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Foul Pages (Susan Elkin reviews)

The star of this witty, perceptive show is James King as Chop – a dog. Clad in a ruff and a sort of dog’s bottom/tail trouser garment he barks, rolls over, whimpers, digs for bones and munches treats – It’s very convincing canine method acting with more than a whiff of Brecht. Then, even better, Robin Hooper’s script gives him sardonic comments in a human voice so that he also has an observational narrative function. It’s both clever writing and impressive acting.

We’re at Wilton, Wiltshire – the ancestral home of the Herbert family, the Earls of Pembroke. It’s autumn 1603. James I (James VI of Scotland) has just acceded to the throne. And Walter Raleigh, lover of the widowed Countess of Pembroke, is in prison with the likelihood of execution for treason. In order to persuade the visiting king that Raleigh should be reprieved she, herself a wannabe writer and actor, invites Shakespeare and his players to put on a new play – which the audience quickly realises is going to be As You Like It.

Cue for some very sharp, often funny, mostly ribald dialogue between the boys who play the female roles in the play. Maybe they really did sell their favours to men with money – moonlighting as rent boys. Were most of them gay anyway? And James 1, after all, is known to have preferred pretty boys to his wife. With nine in the cast there is scope for a lot of complex jealousy and tension which Hooper exploits effectively. Director Matthew Parker makes pleasing use of the Hope’s very limited space against Rachael Ryan’s atmospheric set which connotes Jacobean oak panelling and lots of cloths.

Thomas Bird is a compellingly charismatic actor. His gently corpulent, sensitive but pragmatic character Rob is drawing the attention of several characters within the play and he has the same effect on the audience. Olivia Onyehara delights as the feisty, smiling maid Peg and Clare Bloomer finds the right haughty disdain offset by lust and artistic ambition for Mary, Countess of Pembroke. The traditional Jacobean end-of-play jig is great fun too.

It’s a play with legs but they should drop the incongruous nightclub-style racket they use to orchestrate the (nippily done) scene changes. It’s very loud, very distracting and very unnecessary.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Foul%20Pages&reviewsID=3114

Just occasionally Ms Alzheimer’s presents me with a little bonus – something that’s actually quite useful as opposed to destructive.

It’s reasonably well documented that changing taste in food is a fairly common Alzheimer’s symptom. And My Loved One is definitely an example of that. Quite an extreme one in fact.

I married the fussiest, faddiest eater on the planet. (I blame his mother, naturally). He wouldn’t eat tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, cooked cheese, mayonnaise anything with a sauce on it, casseroles and about a million other things.

And I mean wouldn’t eat. Being invited out was a nightmarish embarrassment. I really don’t like pears but if a pear dish is put in front of me in someone’s house – and it has happened –  of course I eat it out of politeness. Not MLO.  If he was served something on his lengthy “don’t eat” list well then he just wouldn’t. End of. And when we both became vegetarian in the late 1970s in some ways it was even worse because when people obligingly, kindly try to cater for you they tend to dish up all the things MLO refused to countenance. He was effectively a vegetarian who wouldn’t eat (most) vegetables and you really can’t expect people to work round that. I seemed always to be apologising for him.

At home I had decades of making quiches with cheese on one side only, mincing onion and mushroom to make it invisible, always doing stir fries in separate pans, lying about the provenance of redness in dishes  and getting annoyed with him in restaurants when he said loftily: “There’s nothing on this menu I can eat” even when there were three or four veggie options.

Then, about ten years ago it all began to change. He realised he liked leeks, beetroot, parsnips and lots of other previously rejected things. He even started to eat macaroni cheese and lasagne with their dependence on lots of lovely cheese sauce.  Most odd of all, a life long tea hater, he’s decided that green tea is OK so we now routinely share a pot at breakfast time which still seems hilarious given how he used to be. With hindsight I suppose that those changes were early Alzheimer’s indicators although at the time I just marvelled and rejoiced gratefully.

