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The Pirates of Penzance (Susan Elkin reviews)

The Pirates of Penzance

WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Directed by Donna Stirrup

Conducted by Martin Handley

Pirates (Penzance) Ltd in association with Tarantara Productions Ltd

Chichester Festival Theatre

 

Star rating 4

 

It’s a real pleasure to see a G&S production in which both the director and the conductor trust the material and allow it to shine in its own way. Stirrup has moved the scene forward 40 years so that we’ve in 1919 which adds some nuances. Otherwise this is a delightfully “faithful” take on Pirates, a very old friend to me and, I’m sure, to many of the Chichester audience. Yes there were many walking sticks and silver heads but there were also quite a few children in the audience at the performance I saw. As someone who was taken to her first G&S show at age 5 and fell in love with it for life, there and then, I’m always thrilled to see children embarking, I hope, on the same journey.

The first pleasure is the orchestra.  Seated on a raised platform behind the action on CFT’s thrust stage, under conductor Martin Handley, they play Sullivan’s tuneful score beautifully. The sound is always well balanced with the singing, possibly because the musicians are upstage rather than in a pit.  Many directors these days feel obliged to bolt fussy, unecessary action on to the overture but Donna Stirrup allows us to listen – really listen –  to it  in the stillness it deserves. I liked Handley’s nippy tempos too. And it’s a splendid idea to bring every player to the front at curtain call. I’d like to see more of that wherever it’s possible.

The only visual extra during the overture is an enigmatic figure sat in the shadows contemplatively smoking. This was Sioned Taylor as Ruth who, once emerged and involved in the action, sings with rich warmth and looks like Helena Bonham-Carter playing Queen Mary – wonderful feathered hat in the second act. It is one of Laura Jane Stanfield’s many delightful costumes.

This production is staged on a raked dais in the middle of the space. It’s made of planks and surrounded by posts so that it works both as a ship and as the beach with breakwaters or the ruined abbey in the second act. Because it’s half a metre or so off the ground, characters can leap or crawl on and off it and it provides a hiding place for various people at times when the action needs it. It’s simple but ingenious. The set is also by Stanfield.

A small chorus – just two or three to each part – means that every note, harmony and word are clear and  there’s some very convincing action. The pirates (presumably World War One leftovers and misfits) are a motley crew of individuals with Jonathan Eyers as a magnificent pirate king, very tall and looking like the mafia in brown suit, dark glasses and trilby hat.

The women are, for once, plausible as the Major General’s daughters because with Mabel (Ellie Laughharne – excellent) there are only six of them – in their gingham frocks and cardies, keen to get their stockings off and paddle.

In a production full of strengths, Guy Elliot, with his fine tenor voice, brings Frederic to life and Benjamin Bevan runs to good effect with that gift of a part: the Sergeant of Police.

Barry Clark is very funny at the Major General but a few of the words in his famous big number “I am a very model …”were lost from Row F – and bear in mind I already know every word. It would be better, perhaps, if he and Handley were to negotiate a very slightly slower tempo.

This production is touring to Eastbourne (15-18 January) and Cheltenham (28 January to 01 February).

Sancho and Me

Written and Performed by Paterson Joseph

Music by Ben Park, associate director

Co-directed by designer, Michael Vale

Chichester Festival Theatre

 Star rating: 3.5

This enjoyable, educative and often witty show is an unusual blend. It weaves Paterson Joseph’s own North London background as the fifth child of Caribbean immigrants with the story of Charles Ignatius Sancho. He was an unusual eighteenth century former slave who became a musician, author, householder and British voter – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Samuel Johnson,  Hogarth and Handel on the way as well as meeting George II.

We start with Joseph in a casual T shirt and trousers addressing the audience as himself and referring to Sancho, alongside musician Ben Park who provides almost continuous music, some live (electric double bass and more) and some recorded and cued to accompany Joseph’s words. In the second half Joseph is dressed as Sancho in a pretty accurate representation of the clothes worn in the Gainsborough portrait, a copy of which is displayed on stage. As Sancho, he refers to “Mr Joseph” and the things he has discovered, including the 2022 novel The Secret Diaires of Charles Ignatius Sancho, which is – of course – on sale in the foyer. It’s quite a conceit to pull off but Joseph has all the charisma needed to carry the audience with him. After all, his status is such that he gets a round of applause simply for arriving on stage as the beginning so there’s plenty of warmth in the room.

