SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
December 18, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until Sunday, January 10, 2010
IT’S fun, it’s festive, it’s fast-paced and frivolous – all of which scores major plus points for this glossy and professional panto.
But there’s no getting away from the one huge drawback – and it’s one that should be broadcast loudly across all the advertising and promotional material, for fear of misleading the ticket-buying punters. It’s a pre-recorded show.
At the risk of boring regular readers, it’s become an increasingly irritating hobby-horse of mine that productions purporting to be live performances are actually run and staged to backing tracks. This insidious habit has crept through pantoland (with notable exceptions) and is now regarded – by producers, at least – as accepted and acceptable.
All I can say is: oh no it isn’t!
Depriving the audience (particularly those younger members who may be experiencing a theatre for the first time) of a live band is the musical equivalent of serving up a McDonalds on December 25 and calling it Christmas dinner. This is not a musical: it’s karaoke with lipgloss.
Rant over, what remains of Snow White after ripping out its lifeblood is actually very serviceable, and husband-and-wife team Sam Kane and Linda Lusardi come across as polished, professional entertainers. Kane also directs, thus claiming much of the credit for the pace, while their 13-year-old daughter Lucy puts in a sweet turn as the forest fairy.
Elsewhere, Pete Hillier – CBeebies’ Boogie Pete – offers a cheeky, cheerful Muddles, while Richard Shelton and Emily Shaw support ably as Chambers and Snow White respectively.
The self-styled Magnificent Seven just about overcome the increasing uncomfortableness of putting short people in funny clothes and making them perform on cue, and there’s plenty to please the eye in the sets and costumes. Producer Jonathan Kiley and musical director Olly Ashmore provide a better-than-average script and score, and choreographer Chris Baldock makes good use of his large cast of all ages.
So for a traditional show, there’s lots to enjoy. Except for that most crucial of all musical traditions, a live band. Oops – there I go again…
HONK!
December 6, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until Sunday, January 3, 2010
THESE days they’re probably best known for tarting up Mary Poppins for the stage, but the musical writing partnership of Stiles and Drewe had a big success long before that.
Honk! The Ugly Duckling Musical has become a staple of children’s theatre since it first appeared in 1993, and this imaginative version on the Royal’s intimate stage offers a charming alternative to festive panto fare for the holiday season.
The plot is pretty self-explanatory – big grey hatchling rejected by the farmyard creatures takes himself off for the winter, returns a majestic white swan – and to be honest, it’s spread a little thinly across two and a quarter hours, with some sharply contrasting moments of brilliance and dullness in both the score and dialogue.
But the production itself is hard to fault, with director Andrew Panton and musical director Peter Woollard really getting the most out of their enthusiastic cast of eight adults and eight children.
Adam Barlow is an utterly charming Ugly, with a fine singing voice and full range of emotions. Fiona Dunn plays his mum Ida with a touching vulnerability, while other cast members play multiple roles with panache and humour.
The standout performance, though, comes from David McGranaghan as a fiendish feline intent on luring the ugly duckling away from his brood to put something “in the kitty” – lunch. The movement, characterisation and sheer wickedness created by this talented young actor make for a baddie as bad as any you could want in a Christmas show. All that’s missing is the booing.
Elsewhere, a tight pit band keeps the music rolling along, while Jason Denvir’s ingenious set design allows for flying geese, dancing frogs and hatching eggs to grace the stage with equal believability and a genuine sense of fun throughout.
And if there isn’t at least a hint of a tear in the eye by the end, then you’re a tougher critic than I…
BEYOND THE HORIZON/SPRING STORM
October 29, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until Saturday, November 14, 2009
YOU just can’t keep Laurie Sansom down. Maybe the ghost of Rupert Goold is still hanging about the Royal & Derngate. Maybe there’s something in the water in Northampton. But whatever the reason, artistic director Sansom is a man with a mission.
This time, hot on the heels of his groundbreaking Ayckbourn season in the summer, he’s unearthed two formative plays by the American giants Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, shackled them together under the banner Young America, and delivered them with the panache and style of a director who really knows what he wants.
