happens on stage. Nothing that you do should prevent you or anyone else hearing. That means not talking or making noises – this is very different from watching TV at home with the family – during the action. Third, if you’re amused, shocked or moved then, yes, we all hope that you will laugh, gasp or weep but not so loudly that you’re disturbing others whose reactions might be different. Fourth with older groups I’d say: “And by the way some one in this play might say ‘Fuck off’ or ‘You cunt!’. There. You’ve heard me say these words in class now. Snigger if you must. Then get over it and we can all be grown up when we’re out”.

It seemed to work. The groups I took to all sorts of theatres to see all sorts of plays generally had a good time, learned a lot and we were often commended for “our” appropriate behaviour. You can encourage powerful engagement without allowing it to descend into irritating disruptiveness in my experience.

And a note for teachers from an old hand from the chalkface.  If you are teaching a fiction text for English and your chaps are reluctant readers, then don’t show them a video, take them to a film or a stage dramatisation. It will always be very different from the novel and they will never write text-based answers in their exam. The best approach is to get them through the text two or three times, by reading most of it aloud if necessary. Then you can show them another version and ask them to make notes on how/why it differs – which makes for some fascinating in-depth discussion and ensures they keep focusing on what the novelist actually wrote.

It’s different with plays, obviously, because they’re meant to be performed. Then I’d begin with performance and work backwards.

On Sunday I was at the Brighton Dome to review a Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra concert – a routine and regular professional job for me. My Loved One was with me and we seemed, as things turned out, to have left Ms Alzheimer’s at home for once.

Before the concert, I spotted Gavin Henderson – Brighton man, sponsor of one of the BPO principal players, senior arts administrator and Principal of Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I’ve known Gavin for some time and had spoken to him on the phone only a few days earlier on a different matter. So naturally I scooted across to say hello. He was with another man whom I also recognised and exchanged pleasantries with.

When I got back to MLO I said: “Gavin was with Nicholas Chisholm and …”. Before I could finish my sentence to explain that Nicholas is now BPO chairman, MLO had flashed back. “Yes! He used to be head of the Menhuin School and you once went down to Cobham to interview him.” This from a man who a few hours earlier didn’t know what day of the week it was and had completely forgotten that we were going to Brighton. Alzheimer’s is indeed a mysterious, patchy disease.

Perhaps MLO was getting into his stride for the concert because music certainly seems to bring the best out in him. I’ve noticed before that it seems to keep Ms A briefly at bay. The Brighton concert – Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Brahms – certainly put him in a very upbeat mood.

Last week we were at Merry Opera Company’s staged Verdi Requiem at St James’s Church, Piccadilly. Well the “staging” is a bit odd but the singing is fabulous and MLO’s eyes shone from beginning to end – something I haven’t seem for months. Ms A was definitely on leave for a couple of hours that night.

Everyone knows that music affects the brain in general and the memory in particular. That old “they’re playing our song” cliché has a lot of truth in it. For us, since you ask, it’s the Brahms B flat piano concerto. Then there’s the way certain sorts of music have been proved over and over again to benefit children’s learning and development – the so called “Mozart effect”.

And it’s good, when Ms A is thumping on your door, to remember happy times. She doesn’t like those and sulks. Good!

MLO has always been a bit of a classical music geek – pompous with it, in his poseur youth of course but much mellowed now, I’m pleased to report. I came to classical music in the first instance largely through playing and singing it at school. Some of the first things we did together as teenaged friends was to share music, usually on his primitive “Hi-Fi system” (remember those?)  and, when we could afford it, go together to concerts – mostly at Royal Festival Hall or Proms. I can only have been about 15 when he introduced me to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and lent me a record of the Brahms’s violin concerto  – wonderful pieces both of them. What a gift! And, obviously, it’s something we’ve gone on enjoying together for the intervening half a century or so.

Whenever we hear something at a concert or on Radio 3  which we’ve known almost all our lives, I can see the music bashing Ms A on the head and triggering good memories in MLO. Music also makes him think – it’s as much an intellectual experience as an emotional one if you listen properly – and that’s very good for him too. It seems even to help him to remember other things I would have expected long since to have dropped off the hard drive in his brain.  It must be at least 15 years since I made that trip to the Menhuin School to interview Nicholas Chisholm.