One of the most accomplished actors of his generation, Joseph demonstrates some fine voice work in this show from his own father’s heavily accented St Lucian accent to the strange hybrid voice of Anne Osborne, whom Sancho adores and marries, and the rather clipped RP of Sancho himself. He also talks with his body and eyes to such an extent that he changes almost beyond recognition as he shape-shifts from role to role. Moreover, self-deprecating as he is about his musicianship, he’s a passable singer and ukulele player and his high-speed turn on the hand-held drum is quite a show stopper.

After the interval Joseph invites questions from the audience to him as Sancho which requires a certain amount of adept ad-libbing but mostly he deftly turns the questions to relate to his prepared script. It works reasonably well and creates a sense of immediacy as he walks up the Minerva’s aisles to address individuals.

 

I read Joseph’s novel when it was first published and interviewed him last year in connection with it, so I was keen to see this show which has already toured extensively.  So I was familiar with this extraordinary story of boy born and orphaned on a slave ship, taken in by three spinster sisters in Greenwich and then befriended and sponsored by John Montague who had all the connections needed to launch Sancho into society, but this show presents it in a new light.

As himself, Joseph stresses that black people have always been there –  obviously. And they weren’t all slaves and servants although, until recently, that’s how they tended to appear in the theatre and in public imagination.  He didn’t discover Sancho until he was in his 30s when he started reading extensively. He uses a pile of books on stage to stress this. Thus, this pleasing show gently helps to promote black history and raise awareness in a predominantly white audience, although it wears its political agenda very lightly.

 

 

 

The Mirror Crack’d

Agatha Christie, adapted by Rachel Wagstaff

Directed by Dan Usztan

Tower Theatre Stoke Newington

 

Star rating: 4

This sparky adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s best novels is ideal for Tower Theatre’s spacious triangular stage. It allows characters to sit downstage, stationary and listening while scenes are “recounted” – acted out – behind them, sometimes several times in different versions as the story unfolds.

A local woman dies at a drinks party, given by Hollywood film star, Marina Gregg (Lucy Moss), who has recently bought the local manor house and is filming nearby. It soon transpires that she has been poisoned and Chief Inspector Craddock (Sebastian Chrispin) arrives to investigate. At the same time he visits his quasi-aunt, Miss Jane Marple (Alison Liney), who is laid up with a sprained ankle. No prizes for guessing who eventually solves the mystery.

It’s quite a challenge for an actor to make Miss Marple convincing and loveable because we are so used to iconic TV adaptations and several very famous faces. Alison Liney more than nails it. She is gentle, feisty and mentally indefatigable – every inch the sharpest of brains pretending, when it suits her, to be a mildly batty tea-obsessed old lady with a twinkle in her eye. It’s moving at times too because Liney finds real depth and warmth when, for example, Miss Marple discusses childlessness with Moss’s troubled Marina Gregg.

There’s admirable work from Chrispin too. His lanky, raincoated, bespectacled Craddock is trying hard to do a professional job and really could do without interjections from his elderly “aunt” –  except that he can’t because her intuition and observation are more effective than his formal procedures. Chrispin and Liney work well together with a lot of active listening and naturalistic conversation.

There’s a competent support cast of nine, some of whom double in minor roles in the party and film-set scenes. Sangita Modgil, for instance, is fun as the absurdly snobbish Dolly Bantry and Paul Isaacs good as the dead woman’s husband who tries so hard to be heard.

Haidee Elise’s costumes are a 1950s delight. The tangerine suit and hat worn by Lauren Budd as Lola Brewster and Miss Marple’s elegant blouse with brooch at the neck are richly evocative of the period.

You have to hand it to Agatha. She still brings in the punters. The Tower Theatre was fuller for this show than I’ve seen it in a long time and I was pleased for everyone involved in this enjoyable show.

 

 

It all started when, in my usual wordy way, I used the word “olfactory” on the family WhatsApp group. I loathe, detest, abhor, hate and dislike (sorry) the stench of popcorn and my crosspatch comment was to the effect that I was going to dock a star from the show I’d just seen for olfactory reasons. It set both my sons off in a welter of silly puns. Lucas, in particular, has inherited punophilia (is that a word?) from his maternal grandfather and has been addicted to Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue for so long that he can trot them out almost as fast as they can.

