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Legs, loos and theatre goers who think they’re caterpillars

What exactly do we expect when we go to the theatre? Something compelling, entertaining, thoughtful or moving to watch and listen to, obviously. But what about the physical surroundings of the experience?

I was at the National for Hedda Gabler last week and I’d forgotten just how comfortable its seating is. It enables you to stop thinking about where you actually are and immerse yourself totally in the action. The Rose Theatre Kingston where I saw The Wind in the Willows earlier this month isn’t bad at all either. Neither is The Capitol, Horsham where I saw Aladdin yesterday. And the Marlowe at Canterbury where I’m a regular is pretty comfortable too. Compare that with The Noel Coward Theatre in St Martin’s Lane. I reviewed Half a Sixpence there recently and it’s a fabulous show. Much less fabulous is the Circle where I was seated by the PR people because it provides, they argue, a better view. What they gloss over is that it is so cramped – and I am neither overweight nor tall – that it makes economy class seem cavernous by comparison. And Wyndhams – I sat in the circle there for Shakespeare Schools Festival’s otherwise enjoyable Trial of Hamlet at the beginning of December – is nearly as bad. Yes, I know these are old, historic theatres and people used to be smaller but the discomfort level almost – not quite but almost – puts me off the experience to such an extent that I’d rather stay at home.  I also know that these theatres are charging extortionate prices for these seats and that profit levels are high. It would be perfectly possible to reduce those profits marginally by taking some of the rows of seats and rejigging the space to create more leg room. That’s what they did at Royal Festival Hall when they refurbished and why ever not? Should there be a legal minimum space requirement for each punter?

Then there is the vexed issue of lavatories, especially for women which RFH got seriously wrong at its refurb and with which the Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford do much better. Women need more facilities than men – as everyone, surely, knows. When I arrived to interview Michael Volpe, director of Opera Holland Park recently, he was studying the plans for his venue’s new toilets so I pounced. It looks better than many venues and, yes, there will be far more cubicles for women than stalls for men so perhaps the queues will be slightly shorter. Every venue should be doing everything it possibly can to improved lavatory facilities and making it a priority. Fortune, Ambassadors and Duke of York’s, among many others, please note.

The other thing I loathe about being cramped in a confined space in a tightly packed row of theatre seats is having other people’s booze dripped on me and being assailed by the stench of their crisps and popcorn – not to mention the distracting rustling created by theatre-as-picnic-parlour.  I can’t help the fact that it makes profits for theatres who sell all this junk at rip-off prices. People are there to experience a show and eating and drinking should not be part of that. It is rare for an piece of theatre to last more than 90 mins without a break and no one is going to starve or die of thirst in that time. Caterpillars have to consume continuously. Human beings don’t. As Imelda Staunton commented recently, it’s all about concentration levels. We should be encouraging people to focus on the show and nothing else.

For me, physical comfort or lack of it,  definitely affects the quality of my theatre experience. And I’m sure I’m not alone. I hope producers, venue managers and the like are listening because issues like these could be making more difference to their audience numbers than they realise.

When facts and stats – about anything –  are not readily and freely available I tend to think that someone might just be hiding something. Another take on “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

Take the best known twenty or so drama schools. Come on, you know who you are. I want to know exactly how many students who graduated from your performance courses in the last few years have had professional work since they left you. Can you also tell me, please, how many of your graduates actually have independent  agent representation? And how many have left the industry? If your  statistics are good then this is your best selling point because of course when it comes down to subsequent recalls you’re all chasing the same handful of very promising applicants.

When I advise students – and I’m often asked – about applying for vocational training, I always tell them to ask searching questions about  the outcomes of any college or course they apply to. I don’t want to see them wasting money on a course which, for most, leads nowhere much. Trouble is few, if any, of the top twenty colleges publish any statistics. And I want to know why. What do they not want us to know?

If outcomes for graduates were mostly positive, then surely the drama schools would be broadcasting it from the rooftops? If you push them the colleges sometimes say they don’t have the resources to track their graduates but that doesn’t cut the mustard with me. Any college could train their graduates to plot their successes on some sort of database – so that the college had the information. Or they could, heaven forfend, even talk to them.

As it is, everyone (including the applicant’s worried granny and the headteacher of the school she or he is at)  knows that unemployment rates are high in this industry. Even then, where are the reliable stats? All sorts of gloomy figures get bandied about. When is someone going to come up with an accurate evidence-based figure and renew the research annually? How many professional actors have work at this moment? Knowledge is power. Drama schools should be compiling figures for their own graduates and then it wouldn’t be difficult to draw some accurate overall conclusions.

This week I interviewed Anne Marie Lewis Thomas  founder principal of The MTA.  Of her 104 graduates (since 2011) only 5% have left the industry altogether. All had secured independent representation when they graduated.  40 are currently working. Only two have never worked at all. She has all this at her finger tips and it sounds pretty good but perhaps it’s normal. There’s no way of telling because there are no statistics from other colleges with which to compare these achievements.

