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The Big Interview: Annemarie Lewis Thomas

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Annemarie Lewis Thomas is composer, musical director and founder principal of Musical Theatre Academy. MTA has just won the Stage School of the Year (2017) award for the second time. She chats to Susan Elkin

It was a walk in the park with her partner, Angie Peake and their dogs which propelled Annemarie Lewis Thomas into founding the remarkably successful Musical Theatre Academy (TheMTA) in 2009. “I’d been head of musical theatre in another school, had had some very unfortunate experiences including being both fired and slandered by the management” she says. “It was February 2008 and I was unhappy with everything. Then came the idea of starting an entirely ethical school of my own., ‘Do it’ said Angie. And we were off …”

I first met Annemarie early in 2009 when she invited me to sit on auditions for her inaugural group of students. She is short, fierce, funny, very Welsh and a fabulous musician. I watched her and two colleagues audition Sam Hallion and told her afterwards that I hoped they’d offered him a place. They did. He was one of her first group of 13 students. Six years after graduating Sam has played Matthew in the European tour of Jesus Christ Superstar and toured nationally (several times) as the youngest brother in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat among other things. He is one of MTA’s many success stories.

TheMTA now boasts over a hundred graduates, known as “ambassadors” all of whom had been signed up by independent agents by the time they left. 40 of them were in work on the December day I asked Annemarie for her latest statistics. Only 17% have left the performance industry and over two thirds of those still work in the theatre industry in other capacities – as agents, for example. These figures seem excellent for a profession which has notoriously high unemployment rates. But since other drama schools do not publish their statistics – one of Annemarie’s many frustrations – neither she nor I can make any useful comparisons. “We’re in touch with every single one of our ambassadors” says Annemarie who suspects that other drama schools are not. Three of TheMTA’s 2015 ambassadors had already earned enough to clear their student debts within a year of graduation.

Today, I’m talking to Annemarie in her small but neat and businesslike office at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham. The MTA was initially based at the Drill Hall in Chenies Street (now RADA studios) and then in studios behind a shop front in Holloway Road. The recent move to BGAC has given TheMTA much more space and a fine onsite theatre in which to stage most of its shows – at least one a term because Annemarie doesn’t believe in two years of classes before students are allowed to perform to the public, which is the usual pattern in three-year drama school courses.

Born in Swansea, the youngest of three children and the only girl, Annemarie was the child of a steel worker and a school cook. “They weren’t musical at all but there was a piano in the sitting room and my dad could play three chords in C major by ear very badly. So I started playing it too and then he got me lessons because he wanted me to be better than him.” Meanwhile – she was mesmerised by the Gilbert and Sullivan productions at church where her family were devoted attenders and her mother made the tea and coffee. “My mum used to take me to theatre elsewhere when she could too. I think it was a bonding thing between the two of us as I was her only daughter.”

She excelled on the piano (and took up the trumpet on which she was “no good”), passed Grade 8 and used it to earn pocket money and to establish some sort of “cool” image at school where she might otherwise have been a bit of a misfit. “I directed shows at school and of course, because it was Wales there were Eisteddfods to take part in. I also played for a ballet school which taught me how to accompany dance, worked in working men’s clubs often just vamping and of course there were always church organs and hymns.”

Eventually, having scraped through her A levels, she went to Middlesex Polytechnic to do a degree in performing arts, specialising in music. Many years later Annemarie and Angie have adopted a son who is now three years old but she hasn’t always been gay. “I was straight when I was at university because I tended to fall in love with a person rather than a gender. Actually there haven’t been many relationships – I’m Miss Monogamy really – and Angie and I are, of course, for life.” Angie, of whom more later, is a mental health professional and deeply involved with the ethos of TheMTA.

Annemarie regards musical directing as her “real job” although she has always taught as well. After university, she taught singing, for instance, at Hertfordshire Theatre School where, in due course she became Head of Musical Theatre. She has worked at Youth Music Theatre UK since it began as well as at Broxbourne College and back at her own alma mater, now rebranded Middlesex University too. At the same time, she directed lots of fringe and “off West End” shows as well as the Christmas Musicals at Battersea Arts Centre under Jack Gunner which she regards as “very good training”.

