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What the Ladybird Heard (Susan Elkin reviews 1)

If you go a-burgling in your stripy top with your swag bag you will get caught and sent to prison. That’s the lightly presented moral message of Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks’ immensely popular picture book for pre-schoolers.

The story also celebrates friendship and collaboration because it is the rarely seen ladybird who lurks, listens and blows the whistle on the night-time thieves.

We’re in a rather rosy farmyard, where the prize cow has just won a rosette – which is why the burglars are after her. In the hands of director Graham Hubbard and his team the drama of all this makes a fine, colourful mini-musical for very young children [extra lyrics are by Howard Jacques; the composers are Jon Fiber and Andy Shaw] …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review http://musicaltheatrereview.com/what-the-ladybird-heard-lyric-theatre/

This is a very funny show. After all, the British really are ridiculous and one of our great national strengths is the ability to laugh at ourselves. And the audience does plenty of that at Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain.

We’re at Nether Middleton where a battalion of American GIs have arrived in 1942 to help win the war but they need a course in cultural awareness. James Millard and Dan March play American officers trying to tutor their troops (gamely played by the audience). Matt Sheahan is an effete and soppy but “plucky” English officer trying to defend his countrymen’s ways against these brash Americans. And, the best joke of all is that it’s all based on a pamphlet published in 1942 and found in 2005 in the Bodleian library. It’s an unlikely starting point for an evening’s theatre but actually it’s terrific fun which feels fresh and original.

March as the American colonel has a way of bullying with his eyes and his feline growl of anger is a tour de force. He also does a lovely turn as an English Lord trying to teach the Americans to play cricket in a hurry. Sheahan does a good set piece trying to teach the Americans about pre-decimal British money which gets more and more complicated and silly as he goes. All three are talented comic actors (they and their director John Walton wrote the material themselves) but it’s James Millard who really stands out. As well as his excellent turn as the younger American officer continually trying to put March’s character straight, he does a delightful cameo of a predatory middle class English woman who speaks in a hammed up Celia Johnson Brief Encounter voice and a sparky stereotype of an entertaining elderly woman running refreshments in the village hall. All of this allows us to laugh at Marmite, Colman’s mustard, understatement, the weather, vegetable growing, passion for pets, village life and much more. And I didn’t expect when I entered the theatre that, an hour and half later this charistmatic trio would have me (and the rest of the audience) on my feet doing a morris dance, complete with handkerchiefs, to Glen Miller. Joyful stuff.

It’s daft and that’s why it works. Don’t miss it.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Instructions%20for%20American%20Servicemen%20in%20Britain&reviewsID=2894

 

 

I’m struck, not for the first time, by how well Hamlet works midsummer in the open air. It gives you the gravediggers at dusk and the horror of all that death and revenge at the end in real darkness. The metaphors are powerful.

I caught up with Changeling Theatre, a company I’ve previously seen only in rural locations where they have to compete with nothing louder than birdsong, at St George’s Garrson Church at Woolwich which is a stunningly beautiful ruin. The men who designed it after the Crimean War didn’t, obviously, intend to build a theatre but 160 years later, and after a 1944 flying bomb, they have certainly produced one. The site of the old nave works perfectly for Changeling’s characteristic traverse work with the remains of the altar at one end and the west door at the other. The disadvantage is that traffic sails very noisily past on two sides of the church and, of course, it’s under the Heathrow flight path. Nonetheless almost every actor in the ten-strong cast of Hamlet rises ably to the sound challenge almost all the time.

Actor-muso ensemble work lies at the heart of this Hamlet and there’s a lot of atmospheric folksy singing which adds an extra, rather welcome and effective dimension. Four gravediggers dance and sing round Ophelia’s graveside for example, led by in a cheerfully macabre way by Bryan Torfeh as First Gravedigger. Otherwise Torfeh gives us a suitably self-important Polonius and some enchanting violin continuo – live, background music, as it were.