No one can  make a sensible, rational decision about whether or not to pursue vocational training and where to apply without access to detailed information about what happened or is happening to recent graduates. The fact that the Illustrious College of Performing Arts trained some world famous dame or knight in the 1960s is really – at this point – nothing to do with anything. Applicants need current, accurate, transparent statistics. A change in attitude and culture is long overdue.

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Lindley Players

Whitstable Playhouse

This tale of an immortal man who pursues the same re-incarnated girl from the middle ages at seventy-five-year intervals until 2075 is a strange play – strong on originality and weak in nearly everything else. Nonetheless, flawed as the material is the talented Lindley Players make something reasonably entertaining out of it and it’s to the company’s credit that it produces such a wide variety and isn’t afraid, sometimes, to have a go at something riskily unusual.

Lucie Nash is terrific as the knowing flirtatious maid, Constance, who then reappears in a whole series of related personae down the centuries. Each character is differently voiced and she moves beautifully in character whether she’s a pregnant Victorian, a nun, a sexy American flapper and much more. Ollie Grayeson gives a fine performance as Ephraim who, dressed differently each time, chases Nash’s character down the ages and is variously rueful, puzzled, angry and despairing. It’s high-quality acting. Less successful is Russell Sutton’s ‘Host’ who appears in each scene and seems to be a sort of Mephistopholes character, communicating with the voice of his unseen ‘boss’ and manipulating the other characters. There are problems with his diction and he isn’t always audible.

Some of the directorial decisions in this production are odd. Why project a photograph of Kitchener to illustrate 1925 when Kitchener died in 1916? Why play Vivaldi to evoke 1795 when Vivaldi was at his peak 50 years earlier? And these are just examples.

Billed as a comedy The Eternal Courtship is amusing in places – and the whole concept is a joke of sorts – although it isn’t especially funny. The best of the humour comes from the incongruity of using modern, quite relaxed language, in historical situations and from lines such as the Host saying: “You’ve fancied her since the middle ages” or from Ephraim answering with nicely timed dramatic irony “Well I did …” when someone in the Twentieth Century asks him if he knows Shakespeare. In general though, the pace is a bit slow and it all falls a bit flat although the whole play runs only one hour and three quarters including an interval.

It’s a pleasant enough evening but not, I’m afraid, one of the better shows I’ve seen from the Lindley Players.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Lindley%20Players%20Limited,%20The-Ten%20Times%20Two:%20The%20Eternal%20Courtship&reviewsID=2660

 

Colour, movement, smiles, clear story telling, visual surprises and a narrative so iconically familiar that almost everyone in the audience can recite it from memory: it’s a promising mix for pre-schoolers’ show.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show presents four Eric Carle stories saving the famous, ravenous, primary coloured, eponymous insect until last.

Full marks to the Puppet Kitchen …

Read the rest of this review at https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2016/the-very-hungry-caterpillar-show-review-at-ambassadors-theatre/

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Wiggling woolly bottoms, energetic folksy music, much baa-ing and a fabulously scary Lion King-style larger-than-life dog puppet spirits us away to Dick King-Smith’s retro country farm. There, a piglet, won in a competition and mothered by the farm’s resident sheepdog, turns out to have an unlikely talent for sheep herding. It’s a story well known to, and much loved by, at least two generations and David Wood’s play version, which dates from 1997 has been revived many times and does it real justice.

Polka present it as an eight hander with lots of imaginative choreography and tight ensemble work under the imaginative direction of Michael Fentiman. In the past I’ve seen Babe played by a child or young actor dressed as a pig. Here he’s an engaging piglet puppet managed and voiced by an ensemble member who alternates between this and evocative violin playing – often dancing at the same time.

Fine puppetry is one of this show’s (many) great strengths. Directed by Mathew Forbes, puppets include a nice group of stripey brown ducks, and extra sheep as well as Babe himself and that sheep-worrying dog who kills an elderly sheep while the others huddle in impotent fear. This is real life in the country. Although there’s a lot of charm it is also a truthful piece. Babe, for example, is destined to be fattened for bacon until his unusual qualities emerge.

It’s a noticeably well-paced show. At times it pulses with energy. Other moments are quiet. The first half ends on a powerful cliff hanger and the scenes leading to the sheepdog trials – which of course Babe wins against all odds and expectation – give a satisfying structure to the second half. The length at 1 hour 45 minutes (with an interval) is spot on for the target audience too and that’s surprisingly unusual. Many shows are too long.

I was accompanied by a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. By the end the four-year-old was literally hopping up and down with gleeful excitement. Her brother, a fairly seasoned theatregoer for his age, deemed it “the best show I’ve seen.” I don’t think the producers could ask for more.