The O’Neill, Beyond the Horizon, predates the Williams by almost 20 years, and the younger playwright acknowledged the influence of the earlier work on his own theatrical debut – which was only discovered in 1996 and has its European premiere with this production.
As dramatic pieces, neither is particularly outstanding. Both are lengthy, gloomy plays exploring young love and doomed ideals, and while the signs are clear of forthcoming greatness, the classics for both writers are still ahead of them.
But there’s little to fault in the staging of either, and the performances in both – including much doubling among the casts – are exemplary.
In Beyond the Horizon, Sansom has a fine vision of the expansiveness of the landscape, somehow managing to create open space and heat from the Royal’s tiny stage. By contrast, Spring Storm is all claustrophobic atmosphere and decaying decadence in the late 1930s Deep South. The designs of both shows, by Sara Perks, are impeccable in their service of the plays, as are the music (Jon Nicholls), sound (Christopher Shutt) and lighting (Chris Davey).
Among the players, Michael Malarkey and Michael Thomson lead the company superbly together, as tightly-bonded brothers in the O’Neill and fierce love rivals in the Williams. Liz ‘Life on Mars’ White is a sparkling talent in both shows as the object of the boys’ desires and cause of their ultimate tragedies.
But the strength of the casting – along with some consistently excellent accents – lies across the company, with little gems of characterisation in even the smallest roles, and there are many nuggets to lighten the burden through the long three-act plays.
It’s a worthy exercise in academic exploration of these two early pieces, and the productions continue Sansom’s fine tradition of the pursuit of excellence. If the plays themselves are a little stodgy and indigestible, there’s no blame attached to the Royal and its talented team.
SPYMONKEY'S MOBY DICK
September 21, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until September 26, 2009, then touring
ANYONE unfamiliar with the extraordinarily silly, marvellously anarchic talents of the Spymonkey troupe cannot hope to get a true picture of their genius from a few hundred words of type.
Trying to describe their productions is like stuffing a thimble with elastic bands: there’s so much extraneous flummery and uncontainable wriggliness that you can’t quite pin it down into words.
Thus the latest offering from the four-piece physical theatre experts, an adaptation of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick, defies logical description, reducing any attempt at categorisation or synopsis to a meaningless exercise.
The truth is that there is no substitute for seeing this wonderful creation in the flesh. It’s not until you’re exposed to the relentless onslaught of hysterical gags – visual and verbal – or the sublime absurdity of the storytelling (and yes, Melville’s original tale somehow survives the experience) that you can quite grasp just what an exceptional collection of skills and smartness is on display.
Performers Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss, Petra Massey and Toby Park have teamed up with director Jos Houben and associate Rob Thirtle to create a non-stop rollercoaster of utter silliness, using every tool at their disposal. There’s witty wordplay, pure slapstick, high camp and audience participation. There’s a singing ship’s figurehead bemoaning her lack of sexual organs, a hammy ultraviolet underwater sequence worthy of any amateur panto, and a great white whale whose final confrontation with the obsessed Captain Ahab provides a glorious climax to the daftness.
Last seen at the Royal and Derngate in their Gothic romp Cooped, Spymonkey have now officially teamed up with the venue for this co-production, which goes on a national tour after its stay in the Royal auditorium.
Word of mouth on Cooped rendered it a huge hit by the end of its run. If you take my advice, you won’t wait for the word to get round on this one.
MAN OF THE MOMENT
July 30, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until August 15, 2009
IT’S one way to win a five-star review: cast the critic in a minor role.
To be fair to Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who’s directing this revival of his 1988 play himself, I’d already awarded glowing reviews to the Royal’s two earlier productions in the theatre’s Ayckbourn at 70 season, long before landing the part of Ruy, the Spanish gardener.
And having declared my professional interest, I can now safely say, without favour or prejudice, this study of celebrity and the duplicity of the media is a masterpiece of the man’s craft, weaving wit, satire and the usual dose of wrenching human pain into an evening of stunning ingenuity.
