When you assess a show professionally you are supposed to judge it as being decent, weak, good or outstanding for a production of its type. Well I haven’t the faintest idea how to star rate this one since I’ve never seen anything remotely like it before and therefore have nothing to measure it against. This was the first circus I’ve been to since childhood and that was so long ago that I remember plumed horses and roaring lions all of which is now illegal in the UK, thank goodness. I’ve seen occasional circus acts in, say, panto or the piazza at Covent Garden but never the whole caboodle. Well, after much thought I’ve decided it’s a four on the simple grounds that I enjoyed it very much and it includes some stunning performances. I have only a couple of minor reservations of which more shortly.

In a sense Circus 1903 is a play-within-a-play. We’re meant to be in an American touring circus of which there were many (remember Barnum and Bailey The Greatest Show on Earth) in the early 20th Century. The year is 1903 and in the first act they are setting up, rehearsing the show and training the elephants: two life-size puppets by Mervyn Millar and Tracy Waller are a theatrical tour de force. They are beautiful – moving, in every sense – and totally convincing. The second half is more or less a performance, with glitzier costumes, beginning with a parade and ending with a finale.

It’s noteworthy that none of the spectacular acts is British or even American. Most are from South America or Eastern Europe. And they are mind-blowingly, heart-in-mouth good. As I watched them I was forcibly struck that what this work needs is three things: phenomenal trust, bodies trained to behave like iron and decades of practice. The “Daring Desafios”, for instance are a quartet of grinning tattooed young men from Brazil who launch themselves to enormous heights from a teeterboard turning double and triple somersaults in the air. The cheerful camaderie they exude belies the skill of the coordination which is like a very fast four man dance.

We also get Roberto Carlos from Mexico juggling, Natalia Leontieva from Russia doing impossible things with spinning hoops and Olava Rocha Muniz and Denise Torres de Souza, also   Brazilian, in a “Russian Cradle”. The latter involves very daring arial work with nail biting mid air throws. The highest (literally) spot for me was two brothers from Colombia on a “wheel of death. It’s a huge structure like a giant egg timer made from metal tubing and mesh and it’s flown slowly down to stage level. One man in each oval space makes it spin – ever faster as they walk, skip, jump and sometimes climb round the outside of it. The top man standing upright almost has his head in the flies. It’s quite an act.

So all in all a fine show. Recorded music is composed and arranged by Evan Jolly who borrows from all sorts of genres including some traditional circus numbers and some atmospheric classical. It works quite well in the first half but becomes far too loud and relentless in the second. The performances are excellent, Adding that level of noise as an enhancement is almost an insult to the acrobats who don’t need their work psyched up like this.

My other reservation is that I really don’t like squirm-inducing gags involving audience children brought on stage and made to look silly and there’s too much of that in this show although David Williamson as ring master is fairly gentle with them. Even I have to admit, however, that it’s very funny when a child is invited to thrust the traditional plate of shaving foam in her own father’s face and does it with glee.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/circus-1903-2/

Carolyn Murray is a homely Granny who brings Lil (Josie White) a birthday present and then goes home. Lil then needs to visit her on the other side of the forest. Said forest is under threat from developers so they decide to start a rumour that there scary wolves therein despite everyone knowing that wolves only inhabit Russia, Ukraine, USA, Canda and so on. The list of countries is repeated several times in the course of the play.

Murray gives us a nice wolf (Wulfric) in a big headdress (costumes and set by Ella Barraclough) with a habit of eating friends because of an incessantly rumbling tummy. The doubling with Granny makes for a very neat bed scene in which audience children help to tug Granny out of the wolf with a rope. At the end Wulfric’s urges are sated with a vegetarian (sort of – it includes chicken) pie and the wood becomes a wolf sanctuary.

The acting is convincing enough for pre-schoolers and both actors have reasonable audience connection skills. The singing isn’t great however. Although the words to Wayne Walker-Allen’s songs are clever and clearly articulated neither performer actually sings. White, in particular simply speaks in rhythm against the music and it’s uneven. Murray has a bit more range but she’s no singer.

