Now in its thirty-second touring season, Illyria has developed and honed to perfection a very distinctive and outstandingly nippy way of working in the open-air. Oliver Gray’s version of Pride and Prejudice (which I have seen before) dates from 2003, uses five actors, mostly Jane Austen’s words and masses of high octane energy.

This talented bunch start by selling programmes dressed in simple. loosely Regency, cotton undergarments, and then spend the next two and a half hours hopping in and out of bonnets, frocks, coats, shawls and hat at top speed.  Pat Farmer’s costumes are a stroke of genius. Perhaps they’d like to let me know some time where I can buy a gorgeous statement long double breasted overcoat and top hat like the one Mr Darcy wears – and makes quite a power statement with.

Edward Simpson is curmudgeonly but very attractive as plain speaking Mr Bennet. He is also hilarious as the revolting Lady Catherine de Bourgh, benign as Mr Gardiner and a good, back-to-the-audience Darcy double in That Coat – among other things. It’s an extraordinarily busy show. Anyone who’s not actually playing a character has to be the coconut-clicking horse in one of the numerous carriage journeys.

One neat way of ensuring that we really hear Austen’s sardonic voice is to make Elizabeth also into the main narrator and Nicola Foxfield (alongside occasional appearances as a Brummy housekeeper) does this well. Her Lizzy is feisty and intelligent but also warmly human. She conveys the distress when she hears of Lydia’s devastating escapade very convincingly. And of course she reacts to the outrageous Darcy with hilarious fury before, eventually, we reach the conclusion we all know is coming complete with a good joke about the lake at Pemberley also being good for swimming in.

Sarah Pugh’s Mrs Bennet (among lots of other roles) is a joy. She has the obsessive nervous energy and general shallow dimness perfectly – hilarious to watch but utterly impossible if one had to live with it. And Rosie Zeidler’s Lydia really dialls up the likeness between them. Zeidler is very good too at the contrasting, sober, sensible pragmatic Charlotte Lucas and as Jane, the eldest daughter whose future hangs in the balance for so long.

Chris Wills is a fine actor. His Darcy – all charismatic haughtiness and outrageous, disdainful prejudice – is spot on and his oily-voiced Mr Collins an enjoyable contrast. Dancing as Mr Collins –  bowing, scraping, and bobbing up and down is lovely comedy. And, he’s good as the caddish Wickham.

Yes, there are lots of very enjoyable performances in this show which really runs with Jane Austen’s satire rather than trying to reinvent it. And it sits neatly on a simple open air set consisting of a big backing fan, a couple of flexibly used garden benches and two big costume boxes. I’m always delighted, moreover, to see  good quality live theatre reaching a pleasingly big audience in a setting such as Dartford Central Park at affordable prices.

Photo: Manuel Harlan

Rarely have I enjoyed a musical as much as I did Adam Penford’s fresh, vibrant account of Rogers and Hammerstein’s best known and final collaboration. It’s respectfully traditionalist but feels sparklingly new minted.

Gina Beck’s Maria is naïve and feisty, humble but passionate and joyful but troubled. She makes the part completely her own – and there is no sense that she has modelled it on That Actress in That Film which still usually tops the charts for the most viewings of any film ever. Moreover Beck’s voice is sweet, strong, beautifully modulated and of course her diction is perfect. If you can’t hear every word of “The Lonely Goatherd” then it flops. Here it is a show stopper.

Edward Harrison gives us an ideal Georg – initially worried, bereaved, lonely and hiding behind fierceness but eventually healed by Maria’s presence. He does the transition effectively and I loved the final moments when, every inch a loving father, he takes Gretl (Felicity Walton on press night – delightful) on his back and the von Trapp family sets off up the steps through the dark auditorium which represents the mountains to Switzerland.

Of course there are two teams of children  and what a lovely, appropriate idea to bring the non-performing team on at the press night curtain call. The team I saw exuded talent and are a fabulous credit to Lizzi Gee’s choreography – moving with impeccable slickness and singing with accuracy as well as charm. Sasha Watson-Lobo as Louisa stands out particularly: dancing effervescently and singing with charismatic gusto.

