Photo by Tristram Kenton

There’s much to admire in this gently updated revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s darkest opera. We’re in 1953 and it works rather well although I would rather not have filmed news footage – clever as the concept  is – obliterating the sound of Sullivan’s finest overture being beautifully played by a full sized pit orchestra under Chris Hopkins’ baton.

It’s a grandiloquent production with a splendid ensemble of fifty people directed to use every inch of ENO’s huge playing space. We first see the titular Yeomen in their wardroom in their vests with cups of tea gradually singing their way into their familiar, elaborate uniforms – and that’s one of this show’s many good ideas. The use of the revolve is another – especially for the construction of a scaffold at the end of Act 1. The concept of the female chorus as Women’s Royal Army Corps with Dame Carruthers (Susan Bickley – good) as their commanding officer fits the bill perfectly. And the trio of tap dancing guardsmen in their busbies are an unexpected, joyfully absurd delight. Anthony Ward’s sets make terrific use of the space, ultimately including a miniature tower on the revolve with provides an encircling shelf on which some scenes are staged at a slightly higher level.

I doubt that Sardines readers need an account of the plot but as a reminder:  this is a story about a man condemned to death in the Tower of London. A last minute rescue leads to disguise, much obfuscation and, ultimately, three pretty iffy marriages and one broken heart. And along the way much of the music is Sullivan at his finest. The Act 1 finale – beautifully staged here with that sonorous bell chiming from the pit working up to the climactic point when they discover that the cell is empty – is as good as anything written by “serious” opera composers such as Verdi.

Anthony Gregory’s Fairfax (not the most likeable of characters, it has to be said) is one of the finest performances in this show. His tenor voice has a golden mellifluousness to it especially in “Free from his fetters grim” in Act 2. I liked John Molloy’s head jailer Shadbolt too. He’s a tall, lithe  man and a  nippy dancer which, along with his rich bass voice, makes the character more human and less grotesque than sometimes.

Heather Lowe, a pleasing soprano, packs Phoebe, a young woman whose father works in the Tower, with pertness and passion. She does “Were I thy bride” for example with lots of musical humour. And Alexander Oomens sings magnificently as the hapless Elsie Maynard – manipulated by almost every man in the show.

And yet … the star of The Yeomen of the Guard should be Jack Point the travelling jester who loses his sweetheart to Fairfax. Richard McCabe is an excellent, justifiably famous actor but he’s woefully miscast here. The first problem is that he isn’t a singer and that sticks out tellingly if you put him on stage with a whole cast of trained opera singers. Although it’s fun to see him playing the accordion for his first number “I have a song to sing O” he is often out of tune. He struggles to make some of the sung diction clear and in duets and quartets his voice tends to dip when others are singing with him. Moreover he often drags the tempo.  Even his mincing about posturing as a weary 1950s comedian doesn’t quite cut the mustard. He does the last scene quite well though – drunk, staggering with braces hanging down. It’s another of the show’s good ideas.

The other big problem with this show is pace. It moves ploddingly slowly. Two hours and 40 minutes (including interval) is a long haul by G&S standards. Some music which is usually cut has been restored. Instead of “Rapture, rapture” we get “My eyes are fully open” from Ruddigore which is a witty and effective idea although “this particularly rapid, unintelligible patter” is neither rapid nor unintelligible in this version.  In fact it’s rather pedestrian and that goes for other moments in the show too.  Perhaps it’s giving this relatively serious piece the “grand opera” treatment which Sullivan always aspired to but I think, dramatically, it needs to move faster than it does in this version.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-yeomen-of-the-guard-3/

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  All photos: Tristram Kenton

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Two young men, intelligent, educated and in a relationship, have killed a teenager and hidden his body in a wooden chest in their London sitting room – which forms the setting  for the whole of Patrick Hamilton’s 1928 play. He was – fairly obviously – inspired and intrigued by the famous case (1924) of Leopold and Loeb in Chicago.  Is it possible to commit an intellectually-driven murder and get away with it? And what is, or should be, the role of morality in life?

