Press ESC or click the X to close this window

Oh No It Isn’t! (Susan Elkin reiviews)

Show: Oh No it Isn’t!

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Jack Studio Theatre. 410 Brockley Road, London SE4 2DH

Credits: By Luke Adamson. Directed by Kate Bannister. Presented by The Jack Studio Theatre

Oh No it Isn’t!

4 stars

Photo: Davor Tovarlaza

Luke Adamson’s new play is a homage to pantomime. Funny in a bitter-sweet way, it’s partly celebratory but there’s also anguish – tragedy even – behind the scenes.

We’re in the dressing room of two men who are playing the ugly sisters in Cinderella and the rolling aside of a clothes rail (set design by Karl Swinyard) takes us neatly onto the panto stage, several times, so that we become the audience at this show within a show.

Mr Chancery (Matthew Parker)  is clearly better at the job and has other work to go on to after the panto run.  Mr Worth (Bryan Pilkington) is staler, corpses during the show and knows that his career is falling apart. These two men have evidently worked together many times before and there are ancient grudges which still rankle so they bicker.

Parker’s portrayal of Mr Chancery is of a man who knows his craft and can think logically about pantomime issues. His comic timing in the dressing room and his all-telling facial expressions are part of a fine performance. As Mr Worth, Pilkington gives us a sad, angry man who know that he is, almost literally, losing the plot but can do nothing to prevent the slide. The two men play off each other beautifully, especially in the final scene when their characters get out of their costumes (costume changes accompany much of the earlier dialogue) at the end of the show’s run and stop posturing. “You’re more likely to get cast if you’ve been on Love Island than if you’re been to bloody drama school” snarls Mr Worth. Adamson admits that much of this play is rooted in his own experience (like Mr Worth, he did his first panto at age 9) and I bet he has heard that bitter, truthful line said through gritted teeth in a dressing room somewhere

When the two men are on stage singing songs and doing routines there’s a lot of affectionate laughter. Of course the slosh scene is weak and the audience participation song excruciating but that’s the whole point. It’s a pretty lacklustre pantomime these characters are in. But they do all the “it’s behind you” and clumsy dances and songs in a hammy way and involve the real  Jack Studio audience as their panto audience. It’s a thoughtful, ingenious 65 minutes.

On Press Night the Parker and PIlkingon got five minutes into the show and the lighting decision seemed very odd because we could hardly see their faces. Then the Stage Manager announced there was a technical hitch and that we were going back to the beginning of the first song. That led to some cheerful adlibbing as the actors reversed the costume change they’d just done. It was all handled with smooth professionalism and the second time we had the lighting (designed by Robbie Butler) which meant we could see what was going on. It’s fun when things go wrong – as Pilkington quipped.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/oh-no-it-isnt/

 

  • Photos: Davor Tovarlaza

 

 Subscribe 

St Augustine’s Singers, Cambridge

Conductor Lucas Elkin

Michaelhouse

16 December 2023

This concert was a refreshing antidote to all the schmultzy, mass-produced junk music that’s relentless pumped out at us every December. It ranged over several centuries, took us all over Europe and included some unexpected delights.

One such was probably the most challenging, and the longest item, in the programme: Totus Tuus by Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, a Polish composer who died in 2010,  requires the sort of control that only a fine chamber choir (15 in the St Augustine’s Singers on this occasion) directed with real attention to detail, could bring off. It includes some scarily unpredictable close harmony and a very long pianissimo/morendo ending. The only way to do it is to trust the conductor and Lucas Elkin delivered it impeccably.

Among the other eleven items in this lunch-time pot-pourri we also got a pleasing rendering of Beata Viscera by William Byrd. Of course we’ve been marking the 400th anniversary of his death all this year so he’s pretty ubiquitous at the moment. Here, that characteristic, eight-part, soaring sound was delivered with panache.