Today I rough chop onions in the normal way and they go in casseroles and other dishes along with dried tomatoes, tomato puree and anything else I fancy adding. He’s just chomps away at the result, usually has a second helping and says he’s enjoyed it. For a long time I said nothing because half the battle has always been keeping the truth about ingredients from him.

Then I stopped pretending. Instead I just tease him, saying: “It’s taken me nearly 50 years but you’ve become a normal eater. There really isn’t much you won’t eat now. What a pity it took you so long!” He grins back “Just don’t give me cauliflower!”. Little does he know that I quite often chop up the loathed brassica  and sneak it into burgers, pies and other things.

Last week when I was heading out on one of my frequent evening review jobs I fried some onion and red pepper in a frying pan with some tofu, then added a pot of red (tomato) pesto. All he had to do was heat it through and eat it with pitta bread.

When I got home MLO said: “Well I don’t know what that sauce was but it was absolutely delicious”. Gotcha!  Thanks, Ms A. It’s very rarely that I’m grateful to you so you’d better make the most of it.

 

 

 

 

Directed by Chris Hill, this no-frills showcase started with a short  film before offering us fifteen quite meaty duologues featuring this year’s 30 ALRA North graduates in pairs. Of course I can see the rationale behind this format but it creates an hour of rather heavy theatre without much pacing or rhythm. Personally, moreover, I’d rather see each graduate in more than one role so that we get a sense of him or her having a playing range and I’m pretty sure that most casting directors and agents would feel the same.

Nonetheless we saw some talent in this group.  Winnie Southgate as Fi and Beth Nolan as Alice, for example are enjoyable in Rotterdam by Jon Brittain. They’re a gay couple but Alice has now realised that she is innately male and needs to transition. The two actors listen intently to each other and the text asks a whole series of difficult and complex questions which they handle with thoughtful sensitivity.

Or take Daneka Etchells in Simon Stone’s Yerma. She twinkles with disingenuous ignorance as her partner Colin Hadfield struggles to tell her that he ejaculated in the bath before she got in it and that if she’s pregnant that may be why. Of course she knows perfectly well what he did and whole thing is just a wind-up exploiting his embarrassment and biological ignorance. She feigns crossness nicely with loads of dramatic irony: the audience suspects the truth but Hadfield’s spluttering, awkward character does not.

There’s good comedy – also based on embarrassment – in the extract from Luke Norris’s Growth. The comic timing as Jack Wagman as Tobes persuades Conor Ledger’s very reluctant Joff to check his testicle is skilfully played for laughs with commendably naturalistic acting. Wagman and Ledger change the mood adeptly too when they, and the audience, realise that Tobes really does need to see a doctor – as soon as possible. Suddenly it’s no longer a joke.

I liked the work of Elen Benfield (Suse) and Megan Wolfe (Jude) in Sadie Hasler’s rather sparky Pramkicker too. They are sisters. Jude is in serious trouble for dangerously aggressive behaviour. Suse speaks for her like a very reasonable alter ego. It’s a good choice for a showcase (much less familiar than many of the other extracts here) and the two actors play off each other rather well.

Chay February finds plenty of warmth in Barry trying to make his younger brother (Corey Weekes – truculently angry as Mark)  see sense in Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads by Roy Williams – another pair of actors who complement each other.

Trafalgar Studios is a surprisingly good venue for a showcase. The steeped raking ensures that every audience member is close and the smallish playing space means that the two actors on stage at any given time are not lost in vast emptiness. The enclosing set for The Grinning Man, under which the showcase took place, adds intimacy too. All this means that you can see the whites of these young actors’s eyes at quasi-televisual distance. And that’s a bonus.

PICK OF THE BUNCH: Director, Roman Stefanski chooses Daneka Etchells

I used to review large numbers of graduating student showcases for The Stage. Then last year an editorial policy decision was made at the Stage not to cover them any more. So I didn’t go to a single one in 2017.

Then withdrawal symptoms set in. I really missed seeing the industry’s newest recruits in action. I also felt it was a useful way of keeping hands-on contact with drama school staff and students and I didn’t want to lose it. Showcases are like mini-parties too. I meet lots of people there I know – and over the years I’ve got to know several people quite well having originally met them at showcases.