This version, directed by Rob Ayling, resets the play in the 1960s. It makes it feel less dated and Heather Collier excels as an empty-headed, white-booted, glitteringly attractive “dolly bird” in a wonderful Quant-ish dress. The period details are good too: table lighter, silver cigarette cases, a single Habitat chair, scarlet phone. It also means that the central gay relationship can be more overt, given the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. On the other hand it also throws up narrative oddities. Why, for instance, does Rupert (Srijit Bhaumick), still quite young, talk of  personally murdering people in the first world war  but not mention the second? And ultimately the murderers are terrified of hanging (the clue is in the play’s title) but the death penalty was suspended in the UK in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969 so, irrespective of their cold blooded, amoral crime, they wouldn’t have been executed.

But I’m nitpicking. This production is actually a fine evening’s theatre made memorable by high quality, beautifully directed acting from a cast of seven.

Charlie Weavers-Wright as Granillo, the less dominant half of the central couple, is jaw-droppingly good. His character is fraught with doubts, fears and regrets and Weavers-Wright communicates this continually. He finds jumpy nervousness in his character’s manner even when he’s trying to pull himself together, assisted by whisky. At one point he faces silently away from the others in a corner of the playing space thinking, listening and telling the audience what he’s thinking with his face and body language. And he weeps silently (and sometimes loudly) for a long stretch at the end. It’s a masterly and unforgettable performance. I Googled him on the way home and, as far as I can gather, this astonishing young actor has no training apart from A Level Theatre Studies, very little experience and no agent. I hope fervently that someone important sees him in action in this show and takes him on so that we see lots of his work in the near future.

There is also a chillingly powerful performance from Sami Awni as Granillo’s calm, calculating, but also violently unpredictable partner. And Bhaumick convinces as the voice of reason and morality. LT Hewitt provides humour to offset the darkness of this play by predictably falling in love with Leila and his is another enjoyable performance.

Patrick Hamilton seems to be ubiquitous just now. I’m seeing Mark Farrelly’s one man play about Hamilton next month and I’ve signed up for a study day in Brighton next spring based on Hamilton’s novel West Pier. And I recently read his novel Hangover Square. There’s a theme in all this: hard drinking. There’s awful lot of whisky in Rope and you’re left marvelling that they really were planning to drive the chest and the body to Oxford at the end of the evening. Oh those careless days. But again – there’s a narrative flaw because the landmark Road Safety Act which set specific limits for the first time became law in 1967. It changed driving habits almost overnight. Presumably back in 1928 no one gave it a thought.

Photos: Robert Piwko

Alan Ayckbourn’s 1998 play was written for the ‘Year of Reading’ in 1999. Effectively a witty homage to the power of books, it’s ideal for half term family viewing.

Kevin (James Forth) is an avid reader and we first see him on the top bunk in his bedroom reading a novel about a Los Angeles detective named Rockfist Slim. Then he falls asleep and suddenly he and Rockfist are confronting each other and landing in a series of books (Kidnapped, Beginner’s Guide to Chess and MR James’s ghost stories among others). It’s like The Magic Faraway Tree spliced with the quest element of The Wizard of Oz because Kevin – who is, of course, au fait with every book they arrive in –  faces a lot of danger and wants very much to get back to his bedroom. Interesting point of metaphysics: Kevin is at risk from the ubiquitous shape-shifting villainess but all the other characters are invincible and immortal because they’re fictional and will live on in readers’ heads whatever anyone tries to do to them.

All the acting in this production is strong. Forth excels as Kevin, a boy whose head is full of stories. He blinks, challenges, concedes, grows and yet remains convincingly boyish throughout.  Cranfield – with great competence –  deliberately presents a stereotypical US investigator with a harsh LA accent and an uncompromising line in threats and insults. Initially he’s very hostile to Kevin but the two gradually become buddies resisting a common enemy.

In support of the two of them is a talented four-person ensemble who seamlessly play a whole series of other parts in an impressive range of voices. Lucy Moss, for example, is outstanding as the simpering, lisping Red Riding Hood, Rockfist’s quarry Monique, who is French, and a revoltingly saccharine story teller among other roles.

