Once I’d got over the frustration of being sent a press release without any event dates on it and made a fuss, I was very interested to read about the London Writers’ Week at Central St Martins, beginning on July 5.
It includes In Battalions, a “festival”…..
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Credit: sardinesmagazine.co.uk
Taiko style rhythmic drumming, dazzling lights and line fighting in silhouette make for battle scenes as effective as I’ve ever seen them staged. Add to that soldiers running round the auditorium and the siege of Harfleur encompassing the entire space immersively and you’re in a pretty memorable Henry V.
We start with the full cast on stage in mufti – it’s modern dress anyway – being introduced by Charlotte Cornwell as a warm voiced chorus who wanders round the stage like a casting director before eventually presenting the crown to Michelle Terry. Cornwell then sits at the edge of the stage throughout the show, watching attentively director-style, stepping in and out of the action to drop in those familiar choruses, some of the most evocatative and colourful poetry Shakespeare ever wrote. Here, although they’re sometimes subdivided into shorter interjections, they’re given pretty straight. Cornwell simply allows the verse to work its descriptive magic – especially after the interval when real life dusk is setting in, soldiers have fires in the corners and we’re led to think about the sounds, fears and the need for “a little touch of Harry in the night” before Agincourt.
This show has been cast gender-blind but mostly the sexes of the characters haven’t changed although Joy Richardson gives us modern take on a female Bishop of Ely. Thus Mountjoy the herald is interestingly played by Jessica Regan as a man and Ben Wiggins plays a very feminine Katharine wittily while Catrin Aaron plays a feisty Fluellen.
Michelle Terry is physically very small and it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to accept her as a forceful, charismatic king although she certainly offers an interesting interpretation. At the beginning, during the Archbishop’s Sir Humphry-style attempts to manipulate him, Terry’s boyish, nervous, troubled, out of his depth young king works his fingers nervously. She allows him to get really angry on receiving the Dauphin’s tennis balls and thereafter presents a king growing visibly into leadership. She finds plenty of tension before the battle too in a king who is trying desperately to appear confident while privately beset by fears and worries. And when she gets to the wooing scene at the end of the play, Terry is gruff, mannish, absurd and funny.
In general, under Robert Hastie’s intelligent direction, this is a pretty “clean” crisp take on Henry V which concentrates on linear story telling. All the sub plots – the offstage death of Falstaff, the full treatment of the three conspirators, the feud between Fluellen and Pistol – are gone. At the same time the words are delivered with crystalline clarity so that the narrative is driven home firmly. The young woman sitting next to me who muttered to her companion before the show started that she was apprehensive about seeing a Shakespeare play which was new to her, really couldn’t have had any difficulty following what was going on. And that is probably the most important thing of all. Shakespeare can be played without gimmicks but with imagination and be totally – and enjoyably – comprehensible.
9308A fascinating range of reviews from 1982 to 2015, this book highlights the ever-perceptive work of veteran Scotsman critic Joyce McMillan. Her style is direct and she has a well-honed talent for….
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This article was by Susan Elkin for TheStage – See original article here
Credit Matt Humphrey, Curtain Call Book
Jessica Ronane, casting director at The Old Vic, talks to Susan Elkin
For Jessica Ronane CDG experience is circular. She is, for example, casting director at The Old Vic, the building in which she once trained for as a musical theatre performer. She is best known as casting director for Billy Elliot. “And that took me straight back to my own childhood in dance and stage schools” she says.
Daughter of actor Jack Ronane, she comes from a theatrical family. Her dance teacher Priscilla De Meric, suggested full-time dance school and aged ten she started a nine year stint at Elmhurst. “It shaped me completely. An education like that almost brands you and it has led to everything I’ve done since so I’m very positive about the decision which was made for me” she says, pointing out that a full-time dance education also teaches you hard work and pain management.
That attitude was handy last year when, having just accepted the The Old Vic post, she found herself pregnant with her third child. Old Vic director Matthew Warchus and his staff were unfazed. “They were refreshingly supportive. Matthew’s view was that women have babies and that’s fine” she recalls. “I worked up to my daughter’s birth last May and then took her in with me until December. Yes it’s perfectly do-able when you have colleagues who confidently and understandingly take such things in their stride.”