Like Torfeh, Michael Palmer, who also doubles as the Ghost, is well cast as the personable, slimy, dangerous Claudius and Sarah Naughton’s anxous, tense Gertude is good to watch. Niamh Finlay delights as a diminutive Ophelia gradually getting shriller as she succumbs to mental illness and there’s lovely work from the Khalid Daley as a hilarious Osric and sycophantic Guildenstern. He brings out the humour deliciously in both which provides a few moments of balance in an otherwise pretty dark play. Cary Ryan’s high voiced, hammy Player Queen is quite something too – especially given that he’s the company’s apprentice, fresh from his A levels and on work experience with Changeling.

Every member of this ensemble is good, despite varying levels of experience, and they work impressively together but Alex Phelps as Hamlet is in another league. He is an extraordinarily naturalistic actor who delivers the great soliloquies, pouring his heart out to audience members only a few feet away as if he has only just thought of them. I have rarely heard these tricky-to-negotiate set pieces sounding quite so fresh and convincing. He catches every nuance and mood change in the biggest speaking role in Shakespeare too – at one moment very childlike and vulnerable and at the next weighed down by inner turmoil or anger. His “antic disposition” is entertaining and his closet scene – sons are not meant to think about their mothers having sex – even more disturbing than it usually is. I look forward to seeing him in lots more roles soon – please.

This performance of Hamlet is the beginning of a summer-long tour of pop up venues in Kent, London (and as far as Wales). Catch it if you can.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Changeling%20Theatre%20(professional%20&%20community)-Hamlet&reviewsID=2893

 

The quality of performance and the imaginative direction and other hard work which has gone into this production are, I’m afraid, in inverse proportion to the quality of the play itself. Boy, was Shakespeare having an off day. Written around 1608 it came fairly late in the Great Man’s career, Perhaps he’d temporarily run put of inspiration after the magnificent poetry of his recently written Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear. Experts think that some of the worst bits – the first eleven scenes with their dreadful doggerel for instance – were actually by George Wilkins which (sort of) explains a bit. I’ve only seen it in the past heavily abridged for young audiences, and it can work quite well in that format. Uncut, it’s pretty dire.

A clunkly episodic very unevenly paced piece, its plot is recounted by narrators when the playwright cannot (apparently) think of a suitable way of presenting it theatrically. Richard Brown, for Shakespeare at the George, has split the words spoken by Prologue and Gower as narrator amongst almost his whole cast which adds an inclusive sense of collaboration. He also has some nice ideas for creating low-tech storms and shipwrecks (of which this play is full) using waving sheets and models, probably very much as the Jacobeans might have done it. I also enjoyed most of the music, written by Ian Favell and played by him and Roy Bellass.

There are some impressive individual performances too. Reuben Milne has deliciously compelling stage presence as the simpering Knight of Macedon and is, among other roles, very pleasing as the general help in a brothel. Liz Barka, with her wonderfully expressive face, has fun with each of her six roles – the flirty fishwife being the most memorable. Paula Incledon-Webber is good value as the bossy Bawd and Georgie Bickerdike is pleasing as the rescued princess Marina, abandoned as a baby, rescued by pirates from a Snow White-style evil stepmother (Lynne Livingstone, glittering with malice – next stop panto?) and then sold into a brothel. She starts as a terrified child and grows into a feisty young woman before our eyes, She even manages to make falling in love with a potential client seem plausible – ish.

Simon Maylor is solid as Pericles. He speaks the lines – such as they are – well. But there’s an age problem. Even with brown hair dye in the first half (which disappears during the interval when he ages twenty years) he is not convincing as a strong lusty young man travelling round the Mediterranean partly on the run and partly in search of happiness. He comes across much more as a troubled middle aged man which doesn’t help a play which is already deeply flawed.