On a complex, clever set (Michael Holt) that includes a real working swimming pool, TV reporter Jill Rillington arrives to interview Vic Parks at his Spanish villa for her new show, Their Paths Crossed. Seventeen years earlier, Vic was a bank robber who blasted an innocent girl in the face with a shotgun. Now he’s a TV celebrity himself, while the bank clerk Douglas, who wrestled with him all those years ago, is a forgotten nobody.
When Jill reunites the pair, her programme takes a turn she could not anticipate, and the play unravels into farce, tragedy and almost surreal comedy.
Malcolm Sinclair renders Vic as a fearsome creation, all false bonhomie and in-yer-face, larger-than-life character, while Laura Doddington as his wife Trudy offsets this menace with a hugely touching timorousness that hints darkly at the rebellious nature lurking beneath.
Ruth Gibson is the epitome of power-dressed 80s woman as the feisty but deeply insecure Jill, strutting authoritatively about as her plans collapse around her, and Haz Webb provides a wonderful cameo as the children’s nanny Sharon, whose secret love for Vic lights her own path to disaster.
Yet again in this season, it’s Kim Wall who delivers the sucker punch as the simple, good-hearted Douglas, steadfastly refusing to seek revenge on his former nemesis. With meticulous mannerisms and impeccable comic timing, he perfectly strips away the layers of quiet domesticity to reveal how Douglas could, in the right circumstances, be the hero he’d love to have been.
It’s a production handled deftly by Sir Alan, allowing a clutch of rich, skilled performances to tell his story with warmth, pathos and a host of belly-laughs. And then there’s that genius of a gardener…
CHICAGO
July 7, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until July 11, 2009
IT’S become the ‘done thing’ with this sassy piece of razzle-dazzle to cast flashy names in the big parts and watch the goggle-eyed punters pour in. In the West End version of the show, it’s Jerry Springer who’s currently pulling the crowds.
Mr Springer aside – on whom I can’t comment, since I haven’t seen his performance – there is more than a whiff of cynicism about this approach, since it appears to be concerned less with the quality of the production than with the bucks that can be garnered from celebrity casting.
Well, any hint of below-par performances can be confidently dumped at the door with the latest touring incarnation, which continues the extraordinary success of the Chicago roadshow by extending to December with Gary Wilmot in the role of smart lawyer Billy Flynn and one-time EastEnder Emma Barton as the vampish, amoral Roxie Hart.
This pair can do it. Wilmot, whose track record on the stage over the past couple of decades has won him deserved acclaim as one of our top musical stars, is an assured, accomplished pair of hands. You know you’re safe with his rock-solid confidence, and that wonderful voice has just the right amount of edge for the crafty but charming Billy.
Barton – she was Honey Mitchell, in case you’re wondering – also has a powerful presence, and her singing and dancing are more than technically strong enough to cope with the demands of the role of a cheating wife who weasels her way out of a murder rap after she guns down her lover in 1930s Chicago.
There’s a third leading player, too, in the shape of Roxie’s nemesis Velma Kelly, who vies with her for the fame and publicity that murderous notoriety can bring. Twinnie-Lee Moore brings a sultry energy to the part that works well alongside Barton’s wide-eyed Roxie, and the pair are a force to be reckoned with when it’s just the two of them and a spotlight.
Kander and Ebb’s musical, coupled with some classic Bob Fosse staging, is a sweltering, seething mass of sexiness, from Flynn’s brash Razzle Dazzle to the showstopping Cell Block Tango, and it’s all performed with style and pizzazz by a large, talented company.
With the addition of a 10-piece live band right there on stage, heaving the fabulous music relentlessly from one brassy number to the next, the pace never flags. It’s a hot ticket for a cool show.
PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES
June 24, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until July 11, 2009
A NIGHT on the sofa in front of the telly will never be quite the same again. For when you share your night on the sofa with a couple of hundred playgoers on the converted stage of Northampton’s Royal Theatre, it takes on a whole new dimension.
This second production in the company’s Alan Ayckbourn season to mark the playwright’s 70th birthday throws out the theatrical rule book in a bunch of different ways. Written in 2004 to a self-confessed filmic style, the play consists of 54 scenes in which the intertwined lives of six lonely people unravel to the point where only one relationship – a brother and sister – remains even remotely viable.
