The play is about Frankie Howerd (Simon Cartright) and his live-in manager/ chauffeur/ factotum Dennis Heymer. Howerd struggled with his obvious sexuality all his life and never came out as gay even after homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967. The two men were, of course, lovers in a tortured but passionate sort of way.

The structure of Farrelly’s play gives us Dennis, seventeen years after Howerd’s death showing a party round Wavering Down which was the latter’s Somerset home. Then Howerd (Simon Cartright – all the distinctive Howerd mannerisms deftly mastered) appears as a solid ghost to help retell the story of their life together – including Howerd’s infidelities, years in therapy, career dips and the use of LSD.

Farrelly’s Dennis is gritty but passionate, sardonically witty and skilfully nuanced. When he wants to, Farrelly can glitter with charisma and it’s very effective.  The scene in which the two men first meet at the Dorchester Hotel where Dennis is working as a “sommelier” (a self-deprecatingly posh word for a barman) is funny, for example. It’s full of raised eyebrows and innuendo as Howerd gropes for secrecy and discretion but Dennis is blunt.

This play is a love story. Both men have imperfections and hang ups but eventually, despite everything, Howerd admits – after many rows –  that he loves Dennis. Peace settles.  It’s deeply moving – and intelligent. This is thoughtful theatre for grown ups.

Howerd’s End has matured since I first saw it. There’s a little more playing to and with the audience (who are meant to be the party being shown round the house) than formerly and that works well. It tours easily too because the set is only a moveable fireplace, a rug, a painting, a chair and a small ottoman. Along, with Farelly’s other plays (the rest are solo shows) Howerd’s End is popping up in a number of small theatres this spring. Definitely worth seeing.

Directed by Lucie Pankhurst

The annual revue presented by MTA (Musical Theatre Academy) is always a treat and this year was no exception although, of course, this is the first time it has happened live for a while. It is such a good idea to present a slickly directed revue with a wide range of material featuring every student in both first and second years of this two year accelerated course because it acts as a better showcase than any conventional “showcase”. I’ve often wondered why every performing arts school doesn’t do this.

This year’s show featured fifteen second years and seven second years. The latter group  did an ensemble number (Paradise by the Dashboard Light from Bat Out Of Hell) competently, provided backing for some of the other work and took part in the full company numbers. It struck me for the first time this year that their presence and inclusion is a fine advertisement for the college in more than one way. They show, first, just how skilful MTA is at spotting potential. And when they appear alongside second years you can see very clearly the massive progress these students make in just two years. The training they’re getting is self-evidently outstanding.

The show includes a wide range of material ranging from extracts from Annie, Sweet Charity and Merrily we Roll Along to Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Dust and Embers. Something Old Something New – as advertised.

Lucie Pankhurst, who directs and choregraphs this show (with a handful of numbers choreographed by others) ensures that one number segues seamlessly from the one before, using every inch of Bridewell Theatre’s big playing area. The company operates with near-military slickness so that the show never even pauses for breath – except that it had to at the performance I saw when there was an issue with lighting and everything stopped for 15 minutes while staff decided what to do. It is a tribute to the professionalism of the company that they took this totally in their stride – repeated one number and then simply carried on with the show.

In a company with so much eclectic, vibrant talent it seems a bit unfair to single out individuals but with the caveat that every single participant does an excellent job, I’m going to.

Lou Henry lights up the stage every time she appears in numbers such as There Must Be Something Better Than This (with Emily Tang and Pia Wabs). She is totally convincing in her acting and her singing is sublime. No wonder she is given an impassioned. moving solo slot: Someone Who Could Be Loved.

Emily Tang has a rich singing voice especially in the lower registers. She is also accomplished with accents and has oodles of attractive stage personality. So does Amy Lockwood, whose huge presence (I loved her StepSisters’ Lament from Cinderella with Rowan Kitchen) is out of all proportion to her diminutive size – if she wants to, among other opportunities, she’ll be able to play feisty children in dramas for many years to come.

Blaine Gosling sings with rich warmth and musicality. He could sing opera if he wished – perhaps he has. And watch out for Kaidyn Niall Hinds whose lithe, charismatic dancing is likely to further his career.