Another great strength in this production is the sung harmony, especially from the female ensemble as nuns. Musical Director Matt Samer (tucked away with a fine 14 piece band behind and above the stage) makes sure that we hear every harmonic shift and enjoyed every chord and cadence.

Robert Jones’s set uses revolving flats and a rising desk and chair to evoke different parts of the von Trap villa and Abbess’s office against a craggy mountain backdrop. As we all know, though, this is 1938 and Austria is being annexed.  Hayley Egan’s projection of real Third Reich footage at the top, when the mood changes, is chillingly evocative – as are the Nazi flags carried through the audience to the stage.

While it is true that one or two of the principals don’t sing quite as well as Beck and Harrison (although Penelope Woodman does well as Frau Schmidt), in general this is a faultless show. I might have given it four stars but for one thing – the reaction of my 47 year old plus one. He knew the film, of course, but had never seen the show live although he is in general a pretty seasoned theatre goer.  He was in tears for most of the first half  –  deeply moved by the sheer power of it all. Any show that can do that to a middle-aged man of the world more than earns the final star in my view.

In short, buy a ticket before it sells out. And take plenty of tissues.

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  Photos: Manuel Harlan

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Photo: AB Photography

The fourth version of Much Ado About Nothing I’ve seen this year, and the third in the last twelve days, is an antidote to all the others.

It’s an irreverent send-up predicated on the idea that the actress playing Beatrice (Flora Sowerby at the performance I saw – the cast rotates) is drunk or “sh!t-faced”. She therefore messes up the show with a lot of asides, falling about and disinhibition. Think – if this company’s modus operandi is new to you – Horrible Histories spliced with The Play That Goes Wrong and blended with an energetic adult pantomime.

Sowerby is a gifted comic actor and uses her height – nearly six foot of it – to great effect. She also exudes charisma along with the daftness and has the audience eating out of her hand. And the other five actors work seamlessly with her. It must be fun to develop a show like this. I wonder who came up with the line “Refrain from mounting my codpiece”?

But it’s a bit of an irritant that every time Beatrice swears – and there’s a lot of that –  the audience falls about laughing. Yes, it sounds modern and therefore incongruous but actually these words are centuries old and Shakespeare knew them as well as anyone. Witness the “country matters” joke in Hamlet. It’s funny at first but for me it quite quickly wears thin. It’s a show about drink, in a sense. Perhaps I should have drunk more while I watched it because I thought the chlamydia joke was over-egged too. Trouble is that at heart I don’t find the British obsession with drink and drunkenness funny but that’s a personal reaction. It doesn’t mean that this isn’t a fine show of its type. After all they do – sort of – wind their way through Much Ado and even speak some Shakespeare occasionally.

There’s a compere (Beth-Louise Priestley on press night) who acts as a quasi stage manager and pantomime-style liaison with the audience, along with some rather contrived audience participation: It’s the sort of thing which grates on me but that’s to do with personal taste and not a criticism of the show.

It is, of course, much harder to do something like this than it is to do a Shakespeare play “straight” even with a heavily cut text. You have to convince the audience it’s all spontaneous while at the same time keeping it carefully under control – quite an art and this company do that extremely well which why I’m giving it four stars. This is a classic case of a reviewer having to separate her own likes and dislikes from assessment of quality.

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  Photos: AB Photography

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Photo: Marc Brenner

The latest in Open Air Theatre Regents Park’s series of re-imaginings for an all-age audience, is very freely reworked. And this time it is co-produced with Unicorn Theatre which makes a lot of sense. The show is effectively a tuneful mini opera (music and lyrics by Harry Blake) glued together with short passages extrapolated from Shakespeare and made as coherent as possible with skilled adaption and addition. It runs for just 75 minutes.

Chiara Stephenson’s set is a delight. The playing area is surrounded with the sort of rubbish which washes up on beaches so there’s a quietly understated environmental message especially as Ferdinand’s later task is to clear it up rather than to move logs.