First published by Sardines www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Polka Theatre (professional productions)-Babe, the Sheep-Pig&reviewsID=2653

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Stronger on storytelling than really good jokes, this is a feisty reworking of the traditional Sleeping Beauty tale for the enlightened, liberal people of Hackney. Beauty (Alexia Khadine, who has a magnificent mezzo singing voice) is awakened from her curse-induced coma by her nanny (Gavin Spokes playing a fairly low key Dame). She is then armed for combat by the fairies and goes off to rescue her prince (Wayne Perry) from the clutches of evil. It’s a neat reversal and as one of the fairies remarks to the audience: “You see! The Brothers Grimm didn’t always get it right!”

So it’s a political pantomime for Hackney. There are a lot of jibes about, for example, Brexit including a song called “Never ask the people what they think”. We also get a rather laboured running gag about the court jester who has left his post to become the new Foreign Secretary. None of this sits very happily in what is meant, first and foremost surely, to be a children’s show although the (largely adult) audience on press night lapped it up and turned the final ten minutes into a pretty riotous party by dancing, almost literally, in the aisles.

There’s plenty to enjoy though. Darren Hart who has an elastic body and a terrific range of funny, rueful, cunning facial expressions is very good value as Ikabo. Sharon D Clarke plays a statuesque, charismatic imposing Carabosse somewhere between Katisha, Brunhilde and Cleo Laine. Kiruna Stamell is entertaining as the shortest member of the good fairy trio often flying incongruously but convincingly over the action. And there’s some fine ensemble work particularly in the scenes with wolves supporting Carabosse. Moreover, the sparkling five piece live band led by MD Mark Dickman is one of the best things in the whole show.

High spots include a slick “slosh routine” performed quasi-balletically to music in the manner of a silent film. And there are some entertaining special effects with lights, ultra-violet and puppets in the second half when the Prince goes hacking through the brambles to find the castle.

Generally speaking though I found this panto somewhat unfunny and a bit forced in places. It seems very long at 2 hrs 40 minutes too. I was delighted though to see the full stage crew brought on for applause at curtain call. Good for democratic Hackney. Why doesn’t this happen at every show to remind the audience that there’s a great deal more to theatre than what they see?

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Hackney%20Empire%20Ltd%20(professional%20productions)-Sleeping%20Beauty&reviewsID=2651

2652_1480754113As soon as you see the trademark ladders and gantries you know you’re in a Sally Cookson show and that plenty of theatrical surprises are in store. And this is Peter Pan as you’ve never seen it before. We start with an adult Wendy (Madeleine Worrall – a delightful blend of feistiness but naivety) remembering. Then when the children eventually get to Neverland the Olivier’s vast stage becomes a huge playground not unlike the skateboard park just along the South Bank outside. There’s a whiff of Cats too as everything in the action is contrived from rubbish and debris with the corrugated iron crocodile being a tour de force. The stage is full of bungey ropes for the flying, counterbalanced by experts shinning up and down ladders at the sides of the stage and there’s interesting use of the revolve and its undercarriage – it’s a technically complex show and the emphasis is on playing and make believe.

This is a serious Peter Pan, though, and a very long way from the pantomime versions playing up and down the country at this time of year. Cookson makes us think about issues such loss, bereavement and above all, motherhood. Anna Francolini (a late replacement for Sophie Thompson who was injured in rehearsal and had to withdraw) doubles Mrs Darling and Captain Hook which makes the villain seem both more sinister and more troubled and troubling than usual. What on earth could this woman’s back story be? Francolini – silver teeth glinting and sporting a huge hook – makes it clear that hers is is a fractured, damaged, vulnerable personality beneath the bravado and her final succumbing to the predatory crocodile is almost as arresting as Cleopatra and the asp, lightened only by a reptilian burp.

Paul Hilton’s Peter is a green glad spiv, reminiscent of a young Michael Sheen. He is, by turns, petulant, needy, bossy, rueful, playful, affectionate and there’s a witty scene in which it all gets too much for him and he literally throws toys out of a pram. It’s a fine performance. Other noteworthy work includes Ekow Quartey doubling Nana the dog and the desperately needy Tootles and Felix Hayes as an entertainingly childish Mr Darling.

This Peter Pan is conceived, as usual with Sally Cookson directing, as an ensemble piece and there’s very slick, impressive work from everyone in the cast whether they’re being windows, pirates, mermaids or many other things. At one point they are all playing musical instruments along with the band which pounds expertly along at the back throughout the Neverland scenes.

There are several wow moments of which the best is the point at which Peter and the children set off for Neverland and pass glowing planets, clouds and more. It provides a real sense of magical transition.

It wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea – although all the key elements of the story are firmly present – but this is the most thought-provoking Peter Pan I’ve seen since the 2015 Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park version made us think about how most of JM Barrie’s boys would have been maimed or killed in the war only a few years later. Here Wendy hesitates when, years later, Peter asks her where John and Michael are.

First published by Sardineshttp://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-National%20Theatre%20(professional)-Peter%20Pan&reviewsID=2652