Fast forward a few weeks to Boxing Day, when we had a family party in Felix’s house and Lucas gave Felix and me each a copy of The Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary, first published in 2016. We opened our presents at about 1pm and screamed, or in my case wept, with laughter for the rest of the day as we read them out to each other. It was one of the cheeriest Christmases for years.

It’s a spoof dictionary of course, laid out in alphabetical order with faux-soulful pencil drawings by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith. The definitions (“Germination: A very unhealthy country” or “Fly tipping: gratuities to insects”) are by past and present members of the I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue team: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer, and Ian Pattinson along with Garden and Naismith.

Since Christmas I have read it from cover to cover, sitting at my desk at home allowing myself stints of 20 minutes a day. And I have laughed until I rattle. “Hoedown: Agricultural Strike” and “Apres midi d’une faune: You’ve been on the phone since lunch”.

If I can manage to stop guffawing long enough to think about this seriously, I admire the talents of these five men enormously because you really need to understand a language to be able to pull it about like this (“Prehensile: An island formerly occupied by chickens”). I wonder if they laugh at each other when they’re coining them? I rather suspect they do. I also wonder whether you can pun to this extent in other languages? I doubt it. English has a much larger lexicon than most other comparable European languages because it has drawn its vocabulary from so many sources over thousands of years. So there’s a lot there to play with.

Not that any of that matters. The jokes are the thing. January has a reputation for being a blue, gloomy, depressing, miserable, cold, unhappy, anticlimactic (not sorry) month. It won’t be if you buy and read this book. Promise. Even writing this piece has reduced me to fits of giggles.

PS “Macadam: A Scottish brothel keeper” “Frog-spawn: Blue movies for the French” “Definite: Street slang for hard of hearing”

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Life and Death of Martin Luther King

by Paul Stebbings

Golden Goose, 2-5 January 2025

 

Star rating: 4

This intense and imaginative play does exactly what its title claims. Using five accomplished actors, it tells the story of Luther King from the time of the bus boycott in Alabama in 1955 to his assassination in Memphis in 1968, at the age of 39.

Adrian Decosta, who also directs, is outstanding as King. We see him at home in Montgomery with his young wife and baby – eloquent, idealistic, passionate and well educated. Then comes the birth of the Civil Rights movement bringing with it travel, fame, a Nobel Peace prize, a well developed gift for rhetoric and some sexual corruption. Decosta nails it all – especially that drawling, richly inflected voice. We eventually get a moving, verbatim rendering of the iconic “I have a dream …” speech.

Toara Bankole is a versatile actor with a fine singing voice. She is gentle and caring as King’s wife, pert as the prostitute who serves him in a hotel room and sassily determined as Rosa Parks who famously refused to give seat to a white man on a bus in 1955. Other parts, of which there are a lot, are played by Will Batty (very convincing as broadcaster Jack Nader) Andrew Earl (sinister as Malcom X) and Lincoln James as a no-nonsense Sheriff maintaining Alabama segregation laws.

The production makes good use of symbolism and weaves in some interesting music and fine protest song (music by John Kenny) which makes the piece feel both poignant and plaintive. There’s a scene in which, for example, chains are held across the stage by the whole cast and noisily dropped in rhythm.

Because this play, obviously, features both black and white people, simple half masks in either white or black are used to show when an actor is playing against his or her own ethnicity: the cast actually consists of four black actors and one white. It’s a neat, unfussy, even-handed means of indentification which works pretty well – once I got used to it.

I learned a lot I didn’t previously know about Martin Luther King from this play and found myself checking facts all the way home. Yes, he really was unfaithful to his wife and yes, he was fond of music. Moreover he was initially reluctant to get involved with the bus boycott.

 

A brick of a book, Caledonian Road (2024) is almost Dickensian in scope. Loosely rooted in the eponymous, diverse Islington street, it explores contemporary society from the rich and famous to drug dealing and subversion, all linked by a shimmering web of connections.