I’ve been to Nottingham Playhouse several times but this was my first visit to its Neville Studio, a good space clearly useful for small scale work, It was a pity, though, that at the performance I saw there were only 13 adults and 11 children present: about one third of the capacity. I suppose that’s Covid fears and positive tests biting.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/little-red-riding-hood-2/

It’s vintage Bennett and just as funny as when it was first staged in 1974 especially in the hands of Patrick Marber and his cast of nine accomplished actors.

A surreal play, it’s farce without the clutter.  It makes no attempt at realism. The set consists of a coffin, identities are continually mistaken, characters burst into song and often deliver soliloquies in rhyming couplets. Twice we get manic tango to the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem. There’s a running gag about size (Dan Starkey as Sir Percy Shorter and that’s what he is) borrowed from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a great deal of misunderstanding about a pair of false breasts.

We’re in the home of an unlikely doctor in Hove and almost everyone is randily yearning for sex with someone inappropriate. There’s something appealingly innocent about this at a time when me too, political correctness and a woke world lie decades into the future.

It’s play about rampant desire at the heart of which is an outstanding performance from Jasper Britton as Dr Arthur Wicksteed. He undermines his character’s non existent professionalism with a mere lift of an eyebrow and entertains with fake gravitas. Catherine Russell is splendid as his sadly ridiculous wife longing to be loved and fulfilled by almost anyone. But they also bring some depth to the piece in their reconciliation scene towards the end of the play which is actually quite moving.

Ria Jones as Mrs Swabb the cleaning lady does a lovely job as the quasi narrator. Very Welsh and making outrageous but perceptive comments she really makes the role her own. And since Bennett played this role himself in the original production it’s a pretty hard act to follow. There’s a nice nod to the playwright’s presence in this production when Matthew Cottle, as Canon Throbbing, intones a few lines of verse a distinctively Bennettian voice.

The play includes some memorable lines such as “Sometimes I think Freud died in vain” and “In Memphis, Tennessee, fourteen babies have been born since this play began” – all delivered with wit and panache. And of course – like all the best dramas – it ends with a paternity revelation in The Marriage of Figaro tradition.

Catch it if you can. It’s a couple of hours of real escapism.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/habeas-corpus-3/

An affectionate two-hander send up of the genre, this show works on the expectations of a pantomimically experienced audience – teasing them about already knowing when to shout and boo, for instance. And that includes some pretty knowing children one of whom almost stole the show at the performance I saw, politely but loudly demanding that baddie Abanazer be “impaled on a knife in the digestive system”. Cue for an ad lib quip about the lad’s Arsenal teeshirt.

Potted Panto is part of the “potted” series and has been around for eleven years although I was new to it. The concept is that two actors – Daniel Clarkson (who also co-writes with Jefferson Turner and director Richard Hurst) and Gary Trainor – decide, amidst much argument and banter, to stage an abbreviated version of the world’s six best pantos. There’s a running gag about the inappropriate inclusion of A Christmas Carol which, in the end, merges with Aladdin (Abanazer/Ebenezer – geddit?)

It’s slick in a hats/masks/ frocks Horrible Histories kind of way with a lot of the usual “out of role” asides such as Clarkson to Trainor when the latter is being both ugly sisters with a puppet; “Well that ventriloquism course didn’t do you much good”. And there are lots of jokes about having to play all the baddies and Trainor turning up in a magnificent feather hat as Prince Charming several times. I liked the comment in Sleeping Beauty about its being totally unacceptable to break into a sleeping girl’s bedroom and kiss her without consent – a quite witty comment on the vast gulf between pantomime life and real life.

Having said that, though, a lot of the humour is pretty laboured. Clarkson and Trainor are working hard with a lot of energy, beaming smiles and grimaces. Moreover they know exactly how to let a line settle for maximum effect  but a lot of it isn’t particularly funny.

The best five minutes is Clarkson donning a Boris Johnson wig as Dick (“Mayor of London”) Whittington and doing a hilarious satirical spot with Trainor about clearing the kingdom of plague,  office parties, Barnard Castle and a lot more. It is both edgy and up to date. Clarkson and co must adapt the script on an almost daily basis.