She has also always written music and been asked to provide material such as songs as well as arrangements. “But it was usually functional and for a long time I didn’t really see myself as a proper composer.” Gradually she began to create complete, successful shows often writing the lyrics as well as the music. For example, her published works include Around the World in Eighty Days (Samuel French), Uncle Ebenezer (Oberon Books), Dangerous Daughters (Samuel French) and Great Expectations (published through YMT UK)

Her finest achievement to date, though, is TheMTA whose very apt motto is “rigorously professional”. One of its principles is that all the teaching staff are also working professionals. Annemarie audits annually everyone who works for her and parts company with anyone whose professional track record has hit the buffers. Of course she applies the same standards to herself and continues with her own professional composing and directing.

Another thing which distinguishes TheMTA is its size and the structure of the course. It’s an accelerated two year course so students have to fund their accommodation, subsistence and so on for two years rather than three. Its four terms per year are long and breaks are very short so that students get as many hours of teaching in two years as their counterparts elsewhere get in three. There is only one course. A maximum of 22 students are recruited each year and there are definitely no plans to expand.

Then there’s transparency. Annemarie was determined from the very beginning that everything should be open and ethical. “Any student can access the accounts and we have a management board which includes two ambassadors because I want to be sure we never lose sight of our founding principles” says Annemarie, adding that TheMTA is now a registered charity so that she is an employee rather than the owner.

In 2012 TheMTA’s rapid success impressed judges at The Stage so much that it was dubbed Stage School of the Year. This year – 2017 – it is shortlisted again with the final result due at the end of January. “We are utterly delighted of course” says Annemarie “not least because it’s partly in recognition of Time4Change which we’ve spearheaded.”

Angie has worked assiduously as counsellor and adviser at TheMTA from the beginning and she and Annemarie both know that mental health problems are rife in the industry – far more so than is usually acknowledged. Fear of failure and unemployment as well as having to expose yourself to audience and cameras every day can take their toll on mental wellbeing.

Time4Change (#time4change) is a charter drawn up by Angie which commits any organisation which signs up to alertness and a duty of care towards the people it works with. At the time of writing there are 115 signatories including theatres, agencies and a growing number of vocational schools. “If problems are addressed early they can often be fully dealt with” says Annemarie who is hoping that Time4Change will help to reduce the numbers of desperately anxious, ill actors and other performers in the future.

I’ve met Annemarie many times since that first encounter in 2009 and I’ve watched with pleasure as her enterprise has grown and developed. This time she’s very busy because it’s the day before the opening of TheMTA’s pantomime Robin Hood, which she herself has written. She takes me onto the (rather beautiful) set before I leave. The annual panto is, yet another strand in this ethical organisation. Local primary schools are invited on a “pay-what-you-can” basis and Robin Hood was due to play to some packed houses. So I left them all to it reflecting on what a lot you can achieve in just seven years if you’re sufficiently passionate and determined.

TheMTA’s next show is Something Old Something New, its annual revue, at Bernie Grant Arts Centre 15-18 March. www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk

TheMTA is currently auditioning for students to start the course in October 2017. www.themta.co.uk

For more info about Annemarie Lewis Thomas see her personal website annemarielewisthomas.co.uk

First published in Ink Pellet http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/2017/01/the-big-interview-annemarie-lewis-thomas/

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A visit to the new Winton Gallery at the Science Museum highlights the role mathematics has in shaping our world. Susan Elkin is our guide.

The sea churned beneath me. The tiny plane kept dipping down towards it. Nightmare stuff for someone who dislikes flying so much that I never even sit in a window seat because I don’t want to see the ground. But actually on this occasion my feet were firmly on the ground. I was at the opening of the Mathematics: The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum last month. My foray into a light aircraft was courtesy of a high tech Samsung headset where the commentary explained the digitally presented principles of flight. And it’s testament to the effectiveness of the experience that I found it really quite disconcerting.

The new gallery, mainly funded by David and Claudia Harding with Samsung as principal sponsor, is entirely dedicated to maths. It seeks to show that maths underpins all aspects of everyday life, just as language does. And the gallery itself is a stunning example of art meets science. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects it uses the patterns made by air currents in flight as its visual inspiration. The result is a huge central mass of pink/purple blue ethereal but solid, beautifully lit shapes between the roof and a Handley Page “Gugnunc” aircraft. It’s an impressively dramatic statement.

