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The Woman in White
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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.
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performance date: 04 Dec 2017
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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.
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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/
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 …
Read the rest of Susan Elkin’s 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/
If you’re looking for a present, bound to make your beloved theatre person giggle all Christmas morning, then West End Producer’s shiny new book is the obvious 2017 choice. Everything you always wanted to know about going to the theatre (*but were too sloshed to ask, dear) (Nick Hern Books) is funny because it’s so irreverently acute along the lines of “Shows often have more directors than performers”. If an actor forgets his lines in a Pinter play s/he will “say fuck and do an extra long pause” but if it’s Stoppard s/he has only to “spout some gibberish about quantum physics, the Russian Revolution or Nietzsche that makes less sense than usual”. Anyone who works in the industry, is training to do so, or would like to will recognise and smile. Buy several copies.
Or – (far)fewer laughs but lots of useful ideas – try the second edition of Nick O’Brien’s Stanislavsky in Practice (Routledge). It contains dozens of exercises suitable for acting students at sixth form or first year undergraduate level.
For something more cerebral and historical Granville Barker on Theatre: Selected Essays edited by Colin Chambers and Richard Nelson ( Bloomsbury Methuen Drama) is a jolly good read. I especially enjoyed “Hints for Amateurs on Rehearsing a Play” and “The Coming of Ibsen”.
Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique by Mark Monday (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama) is another practical textbook which would make an ideal gift for an aspirant director or one who is trying to broaden his or her approach.
Peter Brook, of course, writes as interestingly as he directs and his latest little book (it would fit in a jacket pocket so ideal for train journeys and so on) is a fascinating and illuminating set of reflections on language and meaning. Tip of the Tongue is published by Nick Hern Books.
Trying to earn your living by writing is not easy. Ron Hutchison’s Clinging to the Iceberg: Writing for a living on the stage and in Hollywood (Oberon Books) is ruefully funny. “A film maker is someone with a baseball cap on backwards who stands in a muddy field at five in the morning demanding to know where the generators are”. It’s a cheerful, readable mix of anecdote, information and advice.
And lastly, three more gems from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Stephen Purcell’s Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the Globe explores the first decade of productions after the opening of The Globe entertainingly and thoughtfully. A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical by Elizabeth L Wollman is a factual gold mine for anyone who needs to know about the history of the genre. The Improv Handbook by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White is a new edition of their 2008 book. It is detailed and practical with lots of support for comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone else who needs to think or his or her feet in public.
Happy Christmas shopping!
PS: A final pearl of theatrical wisdom from the deadpan West End Producer. This time on heavy drinkers: “ You can spot these people in the local Wetherspoons before, during and after a show. They find a stiff drink is the only thing that gets them through such a harrowing thing as being at a theatre. Which is really quite worrying – particularly as most of them are in the cast”
Alzheimer’s, they tell us, is progressive brain cell death. Over a course of time the total brain size shrinks because the tissue has a diminishing number of nerve cells and connections. Funny, says she hollowly, how bloody blunt everyone is about Alzheimer’s while cancer, which kills far fewer people, is still often delicately euphemised.
So that revolting vulture, Miss A – actually that comparison is an insult to vultures which do at least wait until their dinner is dead before they tuck in – is picking off My Loved One’s brain cells one by one. Given that every Alzheimer’s patient lives with his or her own version of Ms A then I suppose the effects are bound to vary between individuals depending which particular cells have been killed.
I am noticing two things in My Loved One which I suppose are down to lost brain cells although I’ve not seen either of them mentioned in Alzheimer’s literature.
The first is the ability to spell. Now this is a man who was exhaustively drilled in spelling in a funny little private primary school, almost a dame school recast for the mid-20th century, and then by the legendary Dr Giles at Alleyns. He’s always been a sharper speller than I, despite my many years of English teaching. If you were stuck in a crossword wondering whether “aplomb” has a double p, whether there’s a second h somewhere in “Chekhov” or how to spell “mnemonic”, MLO would have been your man. Not any longer.
Last week I said, without thinking “Can you add Weetabix to the cumulative shopping list over there, please”. When I later noticed that he’d carefully written “Wittabix” I really did have to swallow hard to get rid of that lump in my throat. He wrote a note for our son asking him to check a “wonkey” (like “donkey”?) electrical connection the other day too and there have been other instances. So whichever bit of the brain it is that’s responsible for spelling, it’s on the way out, courtesy of Ms A.
It seems to be an unravelling of education as if the learning process is reversing itself. Children will have a stab at writing words they don’t know how to spell – usually because they’ve never seen or noticed them written – and come up with a phonetic approximation such as “Wittabix”. Now I see a man who’s coming full circle, increasingly unable to spell words he’s had under control since he was five or six years old. He’s sliding backwards. How accurate Shakespeare’s “second childishness” is as a description of senility.