The set uses a double revolve with a sort of makeshift hut in the centre which starts gauzy for the storm and then becomes Prospero’s cell. The roof of it provides a second playing space. The outer ring has stylish trees which can be climbed and which rotate at magical moments.

It takes plenty of vision – and some extraordinarily quick costume changes – to do The Tempest with a cast of six but Jennifer Tang makes it work smoothly enough. Ashley D Gayle, for instance, who gives us a fabulous angry, oppressed but funny Caliban, is also a delight as the unpleasant plotter, Antonio as well as singing a jolly song in a very glitzy get up (costumes by EM Parry – good) as one of the three masques summoned to formalise the big betrothal.

Juliet Agnes’s spectacular, larger-than-life Ariel in a sort of white space suit is arresting and she and Gayle lead the audience participation with verve.

Mark Theodore is the most impressive looking Prospero I’ve ever seen. He’s a big, statuesque man with a deep voice and he finds real gravitas and authority in the role – as well as some rueful humility and wisdom at the end.  It is, after all, ultimately a play about forgiveness and redemption.

I also enjoyed Finlay McGuigan’s  diffident, wet Ferdinand which contrasts well with his bumptious Trinculo. Daisy Prosper is a suitably bouncy, impressionable Miranda discovering the hormones she wasn’t previously aware of and Alice Keedwell is convincing as the bereaved mother, Alonsa. and funny as Stephano although I was puzzled by the drink she and Trinculo share and feed to Caliban. From my seat in row Q it looked like a bottle of Windowlene.

They are, in short, a talented bunch although some of them should not have been cast in singing roles. The best tune in the show is Ban, Ban Caliban.  I’m sure, though, I’ve heard it before or something very similar. It’s in a minor key, off the beat, uses a descending chromatic scale and becomes an instant  earworm. I heard several people, grown ups as well as children singing it as they left the theatre.

Maybe I’m literalist but I was a bit anxious about Prospero running a computer on electricity generated by Caliban on a bike. It seems implausible. And where, on this remote Island is getting his wifi from? Satellite? Never mind: magic innit. And  of course it’s fun to have his “books” represented by an iPad which he also uses to instigate his spells.

I think this re-imagining could have used just a little more Shakespeare (although all the famous speeches are in) and a little less innovation which can sometimes stray into gimmickry. I could see no sense, for example, in the pair of Deliveroo drivers bringing food, for example, although it’s good for a laugh.

In general though, it’s a decent and enjoyable show.

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  Miranda (Daisy Prosper). Photos: Marc Brenner

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  Stephano (Alice Keedwell) and Caliban (Ashley D. Gayle)

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  Caliban (Ashley D. Gayle)

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  Antonio (Ashley D. Gayle) and Alonsa (Alice Keedwell)

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  Miranda (Daisy Prosper), Prospero (Mark Theodore) and Ferdinand (Finlay McGuigan)

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  Alonsa (Alice Keedwell), Ariel (Juliet Agnes), Miranda (Daisy Prosper) and Prospero (Mark Theodore)

• First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-tempest-14/

We’re in a Nottinghamshire constituency which has always been Labour. It’s 2017 and sitting MP David Lyons (Liam Stewart) is close to losing his seat. James Graham’s play then takes us back to the late 1980s in a detailed, compelling, often ruefully witty exploration of the tensions between the traditional Labour position and pragmatic New Labour.

Stewart gives us a man who is now shouty and probably burned out, struggling to come to terms with the imminent end of his career. Then we shift back in time and see him with his rather “posh”, distant, lawyer wife (Sophie Platts-Martin – good) who can’t envisage living in the constituency, trying to form a working relationship with the local council and making a laughable mess of a trade negotiation with a Chinese businessman (James Taverner – convincingly cold).

Most important of all is his relationship with his feisty, forthright, very bright agent, Jean (Helen McGill). McGill’s is a remarkable performance. She develops her character from a troubled young mother, whose husband has had to resign as MP because he’s dying of cancer, through several decades to a mature woman who knows the business she’s in and the man she’s working for very well indeed. And she does it in reverse. We get the mature version first and then with the aid of a wig, some younger clothes and some fine acting she sheds 30 years and carries us with her completely.