Qui Creavit Caelum by Philip Mead is a tricky piece because it wanders through many keys and those descending intervals must be tricky to get accurate but this was a very creditable performance.

Included for balance were some pieces that anyone who’s ever sung in a choir will know intimately. Both John Goss’s See Amid the Winter Snow and Gustav Holst’s In the Bleak Winter were sung with clarity and warmth. And I liked the account of Peter Cornelius’s The Three Kings with Will Hale singing the tenor solo. The balance was excellent with the accompanying choir  and Hale was very pleasant to listen to. There was a commendably nippy account of Berlioz’s The Shepherd’s Farewell too.

I have heard Elkin’s own arrangement of Stille Nacht before but had forgotten how lovely it is with a lot of colourful harmony from an all male group – until the last verse when there’s a soprano solo. Vincci Lau, an adult woman, sang this without vibrato and with all the transparent silvery crystalline beauty of a 9 year old choir boy.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing was billed as the last number and nearly everyone in the audience got a cheerful surprise because Elkin’s arrangement sets it to Arthur Sullivan’s Eagle High from Utopia Limited. It works astonishingly well and made a fine, upbeat ending to this charming concert.

Versatile Mo Wah Chan was another reason why this concert was as good as it was. She sang soprano in all the unaccompanied numbers, walking across the space to provide  piano accompaniment where it was required. And it was all done with quiet efficiency and skill.

Michaelhouse is a good venue too. One end of the church is a busy café while the east end is used for services and concerts. The acoustic is warm and friendly and the glass screen between the building’s two sections acts as pretty effective sound proofing.

 

 

The Light Princess – Albany Deptford

Picture: Alex Brenner

The Light Princess continues at the Albany Deptford, London until 24 December 2023.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

The Light Princess is a devised three-hander about a princess in a country called Sneachta who is “different” because she can float, which in this context means fly. Her mother despairs but eventually accepts this otherness, once her daughter has found a supportive friend.

It’s marketed as “a grown-up musical for all the family” with specific mention of ages three to seven in the small print. Actually the sophisticated ideas it tries to convey – at some length – are way too complex for most pre-schoolers. The young children in the two families behind me were literally running about the back of the theatre, totally disengaged, which is pretty distracting for anyone, of any age, able or wanting to watch the show and think about the issues.

And that’s a pity because there’s some good work here …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Reviews https://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-light-princess-albany-deptford/

Cinderella 3 stars

Nottingham Playhouse

Photo: Pamela Raith.

I saw this show at a matinee along with the biggest school party I’ve ever seen and every one of them was in the mood for a whooping good time. At times the noise drowned dialogue and songs although it must have been a treat for the cast to play to such a receptive audience. It has to be said, though, that perhaps the script should have been adjusted for this crowd because most of the cleverer jokes and puns went over their heads and fell flat.

John Elkington has masses of Dame experience and he plays Rose with flair and neat comic timing. He and Tom Hopcroft, as Violet, the second younger sister play well off each other too, each with  a specific personality.

A number of things made this pantomime better than some. There several songs known to all the children present so, invited or not, they joined in and it felt very inclusive. And you can’t get more traditional than a quick, slick round of “If I were not upon the stage a policeman I would be …” presented as entertainment at the ball.

A rather engaging “scary” (not) ghost sequence with ultra-violet light and disembodied arms apparently moving on their own was such fun that the conventional ghost scene after it seemed lack-lustre.

The  use of a chorus of woodland animals with gorgeous masks is a nice touch and the model flying horse which pulls the coach to the ball and actually achieves lift off is good. Design is by Cleo Pettit and includes an attractive stained glass window-inspired stage frame with lots of glowing pumpkins, There was also a good comedy scene in which Hopcroft plays with the follow spot.

