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The Masque of the Red Death & The Fall of the House of Usher (Susan Elkin reviews)

Edgar Allan Poe was an American contemporary of the Brontes. Like them he died young. And also like them, he was fascinated with the macabre and in love with gothic. The Masque of the Red Death, directed by Omar F Okai, takes us to a house presided over by amoral Prince Prospero. Plague – the red death – rages outside and nothing inside is quite what it seems as invited guests arrive. We could almost be Lockwood puzzling over what’s what when he first arrives at Wuthering Heights. The Fall of the House of Usher, better known because of the 1949 and 1979 films, is the story of an outsider arriving at a cursed house to rescue his beloved – Sleeping Beauty crossed with Ruddigore but nastier than either. The second play is directed by Maud Madlyn.

The Jack Studio Theatre is so full of atmospheric liquid carbon dioxide, aka stage smoke, that this could be a murky mysterious London peasouper as Anna Larkin, face painted to look menacingly sinister, darts about as the personification of The Red Death. There’s lovely work from Nell Hardy, who brings lithe jerkiness to Duchess Boleville. As Prince Prospero, Christinel Hogas dominates and is suitably cold and ruthless although he stumbles over his words more often than he should even allowing for press night nerves. The ending of this first piece is enjoyably dramatic with a hint of Don Giovanni as we recognise the inevitability of death.

Zachary Elliott-Hatton is terrific as Roderick in The Fall of the House of Usher. He is pale, twitchy and convincingly neurasthenic and he struggles to persuade the contrasting very normal Winthrop (James McClelland – pleasing performance) that he should go away and stop trying to interfere. Nell Hardy is, again, in fine form as Madeline. What I wouldn’t give to be able to come up from a back bend with that sort of control! Anna Larkin, Harriet Main and Cristinel Hogas are entertaining as the Brechtian trio of ancestors who pop in and out of their pictures and Bethan Maddocks makes a good job of representing real life and natural womanhood in both pieces.

I wish, however, that the sound balance were better. The music is too loud, especially at the beginning when it muffles the speaking of the actors. And there is a sense that both these pieces are slightly too wordy with everyone speaking too fast although the adaptation is into modern English and there’s no hint that the narrative origins are American.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-The%20Masque%20of%20the%20Red%20Death%20|%20The%20Fall%20of%20the%20House%20of%20Usher&reviewsID=2875

For a show which was originally staged in the open air (first as a Chichester Festival Theatre production and then at Regents Park) Running Wild has moved indoors pretty successfully for its tour. Dale Rooks (CFT) and Timothy Sheader (Open Air Theatre Regents Park) have focused the action within the framework of Paul Wills’s elaborate set which includes junk and lots of nooks and crannies so that we get a real sense of being in Indonesia (except when we’re in Devon at the beginning). The sound effects – lots of drumming and choral work by the immaculately directed ensemble – are suitably atmospheric and the show makes evocative use of light especially when we see the eyes (only) of jungle animals.

Of course Michael Morpurgo’s tsunami survival story is in a long tradition of wild child tales from Romulus and Remus to The Jungle Book and the latter is frequently referenced. His version is set in the 2004 tsunami and inspired by the real life account of a child who survived because he happened to be on the back of a beach elephant which bolted to safety in the jungle. Adapted as a play by Samuel Adamson, it carries masses of scope for stage spectacle, imaginative ensemble work and ingenious physical theatre especially as the moment when the wave rolls in and engulfs everything and everyone in its way.

The real star of this show, of course, is the puppetry by Gyre and Gimble – Toby Olié and Finn Caldwell – who worked with Handspring on War Horse. Their almost full size elephant, operated by four people – a key character in this show – flaps her ears, works her feet and talks with her trunk and eyes. The illusion is astonishing. You can almost smell her (frequent!) farts and feel her thick grey hide. Then there are some very effective orangutans, a fabulous Sumatran tiger, lots of birds and a good scene with fish. Observation lies at the heart of good puppetry and the work in this show ticks every box.

Jemina Bennett (remember her from To Kill a Mockingbird?) turned in a strong performance as Lily on press night. It’s a huge role and she develops it pleasingly from bantering about football with her dad to a very different self-assured girl with real goals and determination at the end. She grows before our eyes. And her many scenes with the elephant are delightful.