There is almost no music in this show until we get to the traditional, wearisome singalong at the end.  Instead, the focus is on plot(s) – seven of them in seventy minutes. It’s decent-ish entertainment if you want  a succinct Christmas show and your kids have seen a lot of pantos in the past although it really isn’t anything special.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/potted-panto/

Siobahn Athwal gives a witty performance as both Genies – with different voices, two costumes, a lot of quick changes and a crack about theatre having been through two terrible years and therefore  unable to afford two actors. Emma Ralston is entertaining as Frankie, Aladdin’s sister who replaces the Wishy Washy role and Rosie Cava-Beale sings beautifully as Princess Amirah. Toby Miles as Aladdin is a fair singer once he gets going and he can certainly dance and act convincingly.

I was also impressed by the use of projection including the Horsham photographs which form part of the set and the flying carpet sequence which uses images to create the illusion of movement. And putting the (very good) four piece band stage left in a band stand, steps to which form part of the set, is an original idea which makes deals with potential timing issues and makes the music feel coherent. It looks pretty too.

But  –  and of course there has to be one if not several – Morgan Brind’s script is witty but far too wordy and some of the songs are too long. The long narrative preamble is not a happy start when you have an audience full of very young children. There are a lot of good jokes tucked away but most of them are also thrown away. I have rarely seem comic timing so woefully mismanaged by so many actors in a pantomime. There is, for example, a sequence of quite clever fish puns which ought to produce a lot of laughter and groans. In fact it’s raced through so fast that most of it is lost. Of course there’s a place for word play in a panto but children need a lot of visual humour too and there’s very little slapstick in this show which has no slosh scene. The only time the children really got excited in the performance I saw was during the ghost scene (Yetis in Iceland in this instance) –  just five minutes in a two and half hour show. The result of all this was that many children in the audience were very restive although “my” six year old was more engaged in the stronger second half than the first. If panto doesn’t fully work for children then it’s missing the point.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/aladdin-18/

Using the version,  by Jemma Kennedy, originally commissioned by Unicorn Theatre in 2011, The Prince and the Pauper features identical twins (Leah Gayer and Mhairi Gayer in this case) as the titular pair just as the production at Unicorn did. Obviously, if you can find a suitably skilled pair this is perfect casting for a play about identity swapping although they should be more differently voiced than these two are. Mhairi Gayer isn’t long in the castle before she sounds like a Prince – and that doesn’t ring true.

Apart from the Gayers, there is a cast of six more professional actors – all accomplished actor-musos – and a team of eight young company members. The children rotate between shows in three teams and I saw Team Huckleberry with one substitution. Inevitably some are stronger than others and, because they’re not mic’ed, presumably for economy reasons, there are sometimes audibility problems.

Joelle Brabban, who moves between violin and viola, gives an impressive performance as Tom’s impoverished mother and the flouncy, flippant future Queen Elizabeth – making the most of Kennedy’s witty script, Dexter Southern brings gravitas and terror to Tom’s drunken, violent criminal father and to Henry VIII. He’s a fine guitarist and I liked the moment when he melts downstage from the throne to play a whistle. It was just one of the points in this production when the direction and choreography (Suzie Curran – lots of evocative choral stamping) drives the action and makes good use of Trinity’s unusually deep stage.

Emily Newsome is outstanding as a street busker with accordion. She has a magnificent singing voice, is no mean saxophonist and gives us a fairly convincing, faintly pantomimic, Miles Hendon, a good guy who tries to help Edward get back to his palace.

Full marks too for Stephen Hyde’s set which uses flapped flats with cartoon-style drawn buildings to create small down stage spaces in front of a sketched Tower of London and Westminster Abbey to make the setting clear. Behind that are gates and railings to separate the palace from the street. It’s engagingly imaginative.

So there’s a lot of charm and talent in this  competent show but somehow it lacks warmth and feels a bit flat. It never quite lifts beyond the sense that a bunch of good actors are doing their thing without quite transporting us or making us care quite as much as we should.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-prince-and-the-pauper/