Shakespeare at the George is a fine company and I’m really looking forward to Richard III next year because it will provide much better material for these talented people to work with. For a start they won’t have to tack on an Arabian theme to the costumes and music in a valiant but arguably spurious attempt to inject some sparkle into a second rate text.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Shakespeare%20at%20The%20George-Pericles%20-%20Prince%20of%20Tyre&reviewsID=2890

 

I’ve always been a positive, outward looking, glass-half-full, don’t-let-the-buggers-win kind of person. And, of course, there are a few pluses. I’m discovering, even to My Loved One’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis – an occasional flash of light in the gathering darkness. Clouds, silver linings and all the rest of it. Here, in no particular order, are ten of them:

1.Better sleep Ms Alzheimer’s perpetual prodding at MLO’s ailing brain makes him very tired. So he sleeps like a baby. And that means that I (sometimes) rest more easily too. For two people who have struggled with moderate insomnia for years this is a bit of a bonus

2.Family When our sons were growing up we often despaired at their behaviour and attitudes and blamed ourselves – as most parents do. Now in their forties, both with families and busy businesses to run they are astonishingly, generously, movingly supportive, kind, competent men and we are deeply appreciative. We must, without knowing it, have done something right when they were young. The four or us are, I think, closer than we’ve been for a long time too and we’ve always been fairly strong on family stuff. Then there are their partners and ex-partners all cheerfully on board when we need them. The help is practical, thoughtful and makes me, in particular, realise that I am definitely not alone with MLO and the foul Ms A.

3.Wonderful friends Since I started writing these blogs literally hundreds of people – some we know very well and others whom we know only slightly – have expressed concern, offered help and sent love. I feel more supported and fortunate than at any other time in my entire life. Thanks, Folks. Great to know you’re there.

4.Chocolate biscuits What a lot of lovely varieties there are out there. For decades we abstemiously forewent them. Now they’re back on the shopping list because I let MLO have exactly what he fancies to eat. And it would be rude not to join him wouldn’t it? The M&S “extremely chocolatey” range are our favourites.

5,Learning curve For years we’ve been a team with complementary skills and MLO has done most of our “admin”. Now that he struggles with that I’m having to develop new skills rapidly. Life is suddenly full of firsts. In the last week alone, for example, I have taxed my car from scratch and cracked online business banking with a fiddly fob thing.

6.Safety awareness I now notice steps and other hazards in a way I never have before. Because MLO is shakier on his feet than he used to be I am constantly saying “Mind this”  or “Watch that”. Of course you should never be casual about safety, whatever your circumstances so I regard my heightened awareness as a gain.

7.Time to stand, stare and share Suddenly the simple things seem good. Sometimes it’s enough just to stroll in the park or listen to and watch the parakeets in our south London garden. Yes, I know it’s not PC to like the latter but we’re not and we do.

8.Getting things in proportion There is nothing like a diagnosis such as the one we’re living with to make you sort out what really matters. Things I might once have got very uptight about – such as whether the garden gets weeded or getting exactly the right sort of pre-show snack (he still comes out theatre reviewing with me) – are suddenly revealed as the trivia they are. Not worth fretting about. Better to focus on things like remembering to hug him and tell him how much I love him.

9.Sympathy for others I hope (but it may be a vain hope) that I’ve always been kind to everyone who needs it but I am by nature, brusque, impatient and always in a hurry. And I’m sure I’ve often ridden roughshod over vulnerable people. I’m now conscious that I can very easily spot other people who are dealing with intractable problems in the same way as we are. My becoming even slightly  more empathetic and sympathetic can only be a good thing.

10.Education I’ve learned to spell Alzheimer’s.

 

Last week I saw The Wind in the Willows at the Palladium on press night. Did I see the same show as, for example, Dominic Cavendish, Ann Treneman and Michael Billington? Apparently not. The show they saw was insipid and uninspired in a two or three star sort of way. The one I enjoyed and admired was vibrant, uplifting and fun. You don’t go to a musical based on an iconic of-its-time 1908 novel about friendship in search of something ground breaking – or at least I don’t, even when I have my reviewer’s notebook in my hand. You go for escapist Edwardian nostalgia far away from the ugly concerns of 2017. And this show packs several charismatic performances (Rufus Hound, Simon Lipkin and Neil McDermott, for instance) on imaginative sets with plenty of strong songs and terrific choreography.