Finally, what a joy it is to see a student show like this accompanied by a fine six-piece (yes six!) live band, led by college founder/principal Annemarie Lewis Thomas on keys who has also done all the musical arrangements. They make a terrific sound, tucked away on a balcony above the stage, and I’m certain that their presence is part of the reason for the high standard the college gets from its students.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/something-old-something-new/

First staged at Chichester in 2014 with a transfer to the west End, Taken at Midnight tells the true story of a young German lawyer named Hans Litten. He is arrested because he has defiantly defended communist workers against fabricated charges of violence. In one such case, in 1931, he subpoenaed Hitler and ridiculed him in court and there is a strong sense of personal revenge being enacted. The story is told through the eyes of his mother, Irmgard Litten.

Robert O’Neill’s performance as Litten is excellent. Having just been arrested he is initially strained but determined. He becomes ever more distressed – both physically and mentally – as he is transferred from concentration camp to camp and relentlessly beaten and tortured.  It’s hard to watch. Then finally we get a powerful reprise of the court scene back in 1931 as, still in “striped pyjamas” we see his verbal brilliance, panache and courage.

Heather Wain as Irmgard never feels quite real although I saw this play on its opening night (no previews in non-pro theatre) so nerves were probably biting. She speaks, moves and gestures over carefully – you can almost see and hear Pauline Armour’s directorial notes. Of course her character is under huge strain but we also need to be convinced by her. She seems slightly more natural  and less wooden in the second half and there’s a powerful scene with her son towards the end when, finally, I believed in her.

Strong support roles include  Geoff Dillon as the cocky, intelligent Erich Muhsam, a communist imprisoned with Litten who has, eventually, more integrity than instinct for self preservation.  Michael Martin as Carl von Ossietsky, a newspaper editor and another fellow prisoner, finds intelligence and truth in his character and I liked Howie Ripley’s work as Gustav who helps Litten sort some library books – really nice rapport between the two actors in this scene. This is, incidentally, a good play for an amateur company because there are a number of smallish but meaty roles which can be rehearsed in discrete scenes.

Armour makes good use of Bromley Little Theatre’s small playing space which is more or less split into two (set design by Jan Greenhough) with the relatively comfortable outside world occupied by Irmgard and the people she talks to stage right, while stage left represents the squalid horror of a series of prisons.

The story telling is pretty clear although I was puzzled by Fritz Litten (Michael Martin – charismatic), father of Hans Litten. He comes and goes, apparently not living with Irmgard. Are they separated? Is he dead? He’s fully Jewish, although he has converted – which is why they declare Hans Litten Jewish despite his professed atheism. Why is Litten senior, a university professor, not arrested too?

It is an inspired, sobering idea to have archive footage of the real Irmgard, who escaped to Britain, talking to a British journalist in the foyer at the end of the play.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/taken-at-midnight-4/

Michael Morpurgo’s gut wrenching 2003 novella bears all the hall marks of the things he cares deeply about – injustice and the futility of war for example. There’s even a tiny subplot about a redundant, condemned foxhound – another of Morpurgo’s issues. I’ve seen Simon Reade’s masterly adaptation before but last time it was done by an ensemble of 16 who formed National Youth Theatre Rep company in 2014 and there have been other productions before and since. This new production uses a very busy, hardworking cast of just six.

And in the performance I saw – a schools matinee with lots of excited Year 7s – the cast were working even harder than usual because they’d had Covid-positive problems immediately before it. Assistant director Imogen Beech gamely read in for Emma Manton and Tom Kanji took on an additional role. John Dougall should have had an extra round of applause. Not only is he on and off stage continually in eleven different roles anyway but at this particular performance he had to take a twelfth one. His accent work and ability to change both clothes and manner in an instant are fortunately very accomplished.

The story – widely read in schools – is about a young volunteer in World War One who is shot for cowardice. We sit with him (although there’s a twist just before the end because there are two Private Peacefuls – brothers from Devon) all night as the minutes tick away before dawn. He remembers his childhood, the death of his father, his special needs brother  and his common sensible mother who keeps the family going even when they’re threatened with eviction. Then there’s Molly, the local girl who is a good friend to both Charlie and Tommo.