At the heart of this very political play is a love story. The relationship between David and Jean is stormy, argumentative, often angry but always passionate. As with Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing the more they hurl insults at each other the more we know that there’s chemistry there. It’s beautifully written and in this production exceptionally well acted and intelligently directed.

Phillip Ley’s set supports all this with basic office furniture, an “outside” door to the constituency office and a tiny kitchen off it. He has done some very accurate research and prop finding to get exactly the right sort of technology – phones, TV, fax and so on – for the year in question.

The above-set, video projection (designed by Harry Tomlin) is good too. He gives us archive footage of various prime ministers and leaders of the opposition over the last thirty years (how young everyone looks!) interspersed with film of Stewart and McGill canvassing and making constituency visits. It’s intended to cover the scene changes while cast and crew carry things on and off and it works pretty well although some of the cueing was iffy at the performance I saw.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/labour-of-love/

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at the Roman Theatre 2023 . Photo: Richard Budd

Yet another sparky, innovative take on Much Ado About Nothing of which there’s a lot about this summer although I sometimes wonder whether it’s a competition to see who can come up with the quirkiest re-imagining. The National Youth Theatre, for example, set theirs on Love Island earlier this year.

Creation Theatre has teamed up with OVO for this 1980s version of a play which sits neatly in the leafy, hilly space of the Roman Theatre on a summer evening especially when we’re graced with kind weather.  And they’ve certainly recruited a talented cast, all of whom have to work pretty hard, because there are only six of them.

Good ideas include the rebirth of Leanto’s brother as his sister Antonia, good fun with a long 1980s coiled phone cord and lots of Keystone Cops-style comedy with Verges and Dogberry with sirens and loud hailers around the audience.  I was less happy about the Friar as Elvis although it’s very funny. Presley died in 1977 but perhaps we’re supposed to assume that this Friar is a self-styled, enthusiastic Elvis imitator/fan.

Anna Tolputt – a charismatically diminutive woman and a fine actor – plays Benedick as a man. She is very watchable but as we see Beatrice (Emily Woodward – excellent) gradually realise that she loves him, it feels as if we’re somewhere between a “trouser role” like Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro and a school play in a girl’s school. Tolputt has, however, an excellent knack of communicating her feelings with her face and hiding her character’s gentle vulnerability and innate decency behind gruffness as every good Benedick does. She has a gift for comedy too. Few people could get a laugh out of simply dropping an alka-seltzer into a glass of water.

Lewis Chandler is outstanding as Don Pedro – all independent school RP – along with a delightfully camp Margaret, the hilarious Elvis character and the self-important Dogberry. He is clearly a highly accomplished actor having a lot of fun. Brianna Douglas, meanwhile competently  gives us a prettily virginal Hero, an excitable Verges and a bent, tiresome, bossy old lady when she’s playing Antonia.

I also enjoyed Nicholas Osmond’s performance as the plummy- vowelled, malevolent Don John and as Leonato, a laid back father until we get that profoundly disturbing patriarchal anger with Hero after she’s jilted at the altar. He handles the change with so much conviction that it’s painful. Herb Cuanalo, who also plays Claudio, is at this best as the track-suited, East End Borachio earning pocket money by making mischief at Don John’s behest.

The problem with all that doubling, however is that there often has to be contrived stage business to allow other actors to change costumes and at one point there’s a gap where nothing happens at all and that feels clumsily amateurish as does using recorded music to cover scene changes.  But the occasional use of a recorded or telephone conversation as a way of not having a character on stage at a given moment is both ingenious and effective.

I liked the slight hint at the play on the word “die” by the way. It was Elizabethan slang for orgasm but I may have been the only person in the audience who got the joke.

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  ‘MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING’ at the Roman Theatre 2023. Photos: Richard Budd

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• First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/much-ado-about-nothing-14/