All of which makes it sound relentlessly miserable. It isn’t. Thanks to the intelligent crafting of its author, the barbed one-liners and the painful humanity at the heart of every character, there’s plenty of warmth and wit to offset the poignancy.
Artistic director Laurie Sansom – a one-time Ayckbourn apprentice at Scarborough – serves his former master well with this version, only the third professional production to be staged in the UK. Closing off the Royal’s auditorium, he instead places the audience in the thick of the action itself, using the full width of the wings and depth of the stage to create performances spaces from pools of light and suggestions of furniture. The actors wander among the viewers, playing out their dramas up close and personal, often sitting or standing just inches from the voyeuristic audience. It’s not so much theatre in the round as theatre in the altogether.
There are problems with this. While I enjoyed the luxury of a saggy settee, others struggled through the two uninterrupted hours perched uncomfortably on bar stools or shifting buttocks awkwardly on scatter cushions. Sight lines are sometimes impossibly difficult, and the height of the fly tower above occasionally soaks up actors’ voices, especially when they’re facing in the opposite direction.
But all that is ultimately blown away by two things: the boldness of the whole project, and a set of uniformly superb performances.
Sansom’s ambition continues to vault far beyond the apparent confines of his little Victorian playhouse, and the vision and flair with which he abandons the Royal’s physical conventions matches the vision and flair of the play’s author, who observed the press night from a balcony high above the action.
And both are brilliantly served by their cast, whose dedication to finding the truth at the core of their characters results in some magnificent performances. Lucy Briers combines quiet religiosity with a shocking secret, Matthew Cottle makes his lovelorn estate agent a three-dimensional figure of pity, and Laura Doddington as his sister turns loneliness into an art, while Ruth Gibson and Christopher Harper convey all the acute nuances of a relationship in meltdown.
But if anyone could be said to steal the show, it’s Kim Wall as the stoic barman Ambrose. In a remarkable performance, this highly intelligent and creative actor ranges almost imperceptibly from public dependability to private agony in a flawless illustration of the play’s themes.
It’s hardly a feelgood show and you’re strongly advised to get there early to claim one of the more comfortable (unreserved) seats, but even if you end up with a numb bum or aching limbs, there’s no denying Private Fears is another triumph in the Royal’s increasing litany.
JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES
May 27, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until June 13, 2009
IN case you hadn’t noticed all the fuss being made in Northampton, playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn celebrates his 70th birthday this year. But why mark it in Northampton? Because the artistic director of the Royal & Derngate, Laurie Sansom, was Sir Alan’s assistant at Scarborough before bringing his considerable talents southwards.
And who are we to complain? If it means plays of extraordinary calibre and poignancy, combined with the trademark Ayckbourn barbs and brilliance, staged by actors of acuity, wit and stature, then let the celebrations continue for as long as possible.
Just Between Ourselves is the curtain-raiser in a trilogy from across the Ayckbourn canon that will run between now and August. Dating from 1976, it has all the hallmarks that signal the prolific writer at his most acerbic and perceptive.
With a cast of just five, it follows the intertwining fortunes of Dennis and Vera and their younger counterparts Neil and Pam over the course of four birthdays in one year. The mechanics of the plot are less significant than the dynamics of the relationships, and Dennis’s quiet suburban destruction of his wife without ever suspecting what he’s doing is played out exquisitely by the supremely talented pairing of Kim Wall and Dorothy Atkinson.
Atkinson’s fragile disintegration at the witless hands of Wall’s immaculately drawn Dennis is perfectly judged to wrench tears alongside the laughs, while Matthew Cottle and Lucy Briers as the younger couple wring their own bittersweet heartache from their mutual imploding co-dependency. There’s a fine, painfully accurate Mother, too, from Marlene Sidaway, playing her own insidious part in Vera’s breakdown.
Director Mark Rosenblatt displays a deft touch, allowing a meticulous set by Ben Stones to offset the players’ sublime performances, without himself becoming heavy-handed or intrusive. The result is an impeccable opener to the Ayckbourn season that augurs well for the coming months as the same ensemble take on works from 1988 and 2004.
