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That Witch Helen (Susan Elkin reviews)

REVIEW: THAT WITCH HELEN at Bridge House Theatre and Jack Studio 3 – 5 September

Susan Elkin • Sep 06, 2024

‘At its heart this is a feminist play which poses some serious questions about the nature of heroism’ ★★★★

 

Helen of Troy’s is a story which has been fascinating people for centuries but until recently – as in Offenbach’s tuneful romp, La Belle Helene or in Tennyson’s poems it’s all been pretty male orientated. After all she was a sexy prize awarded by three goddesses to Paris, the prince disguised as a shepherd, wasn’t she?

Not in Catie Ridewood’s version, she isn’t. The playwright, who also plays Helen gives us a real flesh and blood woman who falls in love with the charismatic Paris – so much more fun than her ghastly husband Menelaus –  at a diplomatic dinner and goes off with him willingly to Troy. Ridewood, who hatches with her twin Clytemnestra, from a gauze egg rather neatly, tells her story from the moment she settles down as Queen of Sparta to the horror of the ten year besieging of Troy by angry Greeks. She is passionate, caring, frightened and brave and it’s all pretty convincing as she weaves in and out of lines which are almost Iliad translations, to verse of her own and to everyday speech which sometimes makes for humour. Telling her awful mother-in-law to “fuck off” is a good moment for example as is praying to Zeus and addressing him as “Dad”.

It’s a three handed play with two strong actors in a whole range of support roles. Lorraine Yu is very funny as the gruff, balls-scratching Menelaus and does a fine turn as a charismatic story teller, among other things. Sophia Mastrosavaki is sexy as Paris and both these actors are hilarious in their brief cameos of a series of Greek heroes – posturing with fake scrotum stuffed into their shorts. They’re both vocally skilled too, giving their various characters distinctive voices. The play’s opening, however, in which they play a pair of stylised muses scattering feathers, falls a bit flat.

At its heart this is a feminist play which poses some serious questions about the nature of heroism. In a situation in which women are supposed to be secondary as the men fight it out on the windy plains and everyone demonises Helen (there’s a bitterly fierce monologue in this play which stresses that) we are made to think, and think hard, about the women and the hell they are going through – as women have done, at the behest of men down the ages for different reasons. The end of That Witch Helen with its chorus of “Cleopatra, we hear you. Joan, we hear you. Anne, we hear you, Diana, we hear you …” (and more) takes one by surprise and is richly moving.

That Witch Helen

Writer: Catie Ridewood

Director: Janette Eddisford

Running time: 75 mins without interval

This show is part of the SE Fest 2024 at Bridge House Theatre and Jack Studio which runs until 14 September

Susan Elkin, journalist, author and former education editor at The Stage has been reviewing plays for 30 years.

This review first appeared in London Pub Theatre Magazine https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-that-witch-helen-at-bridge-house-theatre-and-jack-studio-3-5-september?fbclid=IwY2xjawFHvdNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSi7bSDf6CfxfSAqIwRJQPg0zKAPhXjhHT004ncud0unticfofZQVVlF6g_aem_8va131k0d5hxmdJD1vhzfA

Prom 65

Messiah

George Frideric Handel, arranged by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Academy of St Martins in the Fields

Phiharmonia Chorus, Bath Minerva Choir, The Fourth Choir, Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, London Youth Chamber Choir, Voices of the River’s Edge.

Conductor: John Butt

Royal Albert Hall

 

Perhaps the flexibility of Messiah  partly accounts for its   popularity for nearly three  centuries . . .  and counting.  You can do it with a dozen singers and a one-to-a-part orchestra or just a keyboard. Or you can assemble a chorus of hundreds with a sizeable orchestra and/or organ and it still works perfectly. This performance was a large scale one, with six choirs raising the Albert Hall’s very noble roof, but under John Butt’s baton, it, still managed to feel light and even, at times, intimate.

In many ways it was a glorious performance. The beauty of Benjamin Hulett’s smiling, opening Comfort Ye with its immaculately controlled crescendos and diminuendos on the long notes moved me to tears. Helen Charlston’s He Was Despised  was sung with a powerful blend of passion and sensitivity and her decorated recap was exquisite (lovely bassoon work in the accompaniment too).  Nardus Williams, perhaps a tad understated at times, really rose to the warm joy of I Know that My Redeemer Liveth and Ashley Riches’s powerful bass baritone singing of  But Who May Abide carried all the terror that it should.