Well I’m freelance and therefore completely free to do my own thing. I am, therefore, now reviewing as many student showcases as I can get to here on my own website. So if you’re drama school staff or student and would like me to cover yours then contact me. There’s only one of me, obviously, and sometimes the dates don’t work. But give me as much notice as possible and I’ll do my best.

Meanwhile Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Graduating Actors 2018 which I saw last week at The Criterion was a real corker. What a lot of sparkily individual talent!

And of course, while there, I ran into several mates including casting director Richard Evans whom I hadn’t seen for ages. Cue for warm hugs because it was lovely to see him. Updating each other on news, he told me that all his books now have new websites. QED. Showcases have a wonderful secondary networking function. Richard’s Auditions the Complete Guide (Routledge) is a bit of a bible for anyone (a graduating student, for example) who needs to nail parts and there’s lots of additional free advice on the related website. http://www.auditionsthecompleteguide.com

 

 

The standard was very high – as you’d expect from BOVTS. None of the 27 graduating students is less than very good so when I single out a selection to mention it really is a case of highlighting exceptional moments.

One, for example, comes when Anna Munden and Jyuddah Jaymes give us part of Chris Thompson’s Of Kith and Kin. Anna Munden’s Esme is reluctantly handing over a baby she has borne as a surrogate for Jaymes’s Daniel and his partner. She is brittle, tearful, naturalistic. Jaymes finds a dignified stillness for his character who desperately wants the child but is deeply fearful of saying the wrong thing and frightening her off again. It’s both powerful and moving.

Later in the showcase both actors show their versatility in a contrasting monologue. Munden gives us an impassioned account of a girl at her viva voce exam (Alexandra by Jon Welch)  and Jaymes transforms himself into a flamboyant Californian (Topdog/Underdog by Suzi Lori Parks).

Another one to watch is James Schofield who brings oodles of personality to an extract from Honest by DC Moore in which he describes confronting a group of Clapham-based young banker types and it’s very funny.  He’s also noteworthy as a  young primary school teaching assistant desperate to develop further his relationship with Kate Reid’s Lara who’s a teacher five years older and rather more worldly. This comes from School Play by Alex MacKeith.

Charlotte Wyatt catches the eye too. She has one of those neutral faces which can do a great deal – and she knows how to use it. In Rachel Cusk’s Medea, A New Version she brings tears, anger, anguish and truth, all well controlled. She does impressive things with her voice too which is pitched much lower here than for her duologue with Charlie Suff in in Romona Tells Jim by Sophie Wu. They fancy each other but there’s a lot of nicely caught awkwardness and both actors are focused listeners making the best of pauses.

This was a long and complex showcase – a bit of a rollercoaster with 41 separate scenes in 90 minutes. Each actor took part in a duologue as well as having a short (very short in some cases) solo spot so it was pretty even handed. I liked the concept of including three ensemble numbers too. The movement piece at the beginning was slickly percussive and the choral singing of Henry Purcell’s A Round was very fine at the half way point. The finale number (from Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown) highlighted dancing and singing skills as many individuals sang solo lines. Jyuddah Jaymes continued to shine for example.

All in all this was an enjoyable showcase featuring 27 pretty talented individuals. The bittiness of it was more than compensated for by performance quality.

PICK OF THE BUNCH: Tony of David Padbury Associates chooses ANNA MUNDEN

Luke Adamson’s play One Last Waltz has just completed its run in the studio space at Greenwich theatre. I hope he manages to get it out on tour as soon as possible because Ms Alzheimer’s is the central – invisible but palpable – character and the play needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

Luke invited me first because I am a seasoned (or something) theatre critic and second because I am – a role I never sought – becoming ever better known as an Alzheimer’s commentator. One Last Waltz is a meeting of my two worlds.

When I mentioned, en passant, to My Loved One that I’d agreed to review a play about Alzheimer’s he said, quite brightly by his standards, “Well I suppose I ought to see that too. Can I come with you?” So I contacted Luke again to explain and, of course, we were both welcome.