Whatever the initial justification for the celebration, Northampton should be rightly proud of its tribute to Sir Alan.
UNDER MILK WOOD
May 5, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until May 16, 2009
ONE of the great joys of Dylan Thomas’s most famous work, Under Milk Wood, is that as a play for voices – originally intended for radio broadcast – it allows the audience to generate its own pictures in the boundless arena of its imagination.
So how do you resolve this creative dichotomy when it comes to transferring the Welsh masterpiece to the stage?
It’s a conundrum that has plagued theatre productions throughout the play’s history: how much of Thomas’s vivid and vibrant imagery do you present literally, and how much do you leave suggested, making the audience work a little for the full picture in their minds?
Director Adele Thomas, helming her first full piece as part of a Royal & Derngate training scheme, has gone for the literal approach, with almost every descriptive line illustrated by a prop, a costume change or a sight gag.
Working with a cast of five, she dresses four of them in 1950s-style underwear – all cami-knickers and combinations – and then uses their corset-clad bodies as blank canvases on which to impose the whole extraordinary array of characters, up to 10 per actor.
Matthew Bulgo, Arwel Gruffydd, Sara Harris-Davies and Katy Owen all cope admirably with the weight of this expectation (the costume changes alone would challenge lesser mortals), but the experimental, fringe-style approach to the production ultimately detracts from Thomas’s masterly, colourful vignette of smalltown life.
On Hannah Clark’s simple set, lined either side with huge racks of clothing, the multitude of weird and wonderful characters have to scurry frantically from one snatched line of text to the next, with the gentle, lyrical humour forced to unnatural lengths – there’s even an anachronistic swine flu gag elbowed in.
But all the half-ideas crammed into this overflowing cauldron can be forgiven for the sound of Aled Pugh, a mellifluous presence acting as narrator, whose lilting Welsh tones guide the audience assuredly through the day in the life of Llareggub. Evoking memories of the classic Richard Burton recording, his charismatic voice and steadying manner become almost dangerous, sorely tempting you simply to close your eyes and let the music of the words wash soothingly over you.
This attempt at scaling Llareggub Hill is a brave stab at a probably unclimbable peak. But with Pugh as sherpa, the team definitely gets further than they otherwise might.
ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR
May 4, 2009
Derngate, Northampton
IT must have seemed like a gift: open access to the back catalogue of one of this country’s most successful pop and stage singers. For any writer and producer – let alone Jon Conway, who’s made a speciality out of jukebox musicals – it must have seemed like Christmas had come early.
So why does All the Fun of the Fair, a show woven around the songs of David Essex, feel like a missed opportunity?
Maybe it’s the ropey old plot, in which an ageing fairground run by an ageing widower faces predictable hostility from the local thugs, while young lovers from opposite sides of the tracks are driven to desperate measures and ultimate tragedy.
Maybe it’s the cliché-ridden dialogue and characters, who ramble for at least half an hour longer than necessary in pursuit of a story to match the quality of the songs.
Or maybe it’s the criminal use of a pre-recorded soundtrack instead of a live band, which robs the wonderful music of much of its life and passion.
Certainly, the surprisingly sparse Derngate audience was split down the middle over it, with die-hard Essex fans leaping to their feet alongside oddly mute customers steadfastly refusing even to applaud.
Among the actors, there’s a mixed bag. Essex himself, playing the grey-haired, old-fashioned fair boss Levi, turns in a typically relaxed, comfortable performance, looking as if nothing – not even an enforced 20-minute emergency evacuation of the venue – can put him off his stride.
In his professional debut, Paul-Ryan Carberry is volatile, angst-ridden and testosterone-fuelled as his wilful son Jack, while Tanya Robb and Emma Thornett struggle with under-written and two-dimensional characters to provide an unfortunately unbelievable love triangle for the tormented youngster.
The big start and supposedly poignant finish are both given to Louise English as Gypsy Rosa, whose rendition of A Winter’s Tale is clearly intended to be as moving as Blood Brothers but – thanks to some wavering pitching and a little comedy snow – doesn’t quite bring a tear to the eye.