Ronane’s adult professional career began with a Bill Kenwright tour as the baby of the company. “It was a light hearted show and fun and we eventually came into the Piccadilly Theatre, in the West End.” Other shows followed. Then came a turning point.
“I was 27 and coming out of a long-term relationship. I wasn’t busy enough professionally and I wanted a change. I was pretty sure I could cast so I went to see Jina Jay whom I knew because I used to babysit her kids.”
Ronane was quite literally in the right place at the right time. By chance producer Jon Finn phoned while she was in Jay’s office. A musical version of Billy Elliot was under discussion and that he needed someone to find boy dancers. “I met choreographer Peter Darling the next day and they took a big gamble on me with my total lack of experience” she grins.
“I had to start completely from scratch and leave no stone unturned” she says. Starting with Elmhurst she contacted every ballet school in the country in search of boys and found many real life Billy Elliot stories. She travelled hundreds of miles to persuade the children, their teachers and parents to let them attend regional workshops with Stephen Daldry and the team. Eventually she found the boys she needed and, in time, arrangements including the famous Billy House and tutors were made for them in London. “Liam Mower, then 10, was one of the first. He also auditioned for, and got a place at, the Royal Ballet School. He’s now a soloist in the Matthew Bourne company” she says fondly.
By the time Billy Elliot closed in London earlier this month Ronane and her colleagues (as it snowballed she was no longer expected to do the job single handedly) had cast 42 Billys. And she continues to “look after” the nationwide Billy Elliot tour which starts this autumn.
Meanwhile she has built up a substantial freelance business. She was, and is, responsible for casting all the children in Matilda the Musical. “When I was first approached it was only expected to be a little short-run Christmas show” she chuckles wryly, telling me that the RSC’s original intention was to use young actors rather than children. “I’ve always cast adults as well as children although that’s not what people associate me with” she says.
And that brings us rather neatly to the Old Vic and her small but attractive office, where she and I are chatting. “I’d worked with Matthew on Matilda and I was offered me this job when he took over from Kevin Spacey. Kevin did three or four shows a year. Matthew is doing seven or eight so there’s a lot of casting to do.”
We are talking the day after the opening of The Caretaker and I have bumped into Timothy Spall on my way into the building. “I love getting to know and work with actors continuously because it fills the building with energy and my open door policy means that they’re often in here” she says. And Ronane is gleeful about the forthcoming King Lear with Glenda Jackson in the title role and the number of actors who will have to be cast around her.
So there she is, running her own casting business and holding down a full-time job on what is now a five year contract. At the same time she is bringing up three children all under 10, with her husband Jack Brough who’s Head of Creative Development at content creation company, The Moment. “We met through Stephen Daldry and had our wedding party at his house because he has become a great friend” she says. “So actually I owe my marriage and my children to Billy Elliot as well as my career.” It’s another circle completed.
Credit Steve Porter
“Drama school” has always been a very loose term. It covers such a range – from a 20 year old musical theatre training provider such as LIPA to the small scale Dorset School of Acting in Poole and from famous giants such Guildhall School of Music and Drama to tiny training theatre companies like Cygnet in Exeter. They’ve always been a disparate bunch. Today that’s more so than ever and the “how do you choose?” question is almost impossible to answer simply.
Thirteen schools, including Mountview, Rose Bruford and Drama Studio in London and Birmingham School of Acting and Guildford School of Acting elsewhere are accredited by Drama UK. This is the rump of the old Conference of Drama Schools. In their different ways such schools are part of the state higher education system. Their students are eligible for student loans. Until recently they were also entitled to grants if they came from very low income families, but the government last year announced the end of all grants for higher education.
Then there’s another group – RADA, LAMDA and Bristol Old Vic – which function as part of the Conservatoire of Dance and Drama, through which the Higher Education Funding is channelled, along with four dance schools and the National Centre for Circus Arts. The CDD is, in effect, a bit like a collegiate university. Like those in Drama UK schools these students are eligible for loans and so on too.