I was amused at the momentary horror when a chunk was hacked off a foot to make it fit the slipper. It seemed gross and rare in Panto. In fact it is straight out of Perrault (1628-1703) who wrote the original pre-Disney, pre-panto story which is much more gruesome than the sanitised version we’re used to,

There are some strong performances in this show. Jewelle Hutchinson delights as Cinderella – all sweetness and dignity. She has a fine singing voice too. So does Alice Redmond who doubles the Fairy Godmother (all soft vowels) with the cackling RP-speaking step mother. Danny Hendrix holds the audience well as Buttons and when he eventually presses his “Big Golden Button” – well it’s a spontaneous applause moment.

 

  • Photos: Pamela Raith

 Subscribe 

I spotted this book in the National Theatre Bookshop four or five years ago and bought it. The main attraction was the pretty cover. I don’t normally go in for that. I’m usually all about content. It’s the quality that counts and not the wrappings, as my father used to opine in various contexts. But I really couldn’t resist this elegant Liberty fabric cloth cover and the matching marker ribbon. Tactilty and visual delight, for once, won the day.

Over several Christmases since I have dipped into it, along with my collection of other favourite old Christmas anthologies, but until now had never read it right through. Now that I have, I can report that it’s a goldmine of new discoveries.

Simon Rae’s collection dates from 2017 and of course he includes all the obvious, familiar things such as John Betjeman’s Christmas, the opening of St John’s Gospel, Charles Causley’s Innocents’ Song, some Dickens and lots of carols. But across 260 pages he also assembles lots of extracts, stories and poems which were either new to me or which I’d never thought of in this context. I like the way he ranges across nine centuries (I don’t think I knew that I Saw Three Ships dates from the 14th century) and arranges his material in broad themes such as War, Family, Carols, Animals and seventeen other “chapters”.

I especially enjoyed George Bernard Shaw’s 1898 review of The Babes in the Wood at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in which he gives us a witty condemnation of Christmas and all who sail exploitatively in her, including pantomime makers and participants. He describes Christmas as …. “an indecent subject; a cruel gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject, a wicked, cadging, lying, blasphemous and demoralizing subject”. Oh for an ounce of Mr Shaw’s flair with words. I wouldn’t mind a bit of his fearless cynicism either.

Or take George Monbiot’s short piece which suggests that the image of Father Christmas being drawn across the sky by reindeer may have its orgins in delusions induced by eating hallucinogenic fly agaric toadstools in darkest Siberia.

Of course, moreover, I relish anything by Wendy Cope and  hope I’m not infringing copyright by sharing this witty, bitter little gem here.

At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle.

The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle

And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle

And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you’re single.

 Rae also throws into the mix Just William, Saki, Mr Pooter, TS Eliot, Jilly Cooper, DH Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, John Milton and a delightful spoof, by Frank Jacobs,  on The Night Before Christmas  among many others. It really is a glorious and eclectic seasonal read – like a tasty Christmas pudding into which every imaginable ingredient has been happily stirred with plenty of brandy.

 

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle

Peter Pan continues at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 7 January 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Four adult professionals and a splendid cast of 20 performers from Rose Youth Theatre form the gender-blind cast for this show. The young members work in two teams. It was Green Cast on press night.

The music is pre-recorded rather than live but the cast seems to work happily with it. It’s a show with occasional songs rather than full-blown musical theatre. The slinkily rhythmic melody for the pirates is especially effective (music, lyrics and orchestrations are by Vikki Stone).

The show is framed by a lively grandmother (Hilary Maclean, good), probably 1960s, trying to coax her grandson Ralph (Ella Waldmann, Green Cast) to bed in an old-fashioned nursery ….

https://musicaltheatrereview.com/peter-pan-rose-theatre-kingston/Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review  

Show: Pacific Overtures

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Menier Chocolate Factory. 53 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU

Credits: Music & Lyrics Stephen Sondheim. Book by John Weidman. Additional material Hugh Wheeler. Directed Matthew White. Presented by Menier Chocolate Factory co-produced with Umeda Arts Theater.