I wish however that Morpurgo and his adaptor could be slightly more subtle. Of course I agree with the messages – the war in Iraq was wrong, we must protect and live in harmony with the jungle and its natural inhabitants and money certainly isn’t everything. I could however, have done without a clunkily didactic lecture about palm oil in the middle and Lily’s very obvious questions about the war which kills her father. Such things need to be grafted in very carefully but here they feel as if they’re bolted on which does nothing for theatricality. And, we know it’s the deal with anything by Morpurgo but the whole piece is mawkishly sentimental. Most of that, however, doesn’t show too much or too often because the show includes so many ‘wow’ moments and some very good acting.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Marlowe%20Theatre%20(professional)-Running%20Wild&reviewsID=2869

 

The Manny & Brigitta Davidson Foyer. Photo by Richard Hubert Smith.

Well I’ve seen some drama school buildings in my time –  all the main ones from Glasgow to Guilford and from Liverpool to Loughton in fact, along with many less well known ones. I admire facilities, extensions and studios wherever I go. It’s my job. Never, though, have I seen anything to rival the grandiloquent scale of LAMDA’s new building to which I was invited last week for a preview.

The site beside the old Victorian building that LAMDA took over from the Royal Ballet School in 2003, straggles narrowly westward along Talgarth Road towards Hammersmith. LAMDA used to have temporary, single storey buildings on it.  As architect Niall McLaughlin told journalists last week, it’s challenging when you’re bounded by railway on one side and a six lane dual carriageway (the A4) on the other, bookended by listed buildings. The end result includes ten large studios, a 220 seat theatre, a studio theatre, a rather nice foyer and lots of offices and storage. LAMDA Exams, for example, will move back in-house to the third floor, later this summer. It’s remarkable just how much space McLaughlin and his colleagues have found from such a limited base area.

Of course, it’s excellent for LAMDA to have everything on one site for the first time ever. The old MacOwan Theatre which was sold to help fund the new building was off site and LAMDA shows have been staged in various venues across the captital for several years. And alumni Rory Kinnear and Paterson Joseph were there last week to reminisce about having to travel all over London to unlikely teaching spaces, such as an operational convent where the nuns passed through the classes and gave notes. Today’s students will have proper professional facilities – and, principal Joanna Read insists, there are no plans to increase student numbers because LAMDA is determined not to train more people than the industry needs. Various people quip that the theatre provision is now so good at LAMDA that when new graduates go out to their first jobs they will feel that they are slumming it.

Not, as everyone, including Chairman, Shaun Woodward, said firmly  at the event that buildings are the most important factor in training. The quality of the teaching is the essence of the training.

That’s always been high at LAMDA – witness the fact that it’s unusual to see any show anywhere without at least one LAMDA graduate in the cast. And for the last two years every single LAMDA technical theatre student has gone straight into professional work on graduating. It’s a success story regardless of the surroundings.  It’s simply that now the teaching will be more efficient because it’s all based under one properly resourced roof.

And the bottom line for all this? £28.2 million of which only one million came from public funding. The rest had to be raised from trusts, donors, alumni and so on. Quite an achievement. The Monument Trust (part of the Sainsbury empire) was generous, for example, which is why the main space has become the Sainsbury Theatre. The names of some of the other donors are evident in names around the building: the Carne Studio Theatre, the Manny and Brigitta Davison Foyer and the Sackler Library among others.

I’ve long argued that drama schools should be a cultural resource for the local community – quality theatre on the doorstep – and that’s one of the many things that Joanna Read and her staff of 95 are now hoping to build up. I can’t wait to see a show or two in those spaces, either.

A third presence has arrived in my marriage. Until recently it was him and me. But the man I married in 1969 and I are no longer a self contained, private unit.  Ms Alzheimer’s – I think of her as a hideous, be-fanged  brain-eating monster – has come to live with us. Permanently. Symptom-slowing drugs might just keep her in the hall rather than the sitting room for a bit but even that’s not guaranteed.