It’s proof, if ever we needed it, that every audience member interprets the show for him or herself and every individual’s experience is different. It also reminds me of a column the Gramophone magazine used to run called Meat and Poison. Two critics wrote diametrically opposing reviews of a performance or new recording, thereby making quite a useful point about the value of criticism.

Of course criticism is likely to be better when it’s informed,as seasoned critics often point out, but how can that always be? Even Kenneth Tynan and Michael Billington must once have seen Macbeth or The Cherry Orchard  for the first time. Of course you should always do your homework before seeing an established play which is new to you (read the text and something about performance history) and conscientious critics do just that. When it’s something like The Wind in the Willows which we’ve all been reading all our lives, and of which many of us have seem many stage and other adaptations, you simply turn up and take the show on its own terms.

You must also learn to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs” as Kipling put it. At a big, noisy press night such as last Thursday’s the Palladium was heaving with agents, actors and friends of the 100+ creatives. Yes, I am a seasoned old pro and I can remain detached from all that excited, whooping supportive enthusiasm and the exuberant leaping onto feet at the end. Nonetheless, I really do think that  the Wind in the Willows is fine show which I predict will appeal to families for some time, despite the high West End pricing. Sometimes the public wisely ignores the professional press – the original reviews for Les Miserables were very lukewarm for example. More recently, so they were for Half a Sixpence at Chichester last summer. I predicted in print that the latter would transfer and be very successful. Who was “right” in the end?  Reviews are not necessarily the best predictors of success and there are no rights and wrongs.

And sometimes of course, it matters not a jot what the critics say anyway. Remember that dreadful Antony and Cleopatra directed by Sean Mathias at the National in 1998 in which poor Helen Mirren had to do her best alongside a very weak (in this particular show) Alan Rickman? Their names had sold almost every ticket before any reviews appeared so what price the influence of professional criticism? Something similar happened when Ewan McGregor played Iago – very weakly –  at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007 although that production of Othello did help to put Chiwtel Ejiofor on the map.

It’s also worth remembering that, in the end, however informed and wittily written or ill informed and sloppily written a review might be it is simply one person’s opinion. Mine, of the Wind in the Willows will publish in Ink Pellet next month.

Neil-McDermott-and-the-company-of-The-Wind-in-the-Willows-Photo-by-Marc-Brenner-Jamie-Hendry-Productions-2

 

 

One of my bitterest regrets is that Ms Alzheimer’s managed to worm her nasty way into the car quite so early in her tenancy. My Loved One was firmly told to surrender his licence immediately upon diagnosis. And that’s a distressing, demoralising blow when you’re only 71 and have driven expertly all over the world. I’ll never forget the exemplary way in which MLO sailed confidently onto and along a desperately confusing eight lane motorway in Atlanta, for example.

About five years ago Miss A (although I didn’t recognise her at the time) nipped off the ability to park. This man who’d been driving thousands of miles a year since his early twenties suddenly couldn’t judge where other parked cars, kerbs, walls and posts were. Not that he hit any of the aforementioned but there was no competence or confidence and a great deal of shunting forward and backwards and driving round the block looking for a bigger space. And the joke –  I do try to hang on to a sense of humour – is that this least macho of men, wasn’t driving a massive Mercedes or SUV. For years he had Fiat Pandas, with reverse parking sensors on the last one.

For a long time we’d arrive in, say, a multi storey car park and he’d ask me to park his car – and it was worse if he was driving my car which is a little bigger.  I used to giggle to myself that this stereotype-confounding behaviour must look extraordinary to anyone watching. “Hee hee hee” “I’d say. “He can no longer park. Ha Ha. What a good job I’m pretty damn good at it” I’d crow. Of course, I should have been thinking seriously about why he couldn’t do it rather than laughing and I’m ashamed of that now.

But he seemed to be OK when out on the road so I didn’t, in all honesty, give it much thought although he often didn’t seem to able to remember where destinations were and both our sons had long said that their dad seemed to have become a very slow driver.

