The Gruffalo’s Child continues at the Lyric Theatre, London until 7 January 2018.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Show an endearing, caring dad trying to set boundaries for a wayward child. Add a bit of comfortable, pretend scary stuff and place it on a simple but versatile set. Spice it up with some upbeat music and you’ve got the Tall Stories engaging version of The Gruffalo’s Child …
Read the rest of this review at http://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-gruffalos-child-lyric-theatre/
The idea of four modern-ish children improvising a story is not particularly original but it works splendidly in Mike Kenny’s adapatation of The Snow Queen for a cast of four. From the moment you see Nettie Scriven’s evocative opening set – an attic with peeling, faded wallpaper and filmy white dustsheets covering interesting shapes and rippling in the breeze – you know you’re in for a treat. Seven episodes are acted out as Gerda sets out on her quest with all the attic clutter used by the children as they take different parts. Thus we get lampshades for hats, a velvet curtain for a cloak, parasols for wheels and a hobby horse to pull a coach. And it’s all accompanied by accessible, appropriate music by the ubiquitous Julian Butler – I suppose it is possible to stage a children’s show without his fine work but I don’t seem to see many.
Isabelle Chiam delights as innocent but brave Gerda, determined to find and rescue Kai. She comes from Singapore and this is her first main stage show in the UK. I’m sure we shall see more of her. She has presence and charm without ever seeming excessive. It’s a warm, well judged and directed (by Roman Stefanski) performance.
Everyone else plays multiple roles. Sam Hoye is especially memorable as the child who doesn’t want to play all the old lady parts but does and is very funny. His flapping, carking, saucy crow is fun too. Tigger Blaise creates some enjoyable characters including a not-very-scary Robber Queen and a proper queen in a scarlet plaits wig. And George Wigzell is strong as the lost, kidnapped Kai. His reindeer is good value too.
Having failed, as usual, to organise any of my “own” children to take to this rather lovely show, I was nonetheless pleased to notice almost 100 per cent audience engagement and very little fidgeting or muttering from dozens of children out for a Sunday afternoon family treat. The boy next to me, who told me was six, and the girl, 4, behind us he struck up a conversation with, were both utterly engrossed throughout which is fine testament. Highlights which really grabbed them included some nifty shadow puppetry with wrap-round sound effects, the use of projection to evoke the breaking of the mirror and the arrival of the presence of the Snow Queen just before the end which is quite a theatrical moment.
First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Polka%20Theatre%20(professional%20productions)-The%20Snow%20Queen&reviewsID=3054
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The flood myth is common to most cultures and John Agard, originally from Guyana, gives it strong African undertones with lots of African resonances in the language which often rhymes. At the same time, it remains, of course, a story for everyone and this version is powerful, charming, witty, compelling – and universal. Well done director, Peter Savison who was one of the original actor/puppeteers when this show first played at Little Angel Theatre in 2007. Two performers Duane Gooden and Amanda Wright act out roles partly as human beings but use puppets for some of the storytelling with all the puppetry clearly visible – the usual pattern for most puppet shows these days. The animals – some farm (Dalamatian dogs to die for!) and some wild are gradually packed into the ark which is assembled on stage. Wright hands out the wild animals – camels, zebras, tigers and so on – from the back of the auditorium so that audience children are involved in passing them forward as they complete their journey to safety. Later there’s a delightful woodpecker pecking so enthusiastically that Noah fears there will be holes in the ark. Music by Peter Savison and Sandra Bee is often based on simple triads which, done rhythmically, creates impressively simple action songs. The audience, for example, sings Go Noah Go with the cast several times as they work on stage. At other moments the triads allow Gooden and Wright to sing in some very attractive harmony – and it’s all folksily unaccompanied. Gooden has a fabulous chocolate brown singing voice and a delightfully urbane stage presence. Wright is a fine character actor – mostly playing Mrs Noah being sensible and supportive but also giving us a nice account of an old man who refuses to sail with the ark. Both are skilled at voice work. Gooden’s interpolated story told by a frog, apparently and incongruously from Wolverhampton is a nice comic touch, for instance. So is Wright’s pair of parrots who seem to have flown in from California. Other excellences in this enjoyable show include Lyndie Wright’s puppets and designs – especially the imposing totem-like pair of gods, one male and one female, at the beginning. The creation of the storm with rocking along with ribbons operated by front row children works well too. |
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| http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Go%20Noah%20Go!&reviewsID=3048 |
One of the saddest things about everyday life with Miss A is watching her polluting My Loved One’s mind. “I’m getting very worried…” he said to me this week. Pause while he struggled for the right words to express what he wanted to say and I paid full attention because this could be important. “ … about the company accounts.”