Pacific Overture

4 stars

Until 1853 Japan was an Island in the sea which had kept out “barbarian foreigners” since the seventeenth  century. They were a peaceful people who grew rice and painted screens. Then four American warships turned up to make “Pacific overtures”, aggressive ones if necessary, and things changed very quickly.

That’s the history which inspired this American musical, dating from 1976, which tells a very human story entirely from the point of view of the Japanese. It has been pared down, over the years, to highlight the serious, often tragic, nature of the narrative and this engaging new production, which first ran in Tokyo and Osaka earlier this year, runs for I hour 45 mins without interval.

It has always been specified that the cast should be Japanese and most of this cast have Pacific heritage although many of them trained at UK drama schools. The production was originally played in Japanese. At the Chocolate Factory it’s in English, with one neat little joke when the cast apparently forgets and has to be switched back.

The man who does the switching is Jon Chew, the narrator who, remote video control in hand, presents the story as if it were an illustrated lecture. And it’s a splendid performance. He struts, hops and dances about, catching the eyes of audience members, watches the set pieces from the sidelines and is charismatically convincing. We believe what he says. Occasionally he becomes part of the action. He is very adept in including the entire audience as he speaks. The Menier is configured in a traverse format for this production and Chew handles that expertly.

It’s a big cast of seventeen with some enjoyably energetic ensemble work. Saori Oda is excellent as the Shogun, initially very formal but gradually thawing as the situation becomes tenser. She is also delightful as the saucy, knowing, Madame supervising her “girls” and pragmatically seeing good business opportunities in the arrival of foreigners. And that encapsulates the tragedy of this tale. How are foreign sailors to tell which women are prostitutes and which aren’t in this culture so different from their own? The scene in which Luoran Ding is an exotically pretty woman in an orchard where she is propositioned with money by three eager but pretty harmless young Brits is devastating because her honour is ruthlessly defended by the men who guard her. And that’s based on a real historical incident.

The scene in which boats begin to turn up from all over the world hungry for exploitative trade opportunities is a richly entertaining, beautifully written series of stereotypical pastiches.  Patrick Munday gives us a British Admiral singing a take-off of a G&S patter song.  Lee VG makes his bass voice sound straight from the Volga as he accelerates in true Russian folk-style.  And Sario Soloman is hilarious and an absurdly over-the-top, show-stealing French admiral.

Paul Farnsworth’s set does clever things with a big circular screen, looking like a rising sun to connote Japan, or maybe a world map, at one end which splits vertically as doors. It often frames scenes such as the Shogun’s court too. Ayako’s imaginative costumes range from kimonos to silly hats for Admirals and outfits which include boats and national flags. From the technical point of view, however, the best thing is Paul Pyant’s evocative lighting – bright for an orchard, blood red for horror and delicate light patterns on the floor.

 

And it’s all accompanied/led by Paul Bogaev’s fine nine piece band, just visible on a corner balcony. A lot of the music is very subtle – the Pretty Lady number, for example develops into a very attractive fugal piece. And Sondheim isn’t above the classic but always effective trick in which you use the pentatonic scale, rather than the usual Western eight note one,  to make a melody sound Japanese.

I know that to criticise Sondheim is as crass as finding fault with Leonardo da Vinci or Mozart but, as always with his shows, I found myself wondering whether the music needs to be quite so repetitive. I’m not at all convinced that every reprise actually adds something. And most of the numbers (there are only ten in the whole show) are quite long and sometimes feel protracted.

My other little gripe, in what really is a fine show generally, is my usual problem with stage smoke. And there’s a great deal of it when the first American boats arrive. Yes, I know it’s theatrically effective, lighting designers love it and actors sing through it without a problem but – even though it’s meant to be completely harmless – it makes me cough. Perhaps I am a freak but there it is. We exist.