The content of the rest of the gallery is based around 100 items from the Science Museum’s collection. Each tells, or contributes to, a powerful story about how maths has shaped, or been shaped by, some of our most fundamental human concerns – from trade and travel to war, peace, life, death, form and beauty – during the last four centuries.

Thus there’s a 17th century Islamic astrolabe which uses ancient mathematical techniques to map the night sky. Nearby is an early example of the famous Enigma machine used to resist code breaking during World War Two. Also on display is the box of glass eyes which Frances Galton used in 1884 to develop statistics to support the political movement he called “Eugenics”. There’s a splendid classical door case from Lincoln’s Inn to demonstrate that architecture is a mathematical discipline because of its links with geometry.

There are displays about medicine, forensics, statistics and much more – although I was slightly puzzled by the conspicuous absence of music which has many inarguable mathematical patterns and concepts. Captioning and explanations are commendably well written and accessible. The loud and clear message is that maths is crucial to life and closely related to most other subjects so somehow we have to engage young people with it as something exciting and interesting to learn about and experiment with, rather than letting them write it off as boring and difficult as so many adults do. It also makes the point that you cannot study or appreciate maths in isolation. Its real beauty is its intricate relationship with everything else.

Dame Zaha Hadid died suddenly last year so she didn’t, unfortunately, see this project through to fruition – her company’s first museum gallery design. Her influence is everywhere in the gallery though. Having studied mathematics at university she always regarded it as central to her work. “When I was growing up in Iraq, math was an everyday part of life” she said. “We would play with math problems just as we would play with pens and paper to draw. Math was like sketching.”

That is the attitude we need to cultivate in British children today and the Winton Gallery could help. It is now open daily and admission is free. I predict that many school parties will visit as well as families. “My dream is that soon the ‘maths field trip’ will be as standard as the theatre visit or geography expedition now that this gallery is here” said David Rooney, lead curator of The Winton Gallery, at the launch.

Rooney is also the Science Museum’s Keeper of Technologies and Engineering. His new book Mathematics: How it Shaped Our World is effectively an adjunct to the exhibits on display in Mathematics: The Winton Gallery. www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mathematics

Mathematics: How it Shaped Our World by David Rooney. ISBN 978-1-78551-039-7 Scala Arts and Heritage Publishers. RRP £40 hard back. The paperback version, £25, is available only from the Science Museum shop.

First published in Ink Pellet: http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/2017/01/beautiful-maths/

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh with schoolchildren from Sion-Manning RC Girls' School

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Design Museum with schoolchildren from Sion-Manning RC Girls’ School

The Design Ventura competition organised by the Design Museum invites product design entries from secondary schools. Susan Elkin visits the Museum’s stunning new home.

Anyone who remembers the old Commonwealth Institute in Kensington will be delighted that – at last – the building has been rescued and restored to glory. Architect John Pawson has used the iconic shell as a framework for the Design Museum’s spacious (10,000 square metre) new home.

A mass of glass, oak and space, the new venue is three times larger than the museum’s former home in Shad Thames. “We are absolutely thrilled with our new learning spaces” said Head of Learning, Catherine Ritman-Smith showing me round on the museum’s press day in November. There is a roomy casual area in which children and young people coming in pre-booked school parties can eat their packed lunches, listen to informal talks and so on. Then there are practical work rooms – all suffused with natural light where young learners can experiment and familiarise themselves with design principles.

Elsewhere in the building permanent and temporary displays make the point that every manufactured item we use – maps, musical instruments, kitchen equipment, computer programmes, clothes and much more – has been designed. Design is an essential art form. One of the museum’s most memorable sections is a crowd-sourced wall of exhibits. It’s intended to be a diverse selection of 200 objects and included are items as various as a Bible, a Coca-Cola can, a pair of rubber gloves and a plastic garden chair. The London Underground roundel is there too, selected by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan for its bold simplicity. No wonder Sir Terence Conran, founder of the Design Museum hopes excitedly that this “magnificent new cathedral of design” will “educate, inspire and delight future generations for years to come and truly make a difference to the world around us.”