These schools are the most famous and the ones which people outside the industry think of first. Even Neil Fraser, Head of Technical Theatre at RADA, doesn’t know why RADA has always been the first school to spring to the lips of Joe Public. “Maybe it’s the Royal badging” he says, “although Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama have that too.” And LAMDA is, perhaps, a special case, because thousands of young people do its exams so that they are very familiar with the name even before they’re ready to consider drama school.
Schools such as Oxford School of Drama, founded and still run by George Peck, are independent and not part of any group – since it parted company with Drama UK last year. “Our courses are inspected by Ofsted because we’re part of the DaDA scheme” says the school’s executive producer, Kate Ashcroft. So there is still a very significant endorsement of quality. Moreover Oxford School of Drama was adjudged by the website Acting in London one of the world’s top five schools alongside Guildhall, RADA, Julliard and Yale.
Even without formal accreditation or endorsement the proof of the pudding, as ever, is in the eating. If a school can produce dozens of industry-ready graduates who go straight into work and continue to get plenty of jobs then the training has proved itself. The MTA is probably the best example. Founded by Annemarie Thomas Lewis in 2009 it has, to date, for its two year course, achieved a 100% success rate in getting graduating students signed up to decent, external agents and – at any time – over 70% of its former students in work. With statistics like that, accreditation, badging or endorsement becomes irrelevant.
Some of the small independent schools are having a lot of success with foundation courses and getting students into drama schools too. Dorset School of Acting and Reed College, Reading for example, both have a high hit rate.
The trouble, of course, with going to a completely independent school – Courtyard Theatre, Fourth Monkey, PPA in Guildford or the new Midlands Academy of Musical Theatre which is due to open this autumn, for instance – is that there is no state assisted funding for it. Unless the school itself is awarding scholarships (sometimes in association with The Stage) the fees have to be paid by the student. Career development loans from banks are sometimes available, however.
Many drama schools, moreover, teach a great deal more than drama. The larger ones also run extensive technical theatre programmes and, especially at post graduate level, courses in areas such as producing, play writing, directing and much more. Arguably it is an advantage to be in a school where so much is going on at so many levels because every student gets the chance to rub shoulders – and collaborate artistically – with others from different, but related, disciplines.
Drama training is a changeable industry just to blur the picture further. In recent years a number of drama schools have merged with – or been taken over by – universities and the level of autonomy retained by the schools seems to be variable. Examples of this include Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, now part of University of London, Birmingham School of Acting now part of Birmingham City University and Guildford School of Acting which is now part of University of Surrey.
In many cases these mergers provide the drama schools with fine new premises. Drama Centre, for instance, which is part of Central St Martin’s which is part of University of the Arts London, has enviable studios, library, on-site theatre and other facilities in the Granary Building at Kings Cross. East 15 which is part of The University of Essex, has a well converted second campus at Southend and a big building programme underway at Loughton. And of course any student whose training is part of a university has access to all the same benefits as other students. So there are clear advantages.
On the other hand there are constant negotiations in some of these schools relating to the high cost of drama training in comparison with, say, training a mathematician or a historian in the same university. Drama students, if their training is to be fit for purpose, need 30 hours a week of face to face teaching and that costs the university a lot of money.
What all this boils down to is that it’s impossible to generalise about drama school. Each one is unique and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The key thing for anyone approaching the tangled maze of which to apply for is to find out about the outcomes for recent students who did the course you’re interested in. If it’s a foundation course did they progress to drama schools? If it’s a vocational school then did, say, last year’s graduates get agents and how many of them are now working? All good schools have detailed records of where their alumni are and what they’re doing.
It really is time that successful, prominent actors stopped telling the world that actor training is now impossibly expensive for working-class aspirants.
It is simply not true. It costs £9,000 for mainstream higher education – irrespective of subject and provided that the institution is approved – which all the top….
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This article was by Susan Elkin for TheStage – See original article here
Ralph Fiennes gives us a slightly twisted mouth as well as body, “I can smile and murder while I smile” has rarely resounded more truthfully. He hobbles, plots, shouts, rapes, sometimes sardonic, sometimes anxious, eventually resigned. And it’s a treat to watch Fiennes listening to other actors and responding to them – always the ultimate mark of an actor at the top of his or her game. His is a riveting Richard full of “naked villainy” and this is a performance which will talked about for years to come.