He meant the accounts for my writing business Susan Elkin Ltd for which, until recently, he did all the administration. “It’s fine” I said. “Nothing to worry about at all. I got the accountant to do the whole job earlier this year and paid his bill. He’ll do the next lot too. You just have to accept that you’re fully retired now. Drink your coffee and talk to the cat.”
“Am I?” he said, still puzzled. “Fully retired? So I don’t have to do anything? And so it goes on.
I try, of course, to find things for him to do. It’s not good for anyone’s brain or mind to have nothing to focus on. At this time of year there are shows and concerts I’m involved in either as reviewer or, occasionally, as performer. This week for example, he seemed to enjoy the Messiah I played for and later this week he’s coming with me to review Rapunzel at Chickenshed. But more often than not at this time of year I do these things solo and leave him with only the cat (who certainly earns his keep) and his CD collection for company.
Then there are jobs in the house. Very simple things such as pegging out a basket of washing or sweeping up some leaves are fine. But I was almost heartbroken when the other day MLO snatched up the nearly empty pepper grinder (he likes lots of black pepper on everything because he has no sense of smell and little of taste) after dinner. Bent over my crossword in a vain attempt at a five minute respite, I could hear cupboards being opened and closed in the kitchen accompanied by attention-seeking humphing and tutting. So I got up and found the peppercorns for him. Then I looked up to see him, sitting opposite me, trying to shovel the pepper corns into the grinder with a teaspoon. Of course he wasn’t succeeding. Had he completely forgotten what a funnel is and what it’s for? Cue for me, rather unkindly, to snatch the grinder, do the 10 second job with a funnel in the kitchen and fetch the broom to sweep the spilled peppercorns up off the dining room floor.And no more crossword. Welcome to the frustrations of life as a threesome – him, me and her.
She was very present when last week’s supermarket delivery arrived too I’d had a last minute morning review job (children’s show) poked in to my diary so I wasn’t at home at the time. I’d left careful instructions, though. “The delivery guy will give you a little bag of frozen stuff. Put that straight in the freezer. Leave everything else and I’ll sort it when I get in.” I got home early afternoon just in time to rescue the yoghurt, coleslaw, pasta and various groceries from the freezer before they froze solid and were ruined. Of course I was jolly cross and well as incredulous and, worse, MLO was very upset when he realised what a silly thing he’d done. And that’s the hardest part – trying to cut through my own frustrations to understand just how bloody awful it must be not to know what a funnel is or what should and shouldn’t go in the freezer. Lots of hugs required.
When we arrived at the Messiah concert, on my way to the “green room” (bit makeshift in a parish church) I deposited MLO on an audience seat next to a friend. “How are you? ”Friend, who happens also to be a retired GP so he’s more attuned than most, asked MLO carefully and kindly. “Oh up and down” said MLO lugubriously. And I suppose that just about sums it up for both of us.
Recent Daily Telegraph headline made me grin ruefully: Being married may reduce dementia risk. Well sorry UCL, who led a study of 15 earlier studies and 800,000 people, it hasn’t worked for us. We’ve been married 48 years and counting.
I have followed the success of Fourth Monkey Training Company, which launched in 2010, almost since before it was a twinkle in Steve Green’s eye. Today it lives in a very businesslike building on Seven Sisters Road near Finsbury Park Station. They call it – obviously – The Monkey House and it includes lots of good studios, a transverse performance space, offices for “monkey business” and very nice loos.
Last week I revisited it – always a pleasure because Steve and his colleagues give me the warmest, most congenial of welcomes and a good cup of tea. In the past I’ve been to the company’s shows there but this time I was just dropping in for a chat.
The company – both the twelve month “Year of the Monkey” course and the two year rep course – is going well. Some students progress from one course to the other which means they have effectively trained for the full three years. I asked about outcomes, as I always do when I’m in a training establishment, and Steve had a sheet of stats ready for me. Of the 33 students who graduated from the two year course this year all are still in the industry. Of last year’s 27 only one has stepped out of the industry. The 2015 cohort of 26 are all still on board and only two, who graduated in 2014 (when there were 22 students) have left the industry. Those are pretty impressive retention rates by any standard.
So do they all get representation with decent agents? “About 80% of them do” says Steve adding that a growing number of students are making a positive decision not to sign up with agents because they want to start their own companies and be fully independent.