There’s a Design Museum Shop downstairs which has another branch on Kensington High Street. Last summer you might have bought there – for ten pounds – a children’s game. It included a wind up mechanism, track complete with lots of stickers and some propulsion. Good fun, simple and very original.

This item was the culmination of last year’s Design Ventura project – the biggest thing the Learning Department does. It’s a design competition for secondary schools which attracts hundreds of entries and last year’s winners were six Year 9 and Year 10 boys from Finchley Catholic High School under the guidance of curriculum leader Design Technology, Liam Hourican.

Catherine Ritman-Smith, Head of Learning tells me that around 10,000 participants aged 13 to 16 are taking part this year and that the project is, as usual, generously funded by Deutsche Bank. “Teachers like it because the skills are all transferable and it helps to validate the value of design as a subject” she says, telling me that nearly 600 schools have taken part since the Design Museum launched the competition in 2010.

This year’s theme, announced last summer, is “change”. Students worked last term in groups to produce imaginative design ideas for a product in simple materials which could sell for £10 in the Design Museum Shop. Participating schools then registered by November – there is no charge for taking part – and eventually submitted their design ideas. The final shortlist of ten present their ideas to a panel of top-notch designers such as Naomi Cleaver and Yen before a winner is selected.

Along the way comes training and support for teachers, mentoring for students from designers who really know their stuff. And the icing on the cake is that when a winning idea is eventually chosen, it is developed and made for sale in the museum shop in the spring of the following year. So there will be a lot going on this term. Entries for the next competition will be invited in autumn 2017. Meanwhile look out for this year’s winning design in the museum shop in a few months’ time.

Hourican and his pupils have happy memories of spending a whole day at the Design Museum as one of the shortlisted schools presenting their idea to a panel of judges including Jasper Conran. Then they worked with the designer Yen in Shoreditch, met designers back at their own school and attended a productive canteen lunch with committed and enthusiastic Deutsche Bank employees. “The students helped to make decisions and there were plenty of good discussions – they had to change the product’s name, for example. “One of the really useful things about this competition” says Hourican is that there’s a commercial element because the product is going on sale for real and the boys had to learn about budgeting and marketing as well as designing their game”

Profits go to a charity chosen by the winning team. The Finchley Catholic High School product raised about £1000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital, for example.

“Design Technology has become a tricky subject to make a case for and we’ve heard of departments closing in some schools.” Says Ritman-Smith. “We find that if pupils take part in Design Ventura in Year 9 it can be the trigger which leads them to opt for it at GCSE so we are helping to keep alive something which is crucial to industry and entrepreneurialism.”

designmuseum.org/schools-colleges-and-universities

The 2017 deadline for schools to register for Design Ventura will be in November ventura.designmuseum.org

Only schools many enter groups. The competition is not open to individuals.

First published in Ink Pellet: http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/2017/01/design-competition-for-schools/

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Michael Volpe is the director of Opera Holland Park but his background is unusual. He spoke to Susan Elkin

Tell me about your family and upbringing My parents were Italian immigrants. I’m the youngest of four brothers. We were very poor and I grew up on a Fulham council estate. Our dad left us when I was seven months old. My elder brother, Matteo spent a lot of time in prison. It was hard, rough and difficult but my mother worked very hard, defended us fiercely (sometimes literally) and faced the challenges indomitably. Her fight was a good fight.

So what happened to change that? I was selected via my primary school to attend Wolverstone in Suffolk. It was a grammar school – suffused with public school values and staffed by top notch teachers. Children from poor backgrounds but with potential were given the opportunity to board there. It was an experimental state school, long gone. Political considerations watered it down by making it non-selective and eventually it was closed.

Do I detect strong feelings about education? Yes, and they’re entirely apolitical. Learning for the sake of learning is vital. Nothing needs to be justified. Learning is much more important than any consideration of “relevance”. The present system overvalues rote learning and technocracy. Where’s the breadth? Scientists, for example, will be better at their work if they are also committed to literature and music. As it is, standards are being lowered all the time to demonstrate achievement. But we’ve become deeply scared of depth and what is perceived as elitism and I’m not sure we can put the bolted horse back in the stable. I’m wary of both the political left and the right on all this.