While there's much to enjoy, including an evocative fairground set (Colin Richmond) and that terrific Essex back catalogue, this is essentially a show for the fans. And there's little doubt that they just love it.
dinnerladies
April 27, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring
WHEN you’re stepping into the shoes of Victoria Wood, Julie Walters et al, you could be forgiven for shying away from the more extreme traits of your character and playing it safe.
Fortunately for a delighted audience of this stage version of the TV sitcom, there’s no sign of any of that among the cast of dinnerladies (the lower-case ‘d’ being part of the show’s quirky charm).
For anyone living in a parallel universe for the past decade, dinnerladies was Victoria Wood’s first foray into the form, constructing a painfully funny and poignant microcosm within the one-set confines of a factory canteen. Peopled by many of her usual troupe of actors – including Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston – it used the ordinariness of their lives to make an extraordinary comedy.
Now adapted and directed on the stage by David Graham, this production from the Comedy Theatre Company retains all the main characters with just two of the original cast, a neat trick that could have fallen awkwardly flat, but which actually injects a sense of freshness to the portrayals that only endears them further.
At the heart of this show is Bren – the Wood character brilliantly recreated by Laura Sheppard – and her on-off relationship with canteen manager Tony, played by his TV incarnation Andrew Dunn. The question of whether they will ‘get it on’ before Christmas Eve underpins the evening, while a host of other diversions sparkle away in the background.
Much of the spectacularly funny comedy comes from Wood’s typically confident, pinpoint dialogue, which weaves one-liners together with remarkable characterisation to create fully-rounded, warm and lovable people about whom the audience genuinely care.
But credit must also go to this wonderful team of actors who, rather than simply impersonating the TV personas, use them instead as a starting point, making them real on the stage and crafting them as their own characters.
The usual Wood blend of quickfire wit and utter charm, coupled with a cohesive, polished set of performances, lays out the groundwork for an evening of delightful fun, gentle pathos and loads of big laughs.
SPYSKI!
April 7, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
THE importance of the theatre in bringing truth to a benighted public and exposing uncomfortable realities behind cosy lives is the dramatic thrust driving this politically inspired, socially vital piece of contemporary agitprop.
And if you believe that, you’ve probably also fallen for the hokum publicity trumpeting this production as a sincere attempt to perform The Importance of Being Earnest.
It is, of course, all part of the nonsense surrounding high-velocity farceurs Peepolykus, who use Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” as a front for an evening of anarchy, Pythonesque flights of fancy and lots of silly accents.
The troupe of five –co-writer John Nicholson, absurd Spaniard Javier Marzan, ultra-versatile Paul Mundell and the multi-faceted Flick Ferdinando and Rhona Croker –attempt to provide a bizarre, ramshackle recreation of the preceding few days leading up to this apparent performance of the Victorian classic.
In their world, they have become enmeshed in a real-life spy drama involving shady Russians, masked assassins and sinister Chinese gangsters, and the actors are now on a mission to expose this world-shattering nightmare to their discerning audience through the power of theatre.
Where the cast’s “reality” ends and sheer lunacy kicks in is a constant question throughout proceedings.
Which is to say that this is a production that rattles along with enormous good humour, some considerable talent and plenty of belly-laughs along the way. Director David Farr lets neither his actors nor his audience rest up for long and the result is a breathless tour de force by a tight team in complete control of their off-the-wall material.
Just don’t go expecting Edith Evans. It’s much funnier than that.
CINDERELLA ON ICE
March 31, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring worldwide
REALITY television has a lot to answer for. Not only does the current vogue for ballroom dancing owe much to the Saturday night schedules, but ice dance has achieved a fascination with the public that far outweighs its significance as an artform.
Or so I thought.
Then ice dance entrepreneur Tony Mercer brought his Imperial Ice Stars to Derngate. He built a square rink on a projected proscenium stage, dressed his huge team of skaters in fabulous one-off costumes and created perhaps the most beautifully expressive interpretation of the Cinderella story to have graced a theatre since Charles Perrault dreamed up his definitive version of the fairytale more than 300 years ago.