The shock of learning that the person whose personality, mind (and body) I fell in love with over half a century ago is now steadily, inexorably and relentlessly going to fade away before my eyes, is a life changer like no other.  Death of parents was hard to bear but it came nowhere near the horror of this.

Not that we’re unusual (as if that makes it any easier). My Loved One is 71. According to Alzheimer’s Research UK one person in 14 over the age of 65 has dementia. And let me share something I’ve only recently come to understand. The word “dementia” literally, from the Latin, means out of mind. It refers to a generic set of symptoms, like fever. A number of diseases cause it. Alzheimer’s is by far the commonest. Two thirds of dementia sufferers have Alzheimer’s – that’s about 600,000 in Britain at present. Numbers are rising all the time as the population ages.

As our consultant informed us while we sat numbly trying to absorb the enormity of our situation at her clinic last month, Alzheimer’s is set to become the biggest killer in the next 20 years or so, outstripping, for example, cancer. “There is no cure” she said. So did the case worker who originally conducted an assessment at home several months ago., So does every website you look at. No one beats about the bush. Ms A is here to stay. She has to be lived with. Eviction is not an option.

Neither is driving. The hardest thing at this stage is that MLO has had to surrender his driving licence. Once the consultant saw the spatial awareness section of the cognition test MLO did (again)  there was no choice. She was very gentle (but firm) about it, observing that such conversations are the hardest part of her job.

Devastating as it was to have Ms A finally, unequivocally named her arrival has been gradual. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. There was disorientation during a holiday in Chicago (“Where’s our hotel?” repeatedly) in 2012. Last month MLO got lost in a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur and had to be restored to me by the police. He is unsteady on his feet, ponderous, struggles with simple clerical tasks and has lost weight. And as for his memory …

Well, we’ve all seen films such as Iris, Still Alice and Away From Her  not to mention reading powerful novels like Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing and Sally Hepworth’s The Things We Keep. It’s mainstream stuff. Over 38 per cent of the UK population knows a family member or close friend with Alzheimer’s. There are no secrets about where Ms A will eventually lead MLO – further and further away from the rest of us. The only unknown is how long it will take her.

So, while the consultant carefully advises us to set up lasting power of attorney as soon as possible  – a practical but sinister issue with nasty connotations –  we need to focus on the immediate future.

“Take him wherever he wants to go – now – while he can” says our elder son. “And let him have what he wants to eat – decades of ‘sensible’ abstemiousness don’t seem to have done him much good!” says the younger.

So grinning through the tears I lay in vast quantities of chocolate biscuits. And fruit cake. Blow the sugar. If he likes it, he shall have it. (As long as he also eats the usual bucket load of daily fruit and vegetables – old habits haven’t gone altogether).

Asked if there’s anywhere left that he’d like to go or anything he’d like to do – and we’ve already been fortunate enough to travel widely on some fabulous holidays over the years – MLO thinks hard. Yes, he’d like to hear the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on their home turf in the Musikverien in Vienna and, similarly, the Royal Concertgbouw Orchestra  in Amsterdam. I’ve booked the latter for June and am working on the former for November. Susan-will-fix-it.

And at least it’s peaceful now. I was angry with everyone and everything for months before Diagnosis Day. I suppose at some level my unconscious brain was trying to tell me that the whole thing was a wind up and that MLO was putting it all on to annoy me. A counsellor would no doubt call it “denial”. Now I have recognised the disease for what it is. And I’ve looked the hideous Ms A square in the face. I’m adjusting and I’m much better tempered –  despite the all consuming sadness and fear.

Meanwhile, like thousands of other families who have to share their lives with the hateful, pernicious, Ms A, we now, somehow, have to stop fretting about the future and live life to the full in the present. Carpe diem, every day as it comes and all that.

 

 

I was a weekly Evensong attender from about age 6 (with grandparents) to age 18 (independently) when I experienced an Enlightenment moment and gave it all up. But the words of that liturgy are, of course locked in my head for ever. “Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night” being a particular favourite and I think of it whenever I’m at an open air performance.