It’s a fine, gimmick free, modern dress production too. Rupert Goold allows us almost the full text which is a refreshing change from the ultra-fashionable, pared down, paraphrased or gabbled versions we so often get these days. The diction is crystal clear from every single actor and Goold makes sure that everything that happens contributes to making the narrative as strong as possible. It’s also good to hear the language spoken at a speed which ensures every word carries (although it makes for a long night and a late train home). That is not to say that there isn’t a lot of fun with the language in this production. If you say Shakespeare’s words with a slightly different emphasis from usual they can often sound quite wittily current and serve as reminder of just how little the language has actually changed. When Scott Handy, as Clarence, for example feelingly mutters “Bloody Gloucester” through gritted teeth he could be sitting in a 2016 pub.
The four women in the production all give moving performances and spark well off each other. Aislin McGuckin, in particular, as Queen Elizabeth moves from being a solicitous wife to a howling, frenzied bereaved mother. Vanessa Redgrave is an asset as the prophesying Queen Margaret too, as you’d expect, although sometimes her voice strays worryingly close to her Call the Midwife persona. Goold’s production really brings out motherhood, anguish and abuse of women as a theme in this play.
There’s excellent work too from Finbar Lynch as the wizened, weaselly, self serving Buckingham who eventually finds his conscience. I once saw him as Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatraand his performance in Richard III drew my attention to just how similar these two roles are.
The framing device is inspired too. As the audience takes its seats actors in forensic suits and others passing by are excavating Richard in the carpark in 21st Century Leicester – or watching it. Then as the auditorium darkens we get a quasi BBC news story. The hole which forms Richard’s grave becomes part of the set – although sometimes it is covered. No prizes for guessing where Fiennes falls three and a quarter hours later at the rain-soaked battle of Bosworth.
Photo: Matt Crockett
This is one of those shows which makes you beam with delight until your face hurts. From the moment Tony Higgins’s fabulous 14-piece band strikes up (glorious sound!) and you see those large-scale rolling bits of set you know you’re in for one of the jolliest rollercoaster rides in town.
There can’t be many people who don’t know Roald Dahl’s story of Charlie Bucket and his very poor – but feisty – family whose fortunes are restored by Charlie’s winning a golden ticket to tour a rather special chocolate factory. As a piece of musical theatre – with tuneful and witty music and words by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman – it works because it’s structured like The Nutcracker. All the plain everyday stuff when Charlie is at home or scavenging on the dump is in the first act and all the escapist, transformational magic is in the second. It’s an old formula but they’re often the best. It means that some of the action in the first act is bulked up for balance but the TV sequences showing the other four children Charlie eventually tours the factory with are a stroke of genius. As set pieces they are brightly funny and each showcases the talents of a child actor.
And what a quintet they were the night I saw it. Each role is shared by four actors so there are twenty children involved. The contrasts between the five are beautifully brought out from earnest, story loving Charlie helping to look after his bedridden grandparents to sausage chumping, fat suited Augustus Gloop styled as a folksy Austrian and the revolting, pink-clad pirouetting Veruca Salt.
Jonathan Slinger plays Willie Wonka with a wonderful blend of delicious campness and low voiced imperiousness – imagine The Mikado played by Julian Clary. Patter songs trip off his tongue and his lyrical numbers are show stoppers. He also delivers irreverent asides with panache.
The ensemble scenes fizz with well directed exuberance especially when they turn into oompa-loompas, their size shortened by false legs at the front – another tried and tested decision but always effective. And sometimes the whole company becomes an ensemble – at one point complete with sparky tap dancing.
At the heart of this show – and a major part of what makes it special – is some spectacular technical theatre. Scenery comes out of the floor or is “flown” down. There’s massive factory machinery which flashes and burps. Projection creates the huge outside factory wall among other things. And every inch of the stage is used in three dimensions. There’s a splendid ultra violet light scene too – it may be an old trick but it never fails.
All in all this show, which pounds along with pulsing energy, is the most fun I’ve had in the theatre in quite a while.