James Hyland is very good indeed at adapting classic texts and coming at them from a fresh point of view. I’ve seen him in at least three one-man takes on nineteenth century novels being both powerful and riveting. This time it’s a two hander, very focused adaptation with the excellent Ashton Spear as Renfield against Hyland’s own Count Dracula. At just sixty minutes it’s appropriately succinct. It would be hard to sustain (or to watch) such relentless intensity for much longer.

Bram Stoker’s famous 1897 novel is epistolary and, therefore set in various places. Hyland’s version is staged in one claustrophobic room in Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania with a minimalist set: two chairs, a table, a pig’s head and a sword – along with a menacing musical box.

Hyland is magnificent and terrifying. His voice ranges from soft cajoling to what a musician would call a subito fortissimo and he does it repeatedly so that neither you, the audience member, or Renfield within the play can relax for a second. He is a very dangerous man (or something) and the dramatic tension is sharply arresting. Somehow the fact that Hyland in this role looks like the then Prince of Wales (who became Edward VII four years after Dracula was published) makes it feel all the more shocking.  And although there’s nothing as corny or predictable as pointy teeth the scenes in which Dracula attacks Renfield fall somewhere between a hideous macabre dance and a rape.

The synergy between these two actors, as they spar around each other in what is effectively a power struggle, is what drives this fine show. Moreover I have rarely seen a more convincing account of on-stage insanity building to a manic climax than Spear’s work here. And the finale with fake blood is masterly. It could  easily degenerate into melodrama. In the event it’s horrifyingly realistic.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/draculas-guest/

Two young women meet and gradually fall in love. Katie (Erin Siobhan Hutching) is profoundly deaf and a user of signing.  Alana (Lara Steward) gradually learns it. As they get to know each other better they shift between oral language and signing because Katie can speak a little.

The issues come thick and fast. One is that we’re in a world in which signing is associated with terrorism so there’s a great deal of hostility and suspicion in public spaces. Another is that the deaf community is not about “abnormality” or people we should be pitying. These are normal people. They should have equal rights and be respected. This was – we are informed in an entertaining (sort of) epilogue – finally achieved only in 2003. Oralism (a new word and concept to me) has a lot to answer for.

The acting is powerful and Lucy Jane Atkinson directs with  sensitivity. The Dorfman Theatre is configured end-on for this production so some of the audience, including me, is seated in the pit and quite close to the action. Over the simple set – a sitting room sofa with tables at either end of the space to suggest bars in some scenes – are screens on which some, but not all, the text is projected. As a hearing person it’s fascinating to be, for once, on the opposite side of the fence: watching signing but needing captions to understand it. It certainly makes you much more aware. I also relished hearing the many deaf people in the audience chuckling at jokes I couldn’t “hear” or understand – a novel and educative experience.

This moving, often funny piece – good on the love between its two characters – is the winning play in New Voices, the National Theatre’s playwriting competition for 14-19 year olds which attracted over 400 entries from 99 schools. Eloise Pennycott, who came on stage at the end to rapturous applause, is deaf herself. She’s a student at Southend High School for Girls in Essex. Although I found some of the scenes short to the point of bittiness (maybe something to revise if Barrier(s) gets a revival in the future) this very original play is a terrific achievement and I shall be surprised if we don’t hear a lot more of Eloise very soon.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/barriers/

If theatre of the absurd is your thing then, obviously, Eugene Ionesco is your man. And I’m pleased to note that his 1951, one act, three hander play is in skilled hands with Icarus Theatre and its director, Max Lewendel.

We’re in firmly in the realm of mime, physicality and laughter when the unnamed pupil (Hazel Caulfield) arrives for her lesson in a state of giggly, enthusiastic glee. She sustains it splendidly through being invited in by Julie Stark as the dour, plain-speaking maid (a much smaller role) to await the arrival of Jerome Ngonadi as the begowned Professor, complete with mortarboard.

There’s a lot of humour in what appears to be the pupil’s very limited intelligence and her sudden arrival in mathematical infinity. Every nuance and facial gesture speaks volumes for both actors. We know something sinister is amiss, however, because the Maid keeps warning the Professor not to cover certain subjects in the lesson.

The situation gets ever more manic as it heads towards its macabre Bluebeard ending. All three actors are strong and there’s a powerful sense of essential cast bonding because you couldn’t bring off this fast-paced play without it.  But the real star of the show is Christopher Hone’s set. Because we’re in a plain French room there are a lot of wooden door cupboards. All of these are gradually opened to reveal chalk boards on which the professor writes, alongside the projected  lesson-related words and numbers which come in fast and furious from all angles – a metaphor for the tide of confused frustration rising to volcanic proportions in the Professor’s head. And amongst all this, every word of the text is projected, so the play is integrally, very neatly and almost incidentally captioned for people who need it. It’s a clever concept.