So you did well at Wolverstone? No, not really. I learned a huge amount and still find I know things that our wonderful teachers taught us. But when it came to O levels I made a conscious decision – very stupidly – that I wasn’t going to bother to apply myself to any of it. So I left without anything much in the way of qualifications. I talk a lot about this when I do aspirational talks in secondary schools today. The only person who can make any real difference to your life is YOU. So you need to get the very best you can out of the system you find yourself in and seize opportunities.

How did you get involved in opera? I’d picked up a liking for classical music at Wolverstone although I’m not a musician. And of course, I still feel Italian. I founded Opera Holland Park in 1996 and for a long time it ran as a summer festival managed by the borough. Today it is an independent entity supported by the borough and other sponsors.

How does it differ from other opera companies? We wanted to give emerging, British-based performers the opportunity to sing and work with more experienced and established artists. We still retain that ideal.

How easy was it for you to be accepted by the world of opera? Well I was ALWAYS right. And I was an unusual beast: forthright even cheeky to the politicians and never afraid to tell them categorically what I believed they should do, but I was loyal, honest and dedicated. It was those qualities that I think stopped them from booting me out. Ideas were never a problem for me. The strategic patience to deliver them (and to gently coax people into sharing my vision) most certainly was.

What does Opera Holland Park do to support education? As much as we possibly can within the budget constraints, because of course I want opera to enhance everything kids are studying and to deepen understanding across the board. Our production of Alice in Wonderland, for example, can lead to learning about music, literature and history. And workshops relating to it develop confidence, presentation skills and critical thinking. We have an education manager and there’s a huge variety in the work.

So what does that variety involve? There are schools’ workshops relating to every production and next year there will be a school’s matinee of Carmen. Kids that come will have worked on their own versions of songs and scenes and designed a poster – among other things. Sometimes opera can work where nothing else does. They’re an amazing bunch of kids. They recently wrote and performed a mini-opera.

Is it difficult to get schools involved? Sadly, yes it is. They have curriculum driven time constraints and often there’s no one in the school with the vision to understand that opera is an invaluable enhancement rather than a distraction. It’s particularly difficult to reach Key Stage 4 and beyond and the groups which are the most disadvantaged.

Would you like the last word on education? Thanks! I think every child should have an hour of culture in school every week from age 5. Children who grow up with, say, symphonies are perfectly well able to cope and it doesn’t mean they can’t listen to lots of other stuff as well. It teaches them to listen, analyse and draw parallels among a million or so other skills. What’s not to like?

Michael Volpe’s book Noisy at the Wrong Times: The story of a boy who didn’t know his place (2015) is published by Two Roads.

First published by Ink Pellet, January 2017 http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/2017/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-michael-volpe/

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Poor SATS results putting pressure on a headteacher’s job… a new play examines the issues and Susan Elkin meets the playwright.

Plays about primary schools are not exactly two a penny so watch out for School Play which runs next month at Southwark Playhouse. Set in a Headteacher’s office the play, according to playwright Alex MacKeith, “explores the dynamic between teachers and private tutors hired in to supplement lessons”

Alex, still in his early twenties, graduated from Cambridge with a classics degree in 2014. Since then he has, among other things, worked as a private tutor in a south London primary school. He, and a number of others, come in to take small groups for SATS coaching usually at the end of the main school day in an afterschool club. “There were a number of us doing this – perhaps as many as twenty” he says. “Clearly we weren’t required to have a teaching qualification but we were, obviously, all DBS checked. I worked with the children on reading, writing and maths.”

So who is paying tutors like him working in state schools? Alex chuckles. “That’s a key question isn’t it? And in real life I don’t actually know the answer – except that it might have been via the pupil premium. It’s certainly an issue in the play. There I suggest that the parents could be asked to contribute and explore the implications of that”.

He continues: “It was a strange position to be in because we were neither NQTs nor teaching assistants. The children – or their parents – opted in to these extra sessions and were warmly encouraged to do so. The regular teachers often remained in the room. I became fascinated by how it worked and my play grew out of that.” Himself the son of two teachers, Alex describes the atmosphere he has seen in schools as “contentious”, “fraught” and “full of conflict” to such an extent that he can’t understand why it has never been examined dramatically before.