Then came that dreadful diagnosis and the spatial awareness cognition test. One of the tasks was to copy a drawing of two interlinked figures of eight on their sides. Our youngest granddaughter, aged 2 would probably have made a better job of it than MLO did.  Miss A has definitely made off with his sense of shape and space. And although that doesn’t matter much if you bruise your thigh on a piece of furniture or even scrape a post in a car park, out on the open road it could be life and death. Thank goodness the accident was waiting to happen rather than having already occurred. The following morning, I downloaded the licence surrender form and made him sign it and post it. And a few days later we sold his car –  a clean break seemed best.

It is however still very hard for MLO. From the passenger seat in my car, he sees mad drivers doing the most unthinkably dangerous things (especially in London where we now live) and says “Look at that. I’ve never done anything as stupid as that in my entire life but he’s allowed to drive and I’m not”. I reply patiently: “Look, no one has said there’s anything wrong with your driving. It’s simply that you’ve been declared medically unfit to do it”. Unconvinced, he just grunts.

In another mood he’ll say. “They stopped me driving just because I couldn’t draw a silly diagram. I’ve never been any good at drawing. What has that to do with anything?” And I explain over and over again (many of our conversations are verbatim repeat efforts these days) what spatial awareness is and why it matters.

Worse, I get: “If only we hadn’t let those bloody women into our life then everything would still be normal”. He doesn’t mean Ms A either. He is thinking of the consultant, the nurse who is our first port of call at the euphemistically named “Memory Clinic” and the occupational therapist. Almost daily I tell him, as patiently as I can, that he has an illness. And he’d still have it whoever we consulted or agreed to talk to. “Loathe, hate and despise the illness if you like – but you can’t blame people who are merely trying, as compassionately as they can, to do their very difficult jobs” I remind him.

Meanwhile he worries that he can’t help me as he always used to.  And I really do have a lot to do – a business and home which I now to run more or less singlehandedly plus the “caring”. He used to pick me up in the car, share the driving, run errands, do the shopping and much more.

Ah. Did someone mention shopping? I’ve bought him one of those big square wheeled shopping trolleys – much cheaper to run than a Fiat Panda. We are less than a mile from two excellent supermarkets. So I’ve put him in charge of fruit and vegetables (and now have all the bulky stuff delivered)  – reminding him that exercise is meant to be vital in the management of Alzheimer’s. As long as he has a clear list he can manage that perfectly well at present. And it makes him feel both independent and useful. A tiny one in the eye for hateful Ms A for a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It happens every year so I really shouldn’t be surprised. The Edinburgh Fringe programme drops (like an old fashioned telephone directory) on the mat and I’m bowled over by the eclecticism of that three plus weeks: 4-28 August this time and it’s a septuagenarian celebration for 2017.

What, as ever, impresses me most, is the range of seminars and learning opportunities because there’s a lot more to performance than, well, performance. In fact there are now so many leaning and training opportunies that these days they are helpfully listed in a supplementary booklet.

Many drama schools, for instance, sensibly see Edinburgh as an opportunity to get out there and meet potential students on neutral, buzzy territory. Mountview, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, East 15, Central and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School are all running events, for instance. So are Equity, The Stage, The Independent Theatre Council and many more. You could, in fact, take say a week at the Edinburgh Fringe and treat it as a learn-about-theatre-and-training-for-it course if you organised your time carefully.

There are top up training experiences aplenty too for those who are already working professionally – a voice and movement workshop provided by East 15 for instance or Q/A sessions with eminent actors laid on by Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.

And what about the huge number of people in the early stages of their careers who’ve actually managed to get a show to Edinburgh? Well the Fringe includes lots of sessions relating to what to do next, how to develop your work, advice on producing, how to get the best out of touring and much, much more.

I had a snobbish,  narrow minded relation who lived in Edinburgh for many years. He loved the main festival with its top brass classical concerts and big name drama (as long as the actors weren’t gay) but was witheringly dismissive of what he called “that dreadful fringe” which he spat out with contempt. I often think of him as this time of year because he was so very wrong. Every year the Fringe gets more interesting and more of an all round developmental experience for everyone who engages with it.