The choir sound was excellent, some numbers being sung by the main choir standing behind the orchestra with the rest of the singers in the choir seats joining them at terrific moments such as the exciting subito forte in For unto Us a Child is born when the volume doubled and timpanist came in with his hard sticks. This is a fine achievement in more than one way. I once sang Beethoven 9 (community effort with Kent County Youth Orchestra) in Royal Albert Hall and I know that from the very top row of the choir you feel as if you’re on a different planet from the conductor with a huge time lag between you. So hats off to all concerned with the singing here because apart from a bit of muddiness in Let Us Break their Bonds asunder, which was taken too fast for the acoustic, it sounded rich, clear and vibrant.

Of course there are some great moments in Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s masterpiece – that bassoon and then the flute in He Was Despised, for example and the solo cello punctuating some of the recitative. I do wish though – not for the first time – that he had allowed us a trumpet in The Trumpet Shall Sound. I know valved horns were the new kid on the orchestral block. They were novel and Mozart loved exploiting them. But rescoring this number for a pair of horns saps all the drama out of it.

This Messiah was the climax of the BBC Proms Choral Day and it was billed as offering scope for the audience to join in. As the organ kicked in and the orchestra struck up the introduction to Hallelujah John Butt turned round and signalled that the audience should stand which I suppose at least gets round the usual shall I /shan’t I distraction. It was a moment of grand musical solidarity and might have been all right had I not been next to a loudly enthusiastic, young Florence Foster Jenkins. It’s actually quite a feat to bellow your way through the whole of Allelujah without hitting a single right note and it prevented me from hearing anything else in the hall.  Then, at the very end, we were invited to join in the final Amen which was a mess and completely negated the soprano top A, nine bars before the end which is arguably the most sublime moment in the whole piece. On balance I much prefer my Messiah without audience participation although it was a worthy attempt at “inclusiveness”.

 

The Band Back Together

Barney Norris

Arcola Theatre

 Star rating: 3

Three people used to play in a band together when they were teenagers. Both men have history with Ellie. Now they’re reuniting in their thirties to play a charity concert in aid of Novochoc – the clumsiness of that is a joke. They mean, obviously, in support of the people who were affected by Novchok – the poison which was used in 2018 in a botched assassination attack on a Russian double agent in Salisbury. So the play is set in post-pandemic Salisbury, the playwright’s home city.

The characters are meant to be in a recording studio on two consecutive days and the brick walled, tight space of Arcola’s Studio 2 works neatly for that.

Norris has a gift for naturalistic dialogue and these actors, whom he has also directed, certainly catch the awkwardness. The silences are nicely done. The play is about growing up. They can’t relate as they did as teenagers. They find themselves resorting to the things grown ups talk about such as traffic, work and parents –  until the past kicks in.

All three are troubled. Laura Evelyn’s twitchy Ellie is, she claims, happy with a partner and an urge to “pop out a sprog” before too long but of course she has memories, anxieties and uncertainties which are gradually revealed. Joe (James Westphal), who has never left Salisbury and has organised this reunion, is deeply unhappy, edgy and unfulfilled. Ross (Royce Cronin) has a successful career as a professional guitarist but he too is ill at ease. It’s almost a subtle study in group dynamics with some intelligently added body language.

Of course there also has to be music because that’s what they’re there for. Evelyn (who wrote the songs in collaboration with music supervisor, Tom Cook) sings extremely well, Cronin is a fine guitarist , who has to saunter in and set up as part of the action, and Westphal is pretty good on drums. On the other hand there’s bit too much of this in what is meant to be a play, rather than a concert. Moreover, interesting as the play is, it doesn’t go anywhere much which feels oddly unsatisfying at the end.

 

The Spy Who Came in From The Cold

John le Carre adapted by David Eldridge

Chichester Festival Theatre, Minerva Theatre

 

Star rating: 4

 

Confession time: I have always struggled with the novels of John le Carré and  TV and film adaptations of them because the plots are so convoluted that I get lost. It reflects the complicated nature of espionage, I know, but (for me, at least) it makes for pretty impenetrable  fiction. The good news is that adapter David Eldridge, along with director Jeremy Herrin and his accomplished cast of nine, have created a piece in which the story telling is pretty clear, despite the source novel having more twists and loops than a full grown anaconda. Opening with everyone on stage, while Ian Drysdale as Control, stands narrator-like in the middle, introducing the characters, is an effective idea, for example.

At the heart of this Cold War story of agents, double agents and shifting loyalties, set in the early sixties as the Berlin Wall goes up is Rory Keenan as hapless Alec Leamas, sent out on one last mission. It is an outstanding performance which richly conveys all the character’s  irritation, bravado, fear and eventually love for Liz Gold (Agnes O’Casey – good). The scene in which he is at the centre of an East German tribunal in the second act is terrific drama with John Ramm (as Karden) and Philip Arditti (as Fiedler) arguing their cases across him. And there’s strong work from Gunnar Cauthery as chilling Mundt, the East German controller, once a Nazi but now a communist – or maybe not. And how, when he came to London, did he manage simply to get a taxi to the airport and fly home unmolested? It’s a question which is aired from several points of view.