Donald Watson’s translation from French works pretty well although it makes nonsense of some of the Alice in Wonderland-type language jokes when for example they refer to English as if they weren’t already speaking it. It matters very little, though. It simply adds another level of absurdity – and that’s the whole point

I’ve seen most of Shakespeare at the George’s work in recent years. It’s always reliably enjoyable but with this show the company really achieves new heights.

The changed setting – 1950s – injects real freshness with full skirts, layers of petticoats, elastic belts and colourful teddy boy gear.  So does the casting of several talented actors I’ve not seen before. And you couldn’t find a finer set for this play than The George’s Jacobean courtyard which has a three sided balcony over the playing area accessed by evocatively balustered steps at stage left. No designer could better it.

Another element of freshness I admired was the decision to cast and rework several male characters as women and adjust the text accordingly. Thus Benvolia (Goergie Bickerdike – lovely performance) becomes a feisty, best-mate type of girl and Rosemary Eason’s well judged Abbess Julienne replaces Friar Lawrence.

Juliet is now 18 not 14.  Heather Bambridge makes her wide-eyed, very girlish, a bit clumsy and totally natural. It’s a very plausible, beautifully enacted interpretation. Lynne Livingstone’s broad Scots nurse delights too. She is voluble, caring, frumpy, anguished – a terrific range. And how long did it take Livingstone to perfect that wonderfully observed walk – not quite a limp but deliciously awkward – I wonder? Nearly all her scenes are, of course, with Bambridge and they work seamlessly together.

Jordan White finds all the right boyishness, maturing love and anguish in Romeo and manages to convince the audience that yes, under those circumstances, we’d all opt for him in preference to Dean Laccohee’s ludicrous but perfectly acted Paris in scarlet, leopard pattern edged jacket and a jet black wig.

Richard Socket’s Capulet is a seriously sinister Mafia type with none of the usual irritable geniality and Paula Inceldon-Webber is strong as his wealthy, vengeful wife totally focused on her own interests until the death of her daughter finally gets to her at the end.

Ah yes – the end. It’s played, obviously at this time of year, as night falls and feels as tragically unnecessary as it should, as well as being solemnly atmospheric.  I also loved the way this show started with the famous prologue spoken by Perry Incledon-Webber as the Chief of Police (replacing the Duke of Verona) while the agonised families stand by two coffins, united in grief. And at the end Incledon-Webber is down stage speaking the final words as the cast group behind him so there’s a pleasing sense of symmetry.

Bravo director Steph Hamer, assistant director Reuben Milne and everyone they worked with on this impressive show.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/romeo-and-juliet-4/

Photos: Davor @The Ocular Creative

This is one of those shows which – with originality and flair – knocks you between the eyes with a profoundly disturbing true story.

Nelly Bly (1864-1922) was an American journalist who, at a time when women weren’t taken seriously in the press, went under cover and got herself admitted to the Blackwell Asylum in order to write an exposé for The New York World. She discovered, experienced and wrote about hideous  abuse, violence and neglect. Baker’s play is largely based on her own words.

It’s a one woman show in which Lindsey Huebner is terrific as Nelly Bly. She is initially persuasive and articulate as she negotiates the commission. Once in the asylum we see her sympathy for other patients many of whom shouldn’t be there, as well as her own suffering because she too is treated with cruelty and violence – all along fearing that her newspaper editor will forget her and fail to rescue her from this “place of horror”. It’s a beautifully judged performance.

But in a sense the real stars of this show are the lighting designer, Jonathan Simpson, the sound designer Calum Perrin and the playwright/director Douglas Baker who also designed the video sequences. Audience members wear headphones so that we can hear the voices of the other characters who are evoked by cartoons, big slidey puppets projected onto a gauzy screen in front of the action or by helium balloons attached to shoes. As Bly becomes more and more disturbed – especially during the waterboarding sequence – so the projections become wilder and the sound track more broken so that we really do share what she is experiencing as if we are inside her head and body.

The important point being made is that if you treat anyone (women in this case) like this it won’t be long before they lose their minds even if they were perfectly well when they were mistakenly admitted – or dumped there by family members. Soon “insanity affects the personality” as Bly puts it.

Finally at the end comes a quiet, sober, shattering final five minutes in which Huebner comes in front of the screen so that we see her clearly – like bringing a camera into focus – for the first time as she speaks powerfully as Nelly, who campaigned on mental health issues for the rest of her life. And then, in silence, come the photographs of some of the women incarcerated at Blackwell Asylum which remained open for a further seven years and, although Nelly’s piece triggered an enquiry no one ever took responsibility.

It’s one of those shows at the end of which applause feels crassly inappropriate although of course you clap like mad because everyone involved has done such a good job. You then leave the theatre thinking very hard about what you’ve seen – always an indicator of something special.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/ten-days-in-a-madhouse/