To be honest I wasn’t at all sure it was a good idea for MLO to see it. Plays and films about Alzheimer’s (remember Iris and Still Alice?) tend to be pretty devastating because they focus on an inexorable downward trajectory and can end only one way. I try to keep MLO as chirpy as possible and I don’t encourage him to reflect on the possible (probable/inevitable) ghastliness of the future. In our situation it’s healthier to dwell in the moment and take each day as it comes.

I needn’t have worried. One Last Waltz tells the story of Alice (played by Amanda Reed). She has memory problems and her daughter is beginning to worry. The three person play, written as a tribute to Luke’s late grandfather is about coming to terms with the illness and seeking help – which means admitting that there are problems. Oh yes, MLO and I have been there, done that and are collecting a whole drawer-ful of tee-shirts.

We I grinned at each other in recognition several times during the 80 minute piece because Luke’s observations are uncannily truthful. Yes, it’s difficult to be sure what day of the week it is when your world is steadily narrowing. And that means you have little idea whether the appointment you’re fretting about is today, tomorrow or next week. Of course, you struggle to remember where you’ve put things which makes you irritable even with yourself. Then there’s the general getting annoyed with yourself and others because you’re not as you were – and disbelief when someone else puts you straight.

And we empathised a lot with Alice’s decision to go to Blackpool for a last waltz in the place she used to dance with her husband who has recently died. MLO has recently mentioned several things he’d like to do again and places with happy memories that he’d like to revisit. That’s why we’re going on holiday to Northumberland next month. He wants to go back to Cragside which has long been our favourite National Trust property. Fortunately he’s no dancer.

Of course One Last Waltz is poignant. It has one of the most powerful final lines I’ve heard in the theatre in quite a while. I had to mop up tears several times. Seeing it was, however, more cathartic than upsetting.

I’ve said before that one of the best ways of fighting Ms Alzheimer’s is to confront her openly, fearlessly and proactively rather than treating her as an unmentionable horror. Part of Luke’s agenda is to help to get Alzheimer’s freely discussed without stigma. “After all,” he said to me before the show, “Cancer used to frighten people so much that they couldn’t talk about it. Now they do and it’s much better. We have to do the same with Alzheimer’s”.

The most moving moment of all – for me at least – came after the play had ended. We stayed for the Q/A but listened rather than contributing. Then I popped off to the ladies which is up a few steps at Greenwich Theatre and told MLO to wait for me in the foyer at the lower level. When I emerged, I could see MLO down in the foyer, deep in conversation with Amanda Reed. I didn’t want to interrupt or affect the dynamic so I lurked behind a shelf of leaflets and watched quietly.

He was telling her, I think, how much he’d identified with her character in the play. Alice gets lost in Blackpool. MLO was describing the horror of getting lost in a large shopping centre on holiday last year. She was listening intently – an actor observing life, I suppose. And his dignity was intact because she was allowing him to communicate like a fully fledged human being despite the stumbles and hesitancies. What surprised and pleased me most about it was MLO’s finding the confidence spontaneously to share a few feelings with a stranger. That’s how much the play had freed him up.

Of course, on the way home I asked “Well? Was that the right decision? Are you glad you saw that?”.

“Definitely” he replied.

Never underestimate the power of drama. I’ve said/written that a few hundred times in other contexts, but it applies forcefully to Alzheimer’s too.

Ramps on the Moon is consortium of six National Portfolio Organisation theatres with a mission to create work centred on D/deaf and disabled performers and creative team members.

The six partners are New Wolsey Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse,  Theatre Royal Stratford East, Sheffield Theatres, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse. And they work with Graeae Theatre Company – long established leader in the field of breaking down barriers, challenging preconceptions and boldly placing D/deaf and disabled artists centre stage.

Each year – this is the third –  one of the partners takes the lead in presenting a play which then tours to the other venues in the group. I was hugely impressed with Tommy which I caught last year at Stratford East. But I think, Our Country’s Good, which I travelled to Nottingham Playhouse to see last week is, if anything even better. Catch it if you possibly can during its forthcoming tour.