Told without words, this worldwide touring production relies heavily on a combination of Mercer’s own thrilling choreography and a sumptuous new score from composers Tim A Duncan and Edward Barnwell. There are lush melodies, vast, sweeping string arrangements and some incredibly evocative moments in the music, and it’s all reflected and intensified by the stunning performances on the ice.
More than 20 hugely talented skaters create memorable image after memorable image as the story unfolds, with a strong central theme of time holding it all together effectively. Both in individual displays of technical excellence and ensemble routines of dazzling style, the Imperial Ice Stars reveal a fluency and flair for their art that constantly catches the breath and amazes the eye.
Alongside set pieces of impressive scale – including a wonderful monochrome art deco ball – there are heartstopping moments of sheer beauty and tenderness. Flying has never looked so graceful or natural as in Cinderella’s final touching duet with her hero.
Olga Sharutenko and Andrei Penkine make a handsome couple, matching their blade skills evenly with sincerity and passion, and Vadim Yarkov as her father leads a supporting cast of highly polished entertainers to deliver a fantasy of breathtaking proportions.
Even a technical hitch requiring instant ice repairs – which allowed the genial Mr Mercer himself to chat informatively to the audience for a few minutes – only served to enhance the experience.
So even if Dancing on Ice did nothing for you, then at least allow the Imperial Ice Stars to show you exactly how powerful, elegant, majestic and moving this artform can be.
SPIDER'S WEB
March 30, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
IT’S camp, it’s quaint and it’s got all the credentials to pack in audiences of a certain age. The Agatha Christie Theatre Company is here again.
Under the production umbrella of Bill Kenwright, this enterprising group attracts well-known faces from stage and TV to tour the country with material written by the mistress of 20th century crime herself.
This time round, Casualty’s Duffy, Catherine Shipton, joins Butterflies heartthrob Bruce Montague and ill-fated Bill bobby Melanie Gutteridge among a high-speed cast of 11 playing out the country house murder mystery Spider’s Web, written as an original play by Christie and featuring none of her regular cast of curious detective types.
Instead, in archetypal Cluedo fashion, the rascal Oliver Costello is bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the drawing room. But how? And why? And what is the significance of the secret drawer in the desk?
All these questions and more are answered in the usual clever and witty Christie style, and director Joe Harmston keeps the pace rattling along for more than two and a half galloping hours, aided and abetted by a talented cast.
A sparkling Gutteridge holds the whole thing together with machine-gun delivery of crisp lines, while Montague provides delightful gravitas and warmth as her elderly guardian. Denis Lill and Mark Rose make a fine double act of solid coppers, and Shipton puts in a somewhat eccentric performance as the jolly-hockey-sticks gardener Miss Peake.
It’s all good, reliable fare, elegantly designed by Simon Scullion and staged with a respectful tongue firmly in the cheek. And while Christie may seem a little dated to those brought up on Spooks or The Wire, there are plenty of more senior theatre-goers who will rejoice in this old-fashioned escapism.
THE BFG
March 17, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
IT’S hard to find fault with a show that has clearly benefited from so much time, effort and enthusiasm. Certainly the scale and ambition of this new co-production of Roald Dahl’s children’s story are to be applauded.
Northampton’s Royal and Derngate have worked with independent producers Fiery Light to stage the production, initially in the cosy Royal auditorium and later on a huge national tour scheduled to run until September.
Adapted by veteran children’s specialist David Wood and directed by Phil Clark, the show employs the device of a play within a play, in which guests at young Sophie’s birthday party agree to create a performance of her favourite book after the anticipated entertainer fails to turn up.
This allows for all kinds of horrors, including grotesque giant masks and on-stage child-eating, to be undertaken without scaring the young audience overmuch – this is, after all, only a play, isn’t it?
The energetic cast of ten are all on stage pretty much the whole time, and combine their acting with providing an almost non-stop musical accompaniment using a host of different instruments, ranging from toy drum to bass recorder.