Campbell Flynn is a well known art historian with two very different adult children, one of whom, an influencer, has much more fame than his has-been father. Now short of money, Flynn has written a lifestyle book entitled “Why Men Weep in Cars” which is completely different from anything he has done before such as his groundbreaking and widely respected book about Vermeer. He therefore hires an actor to masquerade as author and promote it for him. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile gullible Flynn befriends/is groomed by one of his students, Milo. He has highly advanced hacking skills,  a ruthlessly worthy agenda and many friends in the drug-driven underworld. Among other things, Milo is out to destroy William Byre, an old university friend of Flynn’s now involved in organised crime. Then there’s his brother-in-law who is a wealthy hereditary peer and master of shady dealings and contacts. Flynn is a mere, unwitting conduit. Underneath all this are drug farms in Kent, sweat shops in Leicester, human trafficking gangs, immigration issues, knife crime and much more.

Of course the immaculately interwoven themes are serious in this complex novel but this is, effectively, a satire and it’s often very funny. I loved loaded observations such as “It occurred to Campbell that Candy might weigh less than her necklace” and “Her face was dismanted with make up”.

I also enjoyed the characterisation. Milo’s Polish girlfriend is good as are Mrs Kruppa and Jakub in their various ways. And Flynn’s eccentric mother-in-law who lives aboard an ocean-going yacht is entertaining.  In the basement flat of the house on a leafy square which Campbell shares with his patient wife, Elizabeth, is an irascible, impossible, elderly, sitting tenant named Mrs Voyles. She isn’t – in her patrician and devious unreasonableness – a million miles from Alan Bennett’s (real life) Miss Shepherd. A long-term thorn in Flynn’s side, she turns out to be the ultimate trigger.

Warmly recommended to anyone who wants to start the new year with a meaty read and to all who love expansive fiction –  and, of course, London which is colourfully, even affectionately, depicted.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Jon Naismith & Ian Pattinson

Petroc Trelawny is a much loved Radio 3 presenter: urbane, warm, witty, knowledgeable and never patronising. And with a name like his, the Cornish roots are obvious.

Now, I have a dear friend who, like Trelawny has deep ancestral ties with Cornwall. She now lives in Penryn where I have stayed with her several times. When I boarded the big GWR train from Paddington to Truro in September, I took newly published Trelawny’s Cornwall  to her as a thank-you-for-having-me gift. Like me, she is life-long music maker and Radio 3 buff so it seemed a perfect fit. Of course I couldn’t resist reading the opening pages before I gave it to her which meant – inevitably – that I had to buy another copy for myself because he drew me in hook, line and sinker, as a Cornish fisherman might say.

It’s not an easy book to categorise because it seamlessly blends travelogue, memoir, history, geography, economics and a lot more. And I learned a huge amount as I walked and drove through England’s most southerly and westerly county with this man, youngest of five brothers, who went to school in Helston after his father retired from the Army and moved the family “home” to Cornwall.

He leads us through Helston with its attractive buildings, tells us about the Flora Dance and the silly (but very catchy!)  song which made it famous, He’s a bit of a railway nerd so he tells us about the Cornish stations and lines closed as the result of the 1963 report by Richard Beeching, acknowledging ruefully that although the cuts were heartbreaking for local communities they did enable the rest of the pretty extensive national network to thrive and develop. He visits some of these stations or their sites. Today, if they haven’t been demolished and built over, some are cafes or community centres thus still serving local people. And, of course, we marvel at Brunel’s railway bridge across the Tamar, which incidentally Trelawney tracks to its source a few miles south of Bude.

I had no idea that Cornwall was once the country’s, if not the world’s, communication centre when cables were laid on sea beds in the late 19th century so that people could send messages to America, India and Australia in just a few minutes. Much later came satellite dishes named after characters in Arthurian legend although most of the Cornish ones are no longer operational. We stand with Trelawny on the wind-swept cliffs and marvel.

Mining, formerly Cornwall’s industrial mainstay, is another dominant strand and he’s very good on how and when the industry developed, what brought about its demise and the situation today. There is lithium in Cornwall and it’s essential for car and other batteries. At present it has to be imported.  Can one of the start-up entrepreneurs Trelawny talks to (he’s every inch a journalist and interviews many people in this book) find an economic way of extracting it in Cornwall?