Alex is very aware of the pressures on teachers in general and headteachers in particular although he says firmly that “as tutors we weren’t fully au fait with the politics”. He is. However, shocked at what teachers have to deal with and put up with. “How do they stay alive?” he asks. “Why aren’t they celebrated?”

School Play, which uses a cast of five, presents a headteacher whose job is on the line because the school’s SATS results aren’t good enough which, if they’re not improved very quickly, could lead to an Ofsted downgrading. “I’ve kept everything in the play as close to the ground as possible” says Alex adding that his other four characters are the headteacher’s assistant, a parent, a tutor and a pupil.

Having been a member of the Footlights while he was at Cambridge, Alex has written plays before but School Play is his first to be professionally performed in a London venue. “I actually had a place to do an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) at Columbia University but then the theatre company Antic | Face expressed interest in School Play so I’m doing this instead.” For Alex, Antic | Face and Southward Playhouse with Charlie Parham as director are “a dream team”.

Antic | Face is a newish company consisting of co-artistic directors Charlie Parham and Emma Hall and executive producer, Joanna Nash. It was formed with twin aims: to redress a gender imbalance that persists in all fields of theatrical practice; and to provide a collaborative platform for young people seeking to enter the profession in any capacity. With a strong focus on the text, the company is committed both to revisiting the classics and bringing them to a young audience, and to promoting new writing. School Play is evidently part of the new writing commitment as well as helping young actors. “We use pupil-age actors – two of them rotating” and I’m really pleased about that” said Alex who was just about to go into rehearsals for School Play when he spoke to Ink Pellet.

“I visited primary schools with the director and the designer in preparation for the staging of the play because we want to get everything right” says Alex who is determined that nothing in School Play will be patronising. “It’s an examination of the issues not a comment on them and it poses far more questions than it answers” he says.

School Play by Alex MacKeith, 1-25 February.

Southwark Playhouse, 77-78 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD
Box Office 020 7407 0234, @swkplay, www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Ticket prices £12 (previews before 6 February). £20 standard or £16 concession after 6 February.

First published in Ink Pellet http://www.inkpellet.co.uk/2017/01/school-play/

1. National Youth Theatre Rep Company

Every year, the National Youth Theatre recruits 15 of its members, aged 18-25, to form a repertory training company. The scheme is now in its fifth year. Actors learn through classes and rehearsals. Then they mount a West End season of contrasting plays – usually three – that run through the autumn. The recent 2016 season comprised Romeo and Juliet, Pigeon English and DNA…

To read the rest of this article, first published in The Stage, and learn about eight different ways of accessing nil-cost training follow this link: https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2017/train-free-youth-groups-masterclasse/

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The Tempest

Salon:Collective at Cockpit Theatre

In Shakespeare’s time actors were given their parts to learn – with cues. They were not issued with a copy of the whole play. This was mainly to stop them – long before copyright legislation – selling the text to a rival company as a lucrative sideline. It would have made for some lively improvisation and imaginative acting given that to start with, at least, an actor would have arrived at the performance of a scene without even knowing in advance how many characters were onstage or what was going on in the plot.

Interestingly, this situation is what The Salon: Collective, directed by the highly talented Lizzie Conrad Hughes who also plays Prospero, has tried to reproduce. Its cast have worked from parts only – with cues. Of course it doesn’t completely work in the 21st Century partly because some of these actors will undoubtedly have studied or worked on The Tempest in the past and already know the play pretty well. Secondly, they obviously get more familiar with it at each successive performance so that, as time goes on, there are ever fewer surprises for the actors. Nonetheless you can hear the quality of the listening as actors bounce off each other.

It is certainly a fresh production with some impressive verse speaking and crystal clear story telling. It’s also surprisingly funny. Although The Tempest is a comedy in the sense that no one dies and it isn’t a tragedy it isn’t usually a barrel of laughs. This version – with the occasional insertion of a modern line – is intelligently witty. I like the feminist take too – the dynamic of the relationship between the controlling Prospero and Miranda (Laurie Stevens) is quite different when they are mother and daughter rather than father and daughter. Ariel is also played by a woman (Eugenia Low) as are both Alonso (Geraldine Brennan) and Gonzalo (Angela Harvey). And it isn’t “gender blind casting” The roles are re-worked as female and there’s a strong sense of the women being in charge. Another plus is that the masques in Act 4 – I usually breathe a sigh of relief when they’re cut – are actually sparky fun in this production so that you’re sorry when they’re over.