 

  • Photos: Manuel Harlan

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/pacific-overtures/

Messiah

George Frederick Handel

Merry Opera Company

 

Music Director Will Sharma

Organist Jack Stone

Stage Director Hohn Ramster

Revival Director Lorrie Hay

 

It isn’t a proper Christmas unless, and until, I’ve heard a decent Messiah. And this year Merry Opera Company, whom I’ve seen in action many times before, obligingly staged theirs in a church which is walking distance from my home, as part of their 2023 tour.

“Staged” is the key word because this is John Ramster’s attempt to find contemporary stories in Handel’s music and it’s the sixteenth time this production has toured so it clearly ticks lots of boxes for many people.

Twelve people arrive – in many cases emerging from spare seats in the audience – at a church presenting various degrees of anger, distress, despair, puzzlement, complacency and more. Each has been assigned a personal story although the audience never knows what these are.

It brings, however a completely fresh dimension to music that I’ve sung, played and heard many, many times going all the way back to school days. And that’s the moving, magical thing about this production, which I’ve seen before in a village church in Kent but that was some years ago.

For a start, doing it like this, means that it all has to be from memory, which adds to the immediacy. Second – with only three singers to each line including solos – the difference between choruses, solo numbers and recitative gets blurred. And it means you can split numbers between singers.  I really like “I know that my redeemer liveth” shared between two altos and a counter tenor (Joshua Elmore), for example. It feels warm – and like almost every note  in this performance – as if each singer means every single word. Elmore does a beautiful “Oh thou that tellest” too.

These singers sing to each other as if they’re in opera and the acting adds resonance. Elmore weeps as he sings “He was despised”. Glenn Tweedie’s opening “Comfort Ye” is almost shocking in the way he conveys the need for comfort in the lovely dramatic acoustic of St John the Baptist Church.  And just occasionally – and rather effectively – they come together as a quasi-conventional choir for numbers such as “Since man came by death” whose beauty, harmony and agony really has to be listened to attentively. If this were  a different sort ofmusical theatre you’d call it a “show stopper”.

Conductor Will Sharma is positioned so that he can be seen by both organist and singers and they must have to work this out very carefully in each different venue. In the performace I saw he was standing on a chair, score on iPad, next to a pillar a few feet from my seat  near the back. There are times, nonetheleswhen some of the singers can’t see him and there’s a time lag to be negotiated but they do a pretty good job of staying together. Only once in the performance I saw/heard did it lose its way and then it was only for a few bars.

The very best thing about this take on Messiah is the surround sound effect and I remember thinking that last time too. Singers are all around you and it’s like being immersed in quadrophonic magic and that’s rare in live performance. It makes you hear, and listen, to every line if the person with the next entry is, literally, standing next to you or just a few feet behind, And when they get to “Worthy as the Lamb” which comes from all corners and sides it’s electrifyingly magnificent, Finally they group at the front for “Amen” and Sharma obviously loves that summative, sublime top A, nine bars before the end, as much as I do because he puts a dramatic accent on it.

As for the “action”, well, there’s a great deal of arm flailing which puts me in mind of the semaphore I was made to learn in the Brownies or of children playing aircraft. And I have no idea why everyone is in funeral black and apparently at a church service for “Behold the Lamb of God” or why they then change into cricket whites or why most of them lie as if dead in the aisle during one number. I suppose punching the air throughout “Hallelujah” and hopping on and off boxes as if doing a gym exercise, does convey a sense of excitement if you don’t think the music already does that.

Moreover, it’s quite a feat to sing part of “If God be for us”  while hoisted, horizontal and corpse-like six feet in the air by four others as Valerie Wong does.  I simply can’t imagine singing the rapid semiquavers in “And he shall purify” and having to dance at the same time either.  And Glenn Tweadie dons a floaty white shroud/beach robe under which he changes his trousers while singing “But thou didst not leave”. These people are opera singers and, evidently, well accustomed to theatrical multi-tasking.

None of that matters, though. It’s the quality of sound and singing which rules the day. And it does just that – in spades.  My Christmas has really begun now.