“Of course I’m really proud and ever so pleased when someone tells me that she or he has a job at The Globe or the RSC” says Steve. “But what excites me most of all is a student or graduate’s proactive decision to create work of their own. It shows how empowering our training really is and I’m delighted”. He adds that, as Fourth Monkey TC develops they are finding ways of facilitating such companies by encouraging them to use the in-house performance space.
The training includes a strong emphasis on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama – although they also do lots of other work too – and plenty of collaboration. They have done Marlowe in partnership with the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury and the Marlowe Society for example. Students have been involved in prison projects, site specific work and lots more. The production of The Elephant Man which toured in 2014 provided paid work for a Fourth Monkey graduate rep company and Steve is hoping to repeat this initiative.
Above all Steve strives for transparency and talks to me very openly – given that he knows that I shall probably go public on anything he says. He admits, for example, that recruitment isn’t always easy given that his students have no access to funding other than career development loans from banks and scholarships such as one in partnership with The Stage. “But we do find the talented students we want every year” he says. “And whatever the financial constraints we have no plans for expanding our numbers. The amount of work out there for graduating performers is finite.”
I leave with a (simian?) spring in my step looking forward to seeing Fourth Monkey’s Romeo and Juliet and/or The Tempest in the spring.
Fourth Monkey’s 2017 production of The White Devil. Photograph: Julia Wills
When My Loved One first started to lose things Big Time – keys, credit cards, phone, rail card, wet wipes, pens and all the rest of it – I issued him with a handbag, a neat grey canvas cross body job. Our elder son and his wife refer to it as his “manbag”.
“Right” I said, “It’s easy. You keep all your everyday bits and pieces in here. You never leave the house without it and you keep it with you at all times when you’re out. Problem solved”.
If only it were. I’d reckoned without the cunning of busy Ms Alzheimer’s. For a start the bag has lots of compartments and he struggles to find things inside it. He likes, for instance, to keep his coins, in a polythene bank bag. On at least six occasions I’ve been told, mournfully, that he’s lost them. Of course I then go through the bag and produce said coins like a chinking rabbit out of a hat. But that doesn’t help if he’s in the Co-op buying a loaf of bread on his own – the sort of small errand I’m determined he’ll go on doing for as long as humanly possible.
Moreover, that bag has been left at home, in people’s houses, in restaurants and in the car more times than I can remember. It is little short of miraculous that it has never been permanently lost. But people are awfully good. Several relatives and friends have very kindly put themselves to considerable trouble to return it to him when it’s been left in their homes. Waiters scamper helpfully after him in restaurants – or look after it carefully until he returns for it. And so far the car has not been broken into.
Of course, we all remind him all the time but we’re none of us infallible. Sadder, really, is the anxiety it causes MLO. “I think I’ve left my bag at home” he’ll often say from the passenger seat in the car when we’re a few miles on our journey. “No you haven’t” I reply. “It’s next to mine on the bag seat under our coats”. He and Ms A, have, of course, completely forgotten what they did when leaving the house. But she has got at him and he has started to fret and worry.
These days, in restaurants and coffee shops I usually put his bag and mine together on my side of the table. I know I shan’t forget mine so that ensures that his is safe. But once or twice during every meal he’ll say “Have you got my bag? I don’t know where it is”. I’m used to that now but it still seems pretty tragic if I pause and allow myself to think about it.
When I grumble at him about his carelessness he will sometimes point out that it’s different for women most of whom carry bags from childhood so the habit is deeply ingrained. Manbags – although now pretty widespread – are a relatively recent thing which have come in with lap tops and tablets. He’s right of course – I’ve been carrying a handbag since I was about 11 and it’s as much part of me as my knickers or shirt. Glued to me, in fact. Twenty five years of teaching in some very challenging secondary schools with known criminals in many classes taught me to keep my bag always within a few inches of where I was and never to allow it out my sight. Bag awareness is second nature. In the same way, I’m a Londoner through and through so don’t my put my bag down in a public place and walk away from it, even for a few seconds unless I’m with a trusted companion.
It would seem that if a man doesn’t carry a bag for the first 50 years of his life it is probably too late to learn such behaviour especially if Ms A is pecking away at him like a malevolent woodpecker.
Miss Julie by August Strindberg, in a new version by Howard Brenton – World Premiere (Part of The ESCAPE Season). Presented by Jermyn Street Theatre and Theatre by the Lake.