He introduces us to personalities such as John Betjeman, whose father had a holiday home in Cornwall so his son wrote about it, later bought a house of his own and died in the county. I was glad to see Charles Causley in the mix too. He was a wonderful poet but oddly underrated. I used, incidentally, to teach Betjeman and Causley together as required by the O level syllabus we were using in the 1980s. Perhaps Trelawny studied the same set of poets when he did his O levels at Helston. He was in one of the last cohorts to take O levels before the introduction of GCSE. He then chose not to go to university but to develop his ambition to be a broadcaster by taking a job and learning the ropes as he went.

Whether you know Cornwall or not, this book is richly compelling. And once you’ve read it you will – I guarantee – want to hop on God’s Wonderful Railway, or into the car headed for A30, and get down there. Happily, I’m booked to visit my friend again in March for another Cornwall fix.

Susan’s Bookshelves was originally a 2021 lockdown project, suggested by my daughter-out-law who thought that as I read widely, compulsively and a lot, it would make sense to write about the books which grab me – for whatever reason and in whatever circumstances. So that’s what I did. Nearly four years later I have written over 200 of these blogs, ranging across fiction, non-fiction, biography, several centuries and many countries. The only theme is that whatever it is, it took my fancy or drew me back for a re-read. And I’m open to anything except fantasy. Spare me dragons, witches, elves, and unicorns, please. From time to time I wonder whether the idea has run its course but whenever I mention that my regular readers tell me to carry on, so I do. This is the last for 2024 (during which I have gobbled 130 books, although only 52 found their way here) so Happy New Year to you all and, of course, happy reading. See you on 01 January 2025.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves:Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan

Cinderella

Philip Wilson

Directed by John Pashley

Chichester Festival Youth Theatre

 

Star rating: 5

 

The Cinderella story is over 2000 years old and, in some form, it occurs as a folk tale in many cultures all over the world. It was retold by both Charles Perrault in the seventeenth centry and the brothers Grimm in the nineteenth. Today we are very accustomed to the 1950 Disney version which (loosely) informs most Cinderella pantomimes

It is, therefore, a refreshing change – and a real joy – to see Philip Wilson’s take which modernises the story and takes elements from both Perrault, Grimm and other sources. The result, along with Jason Carr’s music of which more shortly, is a show which packs food for thought and oodles of charm but never descends to cheesiness.

Cinderella (Annalise Bradley on press night – excellent) grows up on a farm with little illuminated hen houses and gorgeous puppeted hens. Overhead are soaring white doves. Then, alas, her beloved mother dies and her bereft father (Dilshad Yilmaz- good) makes a disastrous second marriage and she aquires two nasty stepsisters. In a strong, well directed cast, Tilly Groves, who alternates the role with Charlotte Stubbs, is outstanding as the cold, calculating, authoritarian step mother.

Stephen Tiplady has made a wonderful job of directing the puppetry in this show. Cinderella is advised by a Council of Birds, including a pushy parakeet and a gor-blimey, grab-your-food seagull (very funny indeed). They perch in a hazel tree which sprouts overnight and are her chief supporters when the going gets rough. Genius!

Simon Higlett’s,  castellated back wall set is grey stone with an upper floor walkway and a balcony, all rather magically lit up in the second act. for the King’s three day ball at which his reluctant son, the prince, is supposed to choose a bride. A combination of stunning red black and silver costumes (by Abigail Caywood) and simple but impressively slick movement with fans (choreography by Julia Cave) makes the opening of act 2 feel as dynamic as the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady.

And so to the music. Many of the melodic lines are repetitive which makes them easy for a young cast to nail and carry off with panache although there are one or two nice moments when the principals sing in harmony. It’s Jason Carr’s orchestrations which really enhance it though. The score, beautifully played by a six-piece band under Audra Cramer’s musical direction from keyboard, is full of lovely contrapuntal and decorative effects especially from viola and trombone.

It’s a show with a lot of heart. Of course a 21st century audience sympathises with the Prince. He’s very young. Why on earth should be be forced into marriage? And Cinderella’s father thinks, like many a widowed father to this day, that he’s doing the right thing by remarrying only to have it all go wrong. Yes, there are funny moments and even some black humour, but there’s plenty of serious stuff here too.

It would be a fine achievement for any company anywhere to have staged this high quality, near-faultless show. To do it with a youth theatre, all under 25 and, by definition only able to rehearse part-time, is truly remarkable.

I am on record as saying in the past that I think Chichester Festival Youth Theatre is one of the finest organisations of its type in the country. Cinderella more than confirms my view.