In a Pickle (Susan Elkin reviews)

t isn’t often you see a youth theatre show presented with full professional production values and I’ve been lucky enough to see two this Christmas (the other was The Wind in the Willows at Rose Theatre, Kingston). This Peter Pan (my third PP this year) is played entirely by CFYT members and there are no professionals in the cast. And, in the hands of director, Dale Rooks who heads Chichester Festival Theatre’s impressive Learning and Participation Department, it’s a magnificent show. The scale is epic because, of course, the playing space is large and enables Rooks to have big groups of dancing mermaids, stamping pirates, (very) lost boys, Red Indians and so on. Every single individual is skilfully grafted into to a slickly accomplished ensemble.

At the heart of the show is outstanding work by Sephora Parish as Wendy on press night – she alternates at other performances with Amy Norman. Sephora is a very naturalistic actor who finds exactly the right blend of feisty feminism, maternal instinct, burgeoning adult feelings towards Peter and childish need for her own mother in her very complex role. Darcy Collins (alternating with Megan O’Hanlon) creates a fine, angry, ever-present Tinker Bell who communicates very effectively in squeaks and gestures. Her epaulettes light up and her trainers flash. Sami Green’s Peter (his alter ego is Freddie Hill) is suitably rueful, sparky, sad, loyal and brave but ultimately a loner.

This production, rather refreshingly, goes back to JM Barrie’s script and uses many unfamiliar words and lines. It makes the dialogue sound slightly stilted in places but the benefits outweigh that because the characters – especially amongst the lost boys are unusually well developed.

Another very successful decision is to create the Neverland set (designed by Simon Higlet) based on a scaled up iron-railed bed. It reminds us that we are never actually very far from the nursery the piece begins and ends in because, in a sense, the whole construct is a children’s dream fantasy.

A six-piece live band, led by Musical Director, Colin Billing provides atmospheric background music, composed by Eamonn O’Dwyer. This isn’t musical theatre but music is an important strand in managing the mood. It also allows song where it’s appropriate, such as the pirates’ robust, stamping shanty.

Costumes (by Ryan Dawson Laight) are inspired too. We are, more or less in modern, or at least timeless, dress. The motley lost boys in yellows and browns have a look of Lord of the Flies about them with their little rucksacks and individual personalised items such the odd tie round a head. The pirates look genuinely menacing and brigand-like and Hook (Hal Darling on press night, alternating with Alexander Hughes) is, praise be, not styled as Charles II, Instead he has Fagin-esque straggly hair and a floor-length coat. And the mermaids dancing with jelly fish umbrellas are an immaculately choreographed delight.

Flying is bound to be a problem in a youth theatre production but the puppetry solution works beautifully. It’s all part of the captivating make-believe game and rarely has the suspension of disbelief been so easy.

It is quite unusual for a venue to turn its main house over to its youth theatre rather than producing an income generating populist professional show such as a pantomime. Bravo Chichester Festival Theatre. It’s an enlightened policy, more than justified by the quality and verve of the work.

The Fairies. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Poor people lie at the heart of the Robin Hood legend although they usually get lost when the tale suffers the pantomime treatment. Greg Banks’ engaging, intelligent version begins and ends with the poor – and as a certain charismatic orator is reported once to have said, they are with us always. The poor who open and close this show are hungry, homeless and cold and they could be anywhere at any time in history. It is they who act out a four-hander ensemble retelling of Robin Hood, improvising their props as they go along. The device isn’t original, of course, but it works to excellent effect here by putting a fresh, disturbingly topical, spin on the story.

Rebecca Killick, lithe and diminutive is one of those actors who lights up the stage. A lively mover (she shins up a rope without knots) and sweet-voiced singer, she presents a feisty, fresh Marion (among other roles) and has a delightful knack of smiling as she sings. Stephen Leask is splendid as camp Prince John, decent Friar Tuck and red capped Will Scarlet and he does a nice little turn with an imaginary, but vociferous, dog before the show starts. Peter Edwards, is equally versatile as Robin Hood and other parts while Nik Howden gives us an utterly hateful Sheriff of Nottingham who leaps in and out of other roles so adeptly that you barely notice it’s the same man.

The simple songs (by Thomas Johnson), with infectiously muscular choreography, have a distinct whiff of the folksy 1960s about them and are accompanied by a fine three-piece band – all female which is a refreshing change. The band is placed on a small dais in a corner of the intimate auditorium configured in the round within the venue’s eponymous oval shape. Hannah Wolfe’s set consists mostly of sawn off trees and logs which represent the forest and obstacles of various kinds.

It’s a chirpy, physical show with seamless ensemble story telling and some very slick switches. It pulsates along with admirable energy and verve. The pacing is good too. I think everyone in the room is surprises when Nik Howden leads a lyrical quartet in a beautifully nuanced falsetto The fights (directed by Tom Jordan) are impressve too, especially given how close the actors are to the audience.

I don’t ever recall seeing a show which has been sponsored by a school before. Well done King Edward’s School Bath where staff clearly understand the extraordinary but immeasurable power of drama and theatre.

bloodiest. Presented as a six hander it runs for just ninety tense minutes. And unlike just about every other abridged Hamlet there is no doubling apart from a resurrected Polonius (David Fielder) morphing into the gravedigger. Instead we get, for example, a conflation of Laertes with Horatio and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Also neat is the way Kelly Hunter runs one scene on the back of another so that, for example the mad scene segues out of the closet scene and the final scene takes place around the body of Ophelia (Francesca Zoutewelle) as if we were still at the graveside. It makes for very coherent, well paced storytelling – and also means you’re not fretting about the last train as you do towards the end of a full-length Hamlet.

Mark Arends as Hamlet trembles, weeps, twitches, has fits during which he’s possessed by his father’s ghost, sings, and succumbs to childish tantrums, as well as having, and using, what must be the most expressive feet in the industry. They’re as delicate and articulate as another pair of hands. It’s a riveting performance. Highly talented Francesca Zoutewelle gives us the most harrowing mad scene ever and Katy Stephens is pretty mesmerising as a drunken, troubled Gertrude trying to conceal her own misery even from herself. She dies horribly and beautifully. Tom Mannion’s measured, manipulative Claudius is enhanced by his magnificent speaking voice and David Fielder does wonderful things with his penetrating, darting eyes as nosy but unfortunate Polonius. Finlay Cormack finds plenty of passion in his composite Laertes role too.

This Hamlet is effectively an intimate family drama played in a small black box studio which makes it feel appropriately immersive. The simple set helps too – it consists mostly of a black leather sofa which gets imaginatively used for various purposes including the provision of a hiding place for eavesdroppers.

On the whole this is a very interesting and well thought out take on the play with some outstanding acting. I have only two gripes. The dropping into modern English and the reworking of the play within a play as a game feels awkward and contrived. Secondly, the famous unearthed skull is definitely Yorrick’s. There has never been any textual doubt about that since the day the play was written. So why use a skull which is clearly not human?