Don’t miss this one. Vibrant, passionate, tragic, beautifully acted and directed, it’s one of the best non-musical productions I’ve seen this year. And it’s interesting to see it only a few weeks after Howard Brenton’s new play about Strindberg – The Blinding Light at the same venue.
Strindberg’s best known tragedy, here in a lively new version by Brenton, explores the dynamic between a male servant with ambition, the sensible cook he’s engaged to and the desperately troubled daughter of the house. And it’s all set in the kitchen of a Swedish aristocratic pile on midsummer night when the sun never sets and the reckless spirit of Saturnalia bites although we’re a very long way from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Charlotte Hamblin is a remarkable Miss Julie, She finds and sustains extraordinary levels of volatility, sexiness and despair, We ache for her predicament as she rocks, twitches, shouts, flirts, weeps and hurls herself hysterically from one side of the stage to the other. At one point James Sheldon’s Jean tells her she’s ill and he’s right. Sheldon is strong as the complex James who never loses sight of his own future and is willing to use others ruthlessly to enhance it. On the other hand he is also human and sometimes humane which Sheldon makes sure that we see. As Kristin, Isabella Urbanowicz, provides a still, mature, moral foil to both the others. She is calm and certain but quite feisty. And Urbanowicz is deeply convincing. And all three actors, defty directed by Tom Littler, work exceptionally well together.
Louie Whitemore’s lovely, homely set is reminiscent of a National Trust below stairs set-up and her costumes are both accurate and attractive. Urbanowicz’s church going outfit, for instance, could start a new fashion. A word of praise too for Max Pappenheim’s sound design. For a long time we can hear the rest of the household revelling in a nearby barn – with folksy dance music. Then as the night wears on he gives us the sound of the birds beginning to sing in the early morning. It’s subtle but very effective.
Co-produced with Theatre by the Lake where it opened at Keswick in the summer, this show is yet another huge feather in Jermyn Steet Theatre’s cap. As artistic director there, Tom Littler is rapidly re-inventing this cutting edge little venue.
First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Miss%20Julie&reviewsID=3044
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Campling Hicks Productions in association with Park Theatre. Allegations of sexual misconduct, confidentiality, lies, damaged people – there’s so much of it about that Matthew Campling’s new play The Secondary Victim, directed by Matthew Gould, could hardly be more timely. We’re in the world of counselling and therapy. Ali (Susannah Doyle) is a therapist. She is accused of sexual assault by her young client Hugo (Michael Hanratty) this becoming the titular secondary victim. We also see her counselling another client Teddy (Christopher Laishley) and we see Jonny (Matt Holt) counselling Hugo. The piece, almost entirely constructed on conversations, also shows Ali with her husband (Gary Webster) and her supervisor Marilyn (Natasha Bain). None of the issues are cut and dried and the play pulls several narrative surprises. Hanratty’s Hugo is, often, all blond insolence and over confidence. He is variously manipulative, arrogant, articulate, childish, dangerous, edgy, capricious, truculent and confused. He is also, of course, at another level vulnerable and troubled with a past which has scarred him deeply. Hanratty’s stunning performance, especially at the Hearing when his weaknesses are highlighted, takes us right inside this complex, multilayered character. There’s also excellent work from Susannah Doyle who finds all the right stillness and calm for Ali when she’s working but also gradually reveals a woman with plenty of problems of her own including the husband at home whose supportiveness comes on his own terms and isn’t always based on trust. The scene in which Ali confesses her worries to Natasha Bain’s Marilyn is dynamically pretty powerful. And Bain is spot on as the reassuring, understanding, realistic supervisor although we later learn that she too has, or acquires, issues in her own life. A lot of this play focuses on the tension between therapists at work and therapists in private. Bain, incidentally, also doubles, Portia-like, as Madam Chair for the disciplinary hearing, hair under a scarf, spectacles and an American accent. Here too she is both naturalistic and believable. It’s an ingenious play characterised by impeccably written, very convincing dialogue between different pairs of characters. Campling worked for twenty years as a therapist (simply an alternative term for a counsellor, the play informs us) and his understanding of the processes, problems and dangers informs every word. Not that there’s anything dry about it. He has also created a thoughtful fictional scenario which works well as drama and holds the interest for most of the time which is quite an achievement. It is, however, self-indulgently long and would benefit from some pretty rigorous pruning. The Secondary Victim might actually work better as a 90 minute one act play should it be further developed in the future. And next time please spare us the pointless loud noise – traffic? Wind? Tinnitus? Metaphor for stress? – at each scene change. First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Park%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Secondary%20Victim&reviewsID=3043 |