I should think this cast – and John Chapman, their director –  had a lot of fun putting this together – especially the very amusing Woobleys scene in which all the dialogue consists of the word “woobley”, based on a book Kevin’s four year old sister left in his room. It’s a good production.

As for me, Ayckbourn plays seem to be like buses. You don’t see one for ages then two come along at once. This was the second one I’ve seen in nine days. The Boy Who Fell into a Book is, though, in a very different mood form Woman in Mind. What a versatile and prolific playwright Mr Ayckbourn is.

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  Photos: Robert Piwko

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First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-boy-who-fell-into-a-book/

This show is full of interesting, innovative ideas – arguably too many.  It is also characterised by naturalistic acting, fine verse-speaking and (mostly) clear story-telling coaxed by director, Yohann Philip from many cast members. Charlotte Holmes, in this gender-blind show, gives us, for example, an outstanding Mercutio. Totally believable, louche, jokey and vulnerable, she is as good as anyone I’ve ever seen in this role especially during her drunken Queen Mab speech.

So what – you might have been wondering all your life – did Capulet and Montague fall out about in the first place? In this version they were close friends, Londoners, who went into business together until they quarrelled and opened two rival fast food businesses which sit at either side of the stage and give us a lot of pre-show vibrance. When the expositional brawl breaks out in the opening scene it’s between fast food staff in baseball or chef hats goading and  attacking each other with brooms by the wheely bins. It actually works pretty well although inevitably it throws up narrative discrepancies later in the play.

Maddy Jones, for example, is a laid back, blue haired druggie in a Sex Pistols tee shirt which is hard to reconcile with the religious authority she still, apparently, has. Romeo (Edward Godfrey) addresses her as “Holy Father” which jars. And, even having reflected on it overnight, I still have no idea why she gets arrested mid-play but continues to dish out dangerous drugs while in police custody.

Godfrey’s Romeo is suitably young, lithe and attractive enough for a girl like Juliet (Gina Cormack) to fall for him at first sight. This production is pretty faithful to Shakespeare’s text (even when it works against the directorial concept) and Cormack, whose character gets the play’s best poetry, speaks the lines with  exceptional dewy eyed conviction. She does well with Juliet’s rapid transition from a young innocent to a woman of mature determination too.

David Frost’s Capulet – every inch a Londoner – is excellent,  especially in the scene in which he loses his temper with his daughter and curses her and I liked Tania Pais’s gentle intelligent take on the nurse.  And watch out for Maddy Baskerville whose delightful Benvolio gets all the appropriate chattiness, intelligence and concern perfectly.  Louise Norman’s Prince is strong too, especially in the opening prologue which is framed as a live-filmed TV interview on the street.

Frost doubles as lead singer of the four piece rock band which from time to time lines the back of the stage and he both sings and plays guitar with great accomplishment. Nonetheless there is too much of this in this show. They play very well but it doesn’t add much to the thrust of the drama. Moreover, Anne-Lise Vassoille’s “atmospheric” sound track which starts and stops rather bumpily in places becomes an irritant. This is a play, not a film, and the words tell you all you need to know.

I was also uneasy about Romeo and Juliet’s big wedding party. It provides an excuse for more band numbers but the whole point was that it was a secret wedding. That’s why Capulet could insist that Juliet now, after the death of Tybalt (Emike Umolu), must marry Paris (Daniel Aarons). Then there’s the conceit that we’re being whisked to different parts of London on the Tube, complete with dead pan announcements to tell us where we are. It was quite funny the first time although the point of it passed me by initially and it wears thin after a while.

Other high spots included the witty inclusion of Macbeth quotes in the scene in which the servants clear up after the Capulet party. The use of dramatic dance (choreographed by Tanisha Knight) to evoke the depth of passion between Romeo and Juliet is imaginative.  And, as is fashionable these days, Shakespeare’s text is decorated with occasional modern expressions. I liked, for instance, the messenger telling Friar Lawrence that he couldn’t deliver the message to Romeo because he’d had to “self isolate”.

Yes, despite the flaws and inconsistencies there’s much to enjoy in this production.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/romeo-and-juliet-5/