The second thing I find odd, but which presumably is down to the demise of a different set of brain cells, is the increasing ability to finish a job. MLO now never closes any of the dresser drawers when he takes out cutlery or a tablecloth. He’ll start to put his laundered clothes away, then wander off and leave half of them on the bed. He rarely switches the bathroom light off or puts the yard broom away after using it and so it goes on.
They’re trivial things in themselves. And some people behave like this all their lives, which must drive those who live with them bonkers, but in MLO’s case they’re new. I presume this behaviour indicates that his short term memory is cutting out very quickly and it used not to. He doesn’t, after a few minutes, remember what he’d started doing so of course he forgets to finish it. It’s handy to have Ms A to blame because I could get very irritated otherwise. As it is, I just finish every little job I see left undone – countless times every day. Mostly he doesn’t even notice. I do try not to comment or get cross but I’m afraid I’m human …
The world’s largest Shakespeare Festival ends this week after 292 performance nights in theatres all over the country. I refer, of course, to Shakespeare Schools Foundation which, every year gets 30,000 or so school students on their feet performing Shakespeare, usually to full houses. This is the 17th festival.
I try to attend at least one performance each year. This time I went, a couple of weeks ago, to Shaw Theatre at Kings Cross to see four schools in action: Harris Academy Battersea with Henry V, Parayhouse School with Romeo and Juliet, St Marylebone CE School with Hamlet and St Stephen’s CE Primary School with Much Ado About Nothing. Quite an evening.
The plays are cut down to about a half an hour running time and it works. Who needs the traitors, the English lesson and stuff about leeks in Henry V ? And in the hands of Parayhouse, a school for children with moderate learning difficulties as well as those with speech, language and communication needs, Romeo and Juliet ran barely 20 minutes. The point is that the story telling is direct and accessible but the language is all Shakespeare’s. The participants are learning huge amounts about Shakespeare and about drama. They are also gaining all sorts of useful transferable skills of which confidence is probably top of the list.
Ruth Brock, SSF Chief Executive, once told me that when she was a primary school teacher she worked with a little girl, of previously limited ambition, whose eyes shone when she said to Ms Brock: “Now I’ve done Shakespeare Schools Festival, I can be a doctor can’t I?” Or, take Yusuf, aged 10, who’s quoted in this year’s programme: “In the future it helps you with a job. If you didn’t do this you may not have the guts.”
However hard we try, there are still plenty of people out there who perceive Shakespeare, or even live theatre, as elitist. “Our survey data shows that nearly half the parents of SSF participants have never been to their local theatre” says Helene Hasse, spokesperson for SSF. As a cultural education charity, SSF is making a splendid job of helping to break that down.
Part of the excitement is the opportunity for children from all sorts of backgrounds and schools to work in a professional theatre for a day. And there’s a lot of gain in four schools being on one programme because they get the chance to mix which is excellent especially for special school pupils who tend, sometimes, to be a bit isolated.
Of course you don’t go to SSF performance nights looking for the next Branagh or Dench. The learning process which gets the young casts to this point is actually far more important than what the audience sees on stage on “the night”. Nonetheless I really enjoyed Lewis Legge’s Benedick. I suspect he’s a natural comic and now that he’s tasted the theatrical drug of hearing laughter I bet he’ll want to do lots more. And watch out – one day, maybe – for Kelsey Rorison. Her Henry V was surprisingly mature and strong.
Students perform on a professional stage as part of the Shakespeare Schools Festival
Following the success of Pied Piper Theatre’s Burglar Bill last year, this new two hander for very young children follows a similar format. There is little dialogue in Hare and Tortoise, lots of physicality and gentle joking, a neat narrative shape and some catchy songs. And it all sits very happily in the Yvonne Arnaud’s child-friendly studio space.
Catherine Chapman’s designs – flowers, snow, carrots, russet leaves, and more – underpin the seasonal progression, once Tortoise has emerged from hibernation and we await the famous race …
(Read the rest of this review in The Stage)
Traditional can often mean stale but Paul Hendy knows panto too well for that. His latest, immaculately well-targeted pantomime for the Marlowe is a fresh and energetic affair.
The trad bits include some magnificently silly costumes, lots of flying, a smashing crocodile, plenty of shouting out and a good old singsong. But this Peter Pan also includes ‘synchronised swimming’ in lieu of a slosh scene, some high camp mermaids and, a Hendy invention, the “spurious comedy routine”, a pun sequence based on the items in a wheelbarrow …
First published in The Stage. Read the rest of it here: https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2017/peter-pan-review-marlowe-theatre-canterbury/?login_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestage.co.uk%2Faccounts%2Fusers%2Fsign_up.popup