Herrin, and movement director Lucy Cullingford, make imaginative use of the Minerva space in this production with entries and exits from every aisle and some spot-lit appearances on a higher level. John Ramm (doubling not totally satisfactory) as George Smiley, for instance, watches a lot of the action from above which makes narrative sense as things turn out. And Max Jones’s ingenious set works a treat – a bank of chairs awaits the tribunal scene on one side of the circular stage which then swivels to provide a very specific setting for the devastating end. No spoilers here.

Anna Maria della Pieta (1696-1782) was a famous Italian violinist for most of the eighteenth century. Probably the child of a sex worker, she grew up in, and remained at, Ospedale della Pieta, the famous Venetian orphanage where Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was her teacher.

And that is the starting point for Harriet Constable’s debut novel which published last month. Her Anna Maria is totally absorbed in her violin with which her relationship is almost erotic from the age of eight when she first discovers the instrument’s sound and shape. Vivaldi, never named, and always referred to as “her teacher”, spots her extraordinary talent almost immediately. Her single minded focus and ambition costs her almost everything, including two important friendships as she grows up. I loved the account of her being taken, by Vivaldi, to a luthier to choose her own violin and the depiction of eighteenth century Venice is evocatively convincing.

The Anna Maria we meet here is also richly, and fascinatingly synaesthetic, perceiving every sound she makes, or hears, in a panoply of colour. Once the “colours come” she can play almost anything although she also works indefatigably to achieve the excellence she wants. At the same time, she is obliged to deal with the nuns who run the Ospedale strictly and without kindness. There’s a lot of physical punishment. Is it really true that every baby posted through that famous hole in the wall was branded with a P? They and Vivaldi don’t always see eye to eye although the music, with his orchestra and soloists, brings in money for the institution which pleases the governors.

So what, I wonder, was Vivaldi really like? He was relatively young and spent a lot of time alone with nubile teenage girls. Historically, he took one of them (not Anna Maria) away on tour to Vienna and lived with her, although nobody knows exactly how things were between them. One of the Ospedale girls becomes pregnant in the novel and the details are appalling although we are left to speculate about how she got into this situation. Anna Maria has a volatile relationship with “her teacher” and there are often ambiguous sexual undertones.

More interesting, perhaps, is Constable’s idea that the musically bright girls he worked with were all composing music as well. Could he have passed off some of their work as his own? It would, perhaps, explain how he managed to produce such an enormous output. In this novel, the idea for the Four Seasons and most of the work on it comes from Anna Maria, uncredited –  to her fury.

Thus, this is also very much a feminist novel. As Vivaldi points out sneeringly, women are not taken seriously as composers in the eighteenth century. Moreover they have few choices. Any girl who is dropped from Vivaldi’s orchestra is ruthlessly “sold” off by the Ospedale for marriage, a fate not that far from the prostitution which was, presumably, the lot of many of their hapless mothers. Anna Maria passionately wants equality, as well as recognition for her musical ability, as she grapples with her conscience (she behaves very badly several times) and the talent which makes her different from everyone else.

The Instrumentalist is an intriguing novel, strong on story telling and sensuously written. I was particularly interested because I’m an amateur violinist which means that, in a tiny way, I feel the instrument in my hands as Anna Maria does. But, of course, you don’t need ever to have touched a violin to enjoy this.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Atlantic by Luke Jennings

 

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

James Hyland, inspired by Lewis Carroll

Brother Wolf Productions

White Bear Theatre

 

Star rating: 4

Lewis Carroll’s surrealist novel Alice in Wonderland (1865)  predates the development of Theatre of the Absurd in the late 1950s by almost a century but it’s a perfect marriage. Carroll’s plotless original is full of non-sequiturs, circular conversations, word play and puns all of which Hyland’s version runs with in this two hander, 60 minute play. He uses most of Carroll’s material, from The Mad Hatter chapter and from elsewhere in the novel and then takes it  further.

Hyland is a first class character actor and his Mad Hatter is, well, mad as a hatter – seriously and terrifyingly so as we richochet “from rabbit hole to heart of darkness”.  Hyland snivels, shakes, shouts, pants, laughs, weeps, croons, acts with his tongue and does a wonderful job with a farting dormouse glove puppet. There is anger, confusion and fear in this volatile character.

Joshua Jewkes is an excellent foil as the March Hare, white faced and wearing  a splendid long eared headpiece (costumes by A Child of the Jago). He seems to be sensible, throwing cold logic back at Hyland and trying to reason with him although of course he’s actually pretty bonkers too. The comic and physical timing is exemplary.