Lucy Sierra’s craggy set with slatey side walks either side of a versatile drop and an adaptable horizon at the back becomes a river where the young people meet in sunny Edwardian Devon and then morphs into the horrors of the trenches. Dan Balfour’s sound design really points up the contrast too –  the immersive sound of shells is very loud and pretty convincing.

Daniel Rainford finds all the right boyishness maturing into an agonised young adult, for Tommo and Daniel Boyd gives Charlie  plenty of strength and dignity, especially at the end.

Frank Moon’s folksy songs highlight the muscular innocence of rural Devon and I liked the way director Elle While occasionally has her cast float into short physical theatre sequences with music because it adds to the idea that these are innocent young people – full of dreams for their future – who should never have been at war. And never let it be forgotten that, in real life, Earl Haig gave the order for over three hundred men to be shot for “cowardice”. Today we’d recognise their behaviour as extreme traumatic stress disorder. I’m glad all those 11 and 12 year olds I saw this with are learning about that atrocity though their reading and through drama.

It’s an unremarkable but decent account of the Scottish Play with its famous witchery, regicide, paranoia, somnambulism and, ultimate good-guy coup. And because it’s part of the long standing Playing Shakespeare With Deutsche Bank project which provides free tickets for state school groups from London and Birmingham it is neatly pared down to 90 minutes to accommodate the constraints of the school day and, perhaps, the concentration spans of young audience members.

Music, directed by Louise Anna Duggan (co-composed by her and Zands Duggan) and played four musicians in the gallery, adds a lot of traditional atmosphere to this Macbeth. It uses muscular percussion, brass and, evocatively, sheets of metal which are menacingly shaken or struck to produce some pretty sinister sounds. Music links scenes and provides effects such as underscoring tension or fear and providing required sounds such as bells. I often find the music gratuitous in  productions at Shakespeare’s. Here it is totally integrated and appropriate.

Sarah Frankcom’s direction ensures that the story telling is clear and the action makes imaginative use of the thrust extension and walkway built across the Globe’s yard (designer Rose Revitt).

The Witches, reminiscent of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, are dressed in brown robes, wear antlered helmets and carry twiggy staffs. Their incantations are gloriously catchily rhythmic.

The cast of nine use a range of accents including  very broad West Midlands for Duncan (Chris Nayak). In many cases I suspect actors have simply been directed to use their own native accents in the interests of inclusivity and conveying the message that Shakespeare’s words can be spoken by anyone from anywhere. It’s a worthy aim but it sometimes leads to lack of verbal clarity. Unfamiliar accents tend to be pitched so that some syllables are lost to some unattuned ears. It’s likely to be an unpopular thought but nothing is clearer nor more universally understood than RP.

Fiston Barek has a certain charisma as Macbeth. I had to wipe my eyes when he got to “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. I was also impressed with how, with intelligent timing,  he dealt with the unaccountable laugh the preceding line “ The Queen, my lord is dead” triggered from the young audience. Hannah Azuonye is an elegant Lady Macbeth although she failed to make me believe in her scheming passion. There’s some strong work from Beth Hinton-Lever as a witch doubling as Porter, Seyton and various takes on “Sirrah”. She scampers round the stage with urgent energy but at other times conveys real stillness.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/macbeth-20/

This show is an epic in the same way that Ben Hur or Doctor Zhivago are. It’s about huge numbers of people – whole races – and their movements during and after the war. I was impressed by Andrea Levy’s novel when it was first published in 2004 but it didn’t give me the sense of vastness that Helen Edmundson’s adaptation does with its cast of twenty-nine.

And that is partly down to director Rufus Norris’s use of the Olivier Theatre’s capacious playing space, the revolve and Jon Driscoll’s projections onto the arc-shaped back screen which provides, among many other things, archive footage, Jamaican jungle, docks, ocean and late 1940s cinema. It is all on a grandiloquent scale.