Director Fiona Buffini and her advisers have made Our Country’s Good as accessible as it could possibly be in a comprehensive way which would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago. Every word of the script is simultaneously  projected at the sides of the playing area or upstage behind the action. At the same time there’s audio description (by a cast member) for audience members who need it. The entire show is integrally signed too so that if a character is speaking, someone somewhere on stage will be interpreting it in BSL – and occasionally the speaker him or herself will be doing both. If the character is communicating in BSL then, similarly, someone else on stage will speak those lines and in many cases the switching is balletically slick – and part of the theatrical joy of the show.

So much for meeting the needs of the audience, who also – incidentally –  have access to a touch table in the foyer with fabric and set samples to feel.

At the same time around sixty per cent of the cast have disabilities of various sorts. In this context their diverse impairments are an enhancement rather than any sort of disadvantage. Garry Robson, snarling and yearning, from his wheelchair, for example is the most convincing Midshipman Harry Brewer I’ve ever seen. And Will Lewis who plays John Arscott uses his distinctive voice to poignant effect. Emily Rose Smith as Duckling Smith signs her anguish when Harry dies so passionately that we all share it. And Caroline Parker who does a lot of interpreting in this show – switching effortlessly between BSL and speech is terrific to watch.

The whole thing is a glorious celebration of the talents of these people and it goes without saying (or at least it should do) that there is absolutely no sense in which this is any sort of sub-standard theatre. Actually, it’s cutting edge.

So Ramps on the Moon  is living up to its wonderfully optimistic  name. It really is creating  ramps – ways in – to fabulous, moon-like opportunities to talented people of all sorts. Bravo! I’m looking forward to the next show, already.

Ramps on the Moon is consortium of six National Portfolio Organisation theatres with a mission to create work centred on D/deaf and disabled performers and creative team members.

The six partners are New Wolsey Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse,  Theatre Royal Stratford East, Sheffield Theatres, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse. And they work with Graeae Theatre Company – long established leader in the field of breaking down barriers, challenging preconceptions and boldly placing D/deaf and disabled artists centre stage.

Each year – this is the third –  one of the partners takes the lead in presenting a play which then tours to the other venues in the group. I was hugely impressed with Tommy which I caught last year at Stratford East. But I think, Our Country’s Good, which I travelled to Nottingham Playhouse to see last week is, if anything even better. Catch it if you possibly can during its forthcoming tour.

Director Moira Buffini and her advisers have made Our Country’s Good as accessible as it could possibly be in a comprehensive way which would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago. Every word of the script is simultaneously  projected at the sides of the playing area or upstage behind the action. At the same time there’s audio description (by a cast member) for audience members who need it. The entire show is integrally signed too so that if a character is speaking, someone somewhere on stage will be interpreting it in BSL – and occasionally the speaker him or herself will be doing both. If the character is communicating in BSL then, similarly, someone else on stage will speak those lines and in many cases the switching is balletically slick – and part of the theatrical joy of the show.

So much for meeting the needs of the audience, who also have access to a touch table in the foyer with fabric and set samples to feel.

At the same time around sixty per cent of the cast have disabilities of various sorts. In this context their diverse impairments are an enhancement rather than any sort of disadvantage. Garry Robson, snarling and yearning, from his wheelchair, for example is the most convincing Midshipman Harry Brewer I’ve ever seen. And Will Lewis who plays John Arscott uses his distinctive voice to poignant effect. Emily Rose Smith as Duckling Smith signs her anguish when Harry dies so passionately that we all share it. And Caroline Parker who does a lot of interpreting in this show – switching effortlessly between BSL and speech is terrific to watch.

The whole thing is a glorious celebration of the talents of these people and it goes without saying (or at least it should do) that there is absolutely no sense in which this is any sort of sub-standard theatre. Actually, it’s cutting edge.

So Ramps on the Moon  is living up to its wonderfully optimistic and assertive  name. It really is creating  ramps – ways in – to fabulous, moon-like opportunities to talented people of all sorts. Bravo! I’m looking forward to the next show, already.