The British are, as ever, mad, I reflected as I gathered with a large group of blanket carrying stalwarts at Coolings Garden Centre near Bromley last week for the opening performance of Illyria Theatre’s Pride and Prejudice – now touring widely. We don’t really have a climate in this country. We just have weather. And it’s unreliable.  I suppose that’s why we discuss it all the time. Open air performances in Britain is often a triumph of hope over experience. Actually it didn’t rain on Pride and Prejudice that night but there were a lot of threatening black clouds and it got very cold. The excellent cast are, of course, moving about continually and probably, on their opening night warmed by adrenaline. It’s different for the audience huddled in the drafty camping chairs they’ve laboriously lugged from the car park.

I recall press night for A Midsummer Night’s dream at Open Air Theatre Regents Park a few years back when ark-building rain deluged everyone. To their great credit the company did the first two acts – trainers audibly squeaking in the wet – while the rest of us dripped in polythene ponchos before the stage manager stopped the performance on health and safety grounds. Then there was a pop-up performance of The Taming of the Shrew by Chalkfoot Theatre in gardens at Canterbury in which you could see the rain cascading down the clothes of the hapless actors. The show must go on? Or something. I recall a Tempest in a tempest beside the lake at Mount Ephraim gardens in Kent too. The thunder rolled around while Prospero strutted his stuff. Who needs a sound engineer? And even some of those covered pavilions such as the one Garsington Opera now has at Wormsley or Opera Holland Park’s new one, where I’ve reviewed twice this week, can be very chilly when the British summer temperature plummets and the wind blows – as so often it does.

Presumably when they mount open air opera and other shows in, say,  Italy or the south of France they do so knowing they can rely on their climate to deliver the goods. No wonder they smile at British efforts to follow suit.

So why do we do it?  Because when open air theatre works it’s wonderful. There are few more glorious theatrical experiences, for instance, than Open Air Theatre. Regents Park –  or at the other end of the scale Shakespeare at the George in Huntingdon – on a balmy night.  You eat your picnic or have a meal in a nearby or on-site restaurant and then settle in the atmospheric open air, complete with bird song ready to be wowed. I was so bowled over by Jesus Christ Superstar in the park last year (and I saw it on a deliciously warm, dry evening) that I’m still thinking about it and determined to see the revival this summer. Like many shows (Lord of the Flies and The Crucible too in recent years) familiar work resonates in a completely different way when you’re outdoors. And there’s always magic after the interval as the natural light dwindles and the artificial light creates its images and effects.

Yes, it’s mad to stage open air theatre in Britain but it’s a superbly creative form of madness and long may it last. And the uncertainties – the “perils and dangers of this night” –  create a welcome frisson all of their own.

Some theatrically inclined school leavers are ready for drama school. Others are not. So how can or should such a young person – or an older one seeking an opportunity to dip a toe in the waters of theatre training – prepare for drama? Enter the foundation course.

Fine arts did it first: it is almost de rigeur for anyone wanting to study a fine arts degree to take a one-year foundation course before starting. It’s a matter of mastering the basics at the outset – the same principle applies to performance skills.

“I think we were the first drama school to do it when we started our foundation course 24 years ago,” says Kate Ashcroft of Oxford School of Drama …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage https://www.thestage.co.uk/advice/2017/foundation-courses-to-strengthen-your-drama-training/

In response to government thinking on the length of degree courses, Susan Elkin says despite misgivings drama schools should reconsider their one-size-fits-all approach

In February, the government announced a plan to axe the requirement that a full degree must be studied over three years. In future, the statement said, there would be an option to study the same material intensively over two much fuller years, thereby saving the student a whole year’s subsistence costs, even though tuition fees would be the same in total as a three-year course.

Although none of the mainstream drama schools have yet taken the plunge and introduced a two-year degree course, some of them …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage: https://www.thestage.co.uk/advice/2017/two-year-courses-future-drama-training/

If you want to train as an opera singer, Britain seems a good place to be based. In the 2017 listing by subject, QS World University Rankings placed Juilliard School in New York first in the new performing arts schools category but there were no fewer than three British conservatoires featured in the top 10.

The Royal College of Music is in second place, while the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland come joint third. Nine British universities, along with Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, are in the top 50.

So what are the available pathways for aspirant opera singers in Britain? …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage https://www.thestage.co.uk/advice/2017/opera-training-how-to-hit-the-high-notes/