Hortense (Leonie Elliott) grows up in a comfortable if authoritarian family, not quite her own, in Jamaica and becomes a teacher. Eventually, in a bid to escape to what promises to be a better life, she marries Gilbert (Leemore Marrett Jnr). He leaves for England on MV Empire Windrush and she follows a few months later. Meanwhile, in England, Queenie (Mirren Mack) has got away from her parents’ Lincolnshire farm and butchery to London where she meets and marries Bernard Bly (Martin Hutson) who has a house in Notting Hill. It is to Queenie’s run down house that Gilbert takes Hortense to live in one squalid room. This is a very long show. It takes nearly two hours to get them to England. The second act explores the difficulties and racism faced in Austerity Britain alongside a pretty compelling plot with unexpected twists.

The contrast between the colourful luxuriance and drama of Jamaica (splendid hurricane) and the dull greyness of London with its ration books, gas meters and grubbiness is neatly pointed up not least by the outrage Elliott finds in Hortense. She can communicate horror, distaste and disappointment merely by turning her head a millimetre and raising her chin and she has a very elegant way of holding herself as she struggles to rise above her many problems. She can be funny too. There’s an enjoyable scene with Mack towards the end: high drama with a happy outcome. She can also be warm and poised. It’s an outstanding performance in a massive role – she’s rarely off stage in three and a quarter hours.

Marrett Jr does an impressive job too. He starts as a bit of a jokey good time lad but his character gradually develops and matures in England – dealing with the abuse (every foul word you can think of is thrown at him) and trying to be realistic. The dignified speech he makes when, at last, he  stands up to ghastly Bernard is as fine as Shakespeare’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” and you can see why Hortense finally falls in love with him. I would have done too.

This show, with its big cast, is very much an ensemble piece with lots of walking in shadows upstage to evoke a sense of big crowds. Dozens of minor roles emerge from this. Rachel Lumberg, for instance, does an lovely Miss Todd – the middle class neighbour who is appalled by Queenie’s having “coloured” lodgers and  David Fielder is a convincing shell shocked Arthur, Bernard’s father.

In the early scenes two children (three are cast for each role) play little Hortense and little Michael,  Hortense’s cousin. The two at the performance I saw were, unfortunately not very clear or audible.

This show is moving anyway but two things add to its poignancy. First Andrea Levy based Hortense and Gilbert partly on the experiences of her own parents. Second, it is sad that Andrea Levy, although she was fully involved almost to the end, died of cancer a few months before Small Island was first staged in 2019.

Small Island is the sort of show that – even when you see as much theatre as I do – gets under your skin and leaves you in reflective mood.

All photos: Ellie Kurttz Photography

Co-produced by Little Angel Theatre and Royal and Derngate, Northampton in association wit Watershed Productions.

Based on Julia Donaldson’s book, illustrated by Lydia Monks, this rhyming story gives us a mermaid who is captured by a self interested Circus Master (Gilbert Taylor) and made to perform in his circus. The Singing Mermaid –  beautiful puppets designed by Lyndie Wright who founded Little Angel Theatre with her late husband, John Wright – is set mostly there, in said circus.

The best sequence is the opening one in which we see the mermaid in her natural environment amongst her fellow sea creatures. The three puppeteer/actors –  Ruth Calkin and Heidi Goldsmith with Taylor  at the performance I saw – bring the cockles and mussels, fish, cetaceans and so on evocatively to life  The salty, dancing crabs are my favourite and the jelly fish are rather fun.

Then we get a whole series of circus acts – nicely puppeted and thoughtfully directed. Eventually we see the poor mermaid, so miserable, that she can’t sing properly for her circus audience.

Barb Jungr’s attractive music turns it into gentle un-micd musical theatre: songs with dialogue. Her melodies are spare, often based on simple triads and a limited range of notes but every bar adds to the story. The  three performers sing together well especially when they’re in harmony although the money song owes rather too much to  Les Mis’s Master of the House – even the rhythm is almost the same.

Most of the young children who saw it alongside me were fully engaged although there was a bit of restiveness towards the end. Arguably, with an hour’s run time, the piece is ten minutes too long.

Charm, theatrical delight and entrancing work for young children is Little Angel Theatre’s trade mark and almost every show I’ve seen there over many years has been enjoyable although sometimes it can feel a bit samey. Good to see a show in the main house, incidentally. The nearby Studios are, I know, very practical but they’re much less atmospheric.