They are both seated  slumbering at the table as the audience enters and, as the world’s most fidgety fidget, I marvel at how actors learn to hold that stillness for so long. Jewkes in particular is “asleep” for the best part of 20 minutes.

Towards the end of the show Jessica Ivy is drawn from the audience and dances as Alison (or Alice-son – get it?). The sequence is too long and doesn’t add much, although she does it well enough.

This show is James Hyland’s latest dive into nineteenth century fiction from a new angle. I’ve seen him in  Fagin’s Last Hour, A Christmas Carol as told by Jacob Marley – deceased, Jeckyll and Hyde and Dracula. His imaginative writing is as impressive as his acting.

Prom 56, 01 September 2024

BBC Singers

Orwain Park

Berlin Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko

BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall.

Thank goodness (and that’s a bit mild) that good sense prevailed and the BBC Singers were reprieved from last year’s proposed cuts and so are still with us. Their rendering of three Bruckner motets, all unaccompanied, was magically ethereal as their glorious sound soared and dipped to fill the cavernous space which is the Royal Albert Hall. Locus Iste, the most familiar of the three was especially moving not least because these voices blend so beautifully. Orwain Park, principal guest conductor is very good indeed at ensuring we hear every note, word, nuance and harmony. A choir like this is a great deal more than a sum of its parts and their performance was a fine prelude to Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony and the arrival on stage of the Berlin Philharmoniker.

One of the most gigantic symphonies in the repertoire, Bruckner 5 runs for a compelling one hour and twenty minutes. Among many striking things in this splendid performance:  the Berlin Philharmoniker’s perfect pizzicato which, especially in the bass section but right across the strings, resonates with rich warmth – and there’s a lot of it in this symphony. Moreover the Berlin Phil does lush melody like almost no other orchestra. The second movement here was idyllic with especial sweetness at the brass entry. And the delicacy of the horn just before the end was spellbinding.

In a symphony which uses the classical four movement framework but weaves it with expansive and inventive romanticism, mercurial Petrenko makes the third movement feel like sparky fun. He starts the molto vivace section like the wind. At times in the trio he stops beating and simply looks at his players as well as swaying, almost dancing so that he conducts with his whole body. He makes the whole movement smile.

Then, just when you thought you thought it couldn’t get any better comes the finale played with as much drama and dynamic contrast as I’ve ever heard it – and finally sumptuous playing at the end with that fabulous bass tuba at the bottom of the texture. Petrenko is evidently totally at one with what must surely be one of the world’s finest orchestras and this was a concert which will not be forgotten by anyone lucky enough to have been there.

 

 

 

The Railway Children

Adapted from E Nesbit by Lynne Lawrence who also directs

Tethered Wits Theatre Company

Actors’ Church, Covent Garden

 

Star rating: 4

 

This is The Railway Children neatly pared down to a 60 minute four hander and it sits very nicely in the Actor’s Church  garden with a platform built over the steps at the West door and the audience sitting on semi-circles of park-type benches.

All cast members are adept actor-musos and there’s some attractive music – wistful, atmospheric, excited – composed by MD Deakin Vanleeuwen and integrated into the action. Alexandra Clare (Phyllis) playing an arrangement of “The Banks of Green Willow” on clarinet, for example is a poignant moment.

Olivia Warren as Bobby gets the older-sister, half child and half adult right and although it seems initially confusing when she morphs from time to time into the children’s mother, it soon settles. In fact Warren ages 20 years simply by wrapping a shawl round her shoulders and modulating her voice. She’s no mean violinist either.

Joe Keenan’s performance as Peter, the excitable middle child, is very convincing. He doubles as Mr Sczepansky, the deeply depressed Russian refugee who is searching for his wife and family. Keenan communicates the poor man’s despair beautifully.

Clare’s Phyllis is very young, excitable, and cheerfully struggles to pronounce some long words which is a nice touch. She also makes her character’s eyes shine so that we believe completely in this well meaning but sometimes over-enthusiastic little girl.

Rory Dulku sports an attractive suave RP for the children’s father and a rich Yorkshire accent as the down-to-earth Mr Perks. He plays the two roles so differently that you hardly notice it’s the same person.

Of course some of the incidents in the novel have gone in this succinct take on The Railway Children but most of the key things are in, or at least referred to briefly. Mr Perks’ birthday is included for example, as is Peter’s stealing coal from the station. We also get the train which has to be stopped to prevent a land-slip related accident – with the children in the audience all waving red flags. They are invited to help hold up the sign to attract the old gentleman’s attention too.

There are no trains as such in this production. Instead the cast create appropriate noises and create an illusion by watching and pointing.

Tethered Wits is a Cotswold-based company which tours outdoor venues. I’m very glad that this, and the sister production Jeeves and Wooster, are in London for a few performances because this company really is rather good.