Conrad Hughes is by turns ruthless, kind, thoughtful, angry, rueful, amused, forgetful, dicatorial and much more. It’s a fully rounded and impressive central performance. Laurie Stevens gives Miranda the right blend of attractive innocence and youthful lust and Eugenia Low manages to create a compelling blend of light other worldliness and physical solidity in Ariel. I could, personally, have done without the curious ticking which preceded her magic spell entries – too reminiscent of the crocodile in Peter Pan – but it’s a small point.

Lawrence Carmichael’s growling, panting Caliban – somewhere between the Elephant Man and Frankenstein’s monster – develops well into a vulnerable but manipulative human being. Matthew Williams is very watchable as the exploitative, mostly drunk, Stefano.

One of the distinguishing features of this take on The Tempest is the inclusion of a prompt who is peripherally part of the action. She presents a verse prologue and epilogue (the latter is completely uneccessary “No epilogue I pray you; for your play needs no excuse” as Shakespeare makes Theseus say in a different play) and then sits visibly “on book”. Actors often call, in an in-role tone of voice, for their lines. It’s a seamless, entertaining process and an interesting reflection on how things must have been in the early 1600s. The proper folksy jig at the end works well though. Not all these actors can dance well but enthusiasm carries the day.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West End & Fringe-The Tempest&reviewsID=2724

 

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Annie

Cambridge Operatic Society

From the moment the fine nine-piece band strikes up in the pit you know you’re in for a pretty professional treat. Annie isn’t an easy show to bring off with real aplomb because it’s so well known that the audience arrives with pre-set expectations. Chris Cuming (director) and Lucas Elkin (musical director) have met that problem head on and developed a fresh, lively take on this musical theatre stalwart. The acting is naturalistic and convincing across a large cast with some imaginative ensemble work. The singing from almost everyone is vibrant and tuneful with excellent diction. Cuming’s decision to go for a fairly spare set, well lit by Alan Morgan’s designs comes off pretty well too.

Annie is, of course, a classic and strong rags-to-riches story set firmly against the realistic historical background – the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash. That’s why it works as well as it does. In this enjoyable production the sentiment is never allowed to be too saccharine and there’s plenty of grit. Suzanne Emerson as head of the orphanage, Miss Hannigan, is, for example seriously nasty. Yes, her simpering mood changes are funny but she is actually an appalling abuser of children and Emerson conveys that effectively. In contrast rich-voiced Steven Waring, the super-rich business man who eventually recognises that money isn’t everything and that human relationships matter more gives us a fully rounded, very warm, thought-provoking character. And there’s an outstanding performance from Emma Viecelli as his assistant, Grace. She sings magnificently and her acting – signalling to Waring when he’s on the phone, managing the staff, offering opinions – is invisible. And that’s always the sign of an actor who really is on top of the job.

And so to the children. The company is using two teams for its six-performance run. Phoebe Poulter-Kerry played Annie on press night with the rest of the Washington Team. What talent! She finds all the feistiness and wistfulness which Annie needs, projects a shining stage personality and sings as if she was born doing it. In a show in which she is rarely off stage her very finest moment is singing in a cracked voice at the beginning of Act 2 when she hears bad news. Few adults could bring it off as well as Phoebe does. She even manages the Sandy the dog (Kiyo) like a pro. I hope we shall hear and see more of her. The other eight children who make up the orphanage chorus are nicely individualised with some especially colourful work from Lydia Amy Ward as Molly and their dancing (choreography by Chris Cuming) is impressively accomplished.

Non-pro groups don’t have the luxury of preview performances at which to sort the technical glitches. There were some sound problems on press night (screechy sounding children, for instance) and one or two stage management issues but it would have taken a pretty discerning professional ear/eye to pick them up and most of the audience were delighted with the show – and rightly so.
First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Cambridge%20Operatic%20Society-Annie&reviewsID=2729