At the heart of the story is Anthony Pedley, turning in a likeable and appealing performance as the BFG himself. As part of Sean Crowley’s ingenious and evocative designs, in giant land he plays opposite puppets, but he becomes a huge on-stage puppet himself when we’re in life-size human territory.
It’s all good clean fun and the fart gags help to ensure plenty of giggles from young audience members. Personally I could have done without the incessant drone of the musical ostinato, which seemed to have no functional purpose and merely served to irritate and detract from the momentum of the piece.
But if the whole doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, there’s plenty of time and opportunity over the coming months to bed this down into a thoroughly serviceable touring commodity.
A SONG AT TWILIGHT
March 3, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
DIRECTOR Nikolai Foster must be the Midas of the touring circuit. With The Witches of Eastwick and the David Essex musical All the Fun of the Fair currently selling out all over the country, he’s now added a classic Noel Coward play to his roster.
And his deft hand with the material certainly adds a golden touch to the already brilliant casting of Belinda Lang and Peter Egan in the vast central roles.
Lang plays Carlotta Gray, a mediocre retired actress who calls on Egan’s pompous writer Sir Hugo Latymer more than 30 years after they enjoyed an affair. But her motives in tracking him down after all this time, and her reaction to his teutonic wife/protector Hilde have more than a few surprises in store as an evening of acerbic wit and venom plays out.
Staged on a sumptuous period set by designer Matthew Wright, this 1966 piece by the master of manners glories in the virtuosity that Coward deliberately created for himself, but it’s also extraordinarily risky, frisky and emotionally powerful. There’s plenty of the sparkling dialogue you’d expect, but as the evening darkens and the hidden motives become clearer, the meticulously crafted writing deepens into dangerous profundity as an exploration of that most modern of themes, celebrity.
It’s all performed superbly by a well-matched cast of just four. Lang is flighty, feisty and full of the not-quite-successful bravado essential to her complex character, while Egan emerges triumphant as the overblown egotist Sir Hugo, whose descent from reputable icon to broken man is perfectly judged. The final moments are as moving as anything you’ll see on a stage.
There’s terrific support, too, from Kerry Peers as Hilde, who plays her relationship with Hugo at exactly the right pitch, whether she’s domineering or defending him, and from Daniel Bayle, whose delightful turn as a smarmy Austro-Italian waiter adds much more than a mere cipher to the unfolding drama.
It’s painful, provocative and persuasively powerful viewing, and an absolute joy for the student of first-class acting. Not to mention the director…
ELAINE PAIGE
February 26, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring until March 16, 2009
ASKED to list a few Broadway divas, you might come up pretty quickly with names such as Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli or Bette Midler. Do the same for the West End and the list stops with one.
Elaine Paige – or EP, as she modestly likes to be known – is a true musical theatre diva, with all the positive connotations of the word. Amazingly, she has now been at it in the West End for 40 years, and she’s currently touring some of the country’s top venues with a special anniversary concert to mark the occasion.
As Don Black says in the accompanying programme, it’s all too easy to take this diminutive little firecracker for granted: she’s down-to-earth, she’s a pal on the airwaves with her weekly Radio 2 show, and she makes her talent look effortlessly easy.
But take a glance at her track record and you start to realise just how significant EP has been to the development and spectacular success of musical theatre over the past four decades. Hair, Evita, Cats, Chess, Sunset Boulevard, Piaf – not bad for a sub-five-footer whose first job on graduating from drama school was modelling children’s clothes.
This concert tour, in which La Paige is supported by a tight, versatile eight-piece band under the direction of Chris Egan, tracks this extraordinary career in an intelligently constructed, largely chronological programme.
After a couple of warm-up numbers, there’s a beautifully performed version of Broadway Baby, from Sondheim’s Follies, which she cleverly uses as a backdrop for a quick run through her early CV. Then it’s one smash showtune after another, spread across two halves and ranging from I Don’t Know How to Love Him (Jesus Christ Superstar) to I Know Him So Well (Chess). Memory is reserved for the first encore.
Among an evening of many highlights, the most thrilling is the selection from Piaf, in which EP dons a simple wig and some scarlet lipstick to transform into the Little Sparrow. Using part of the Pam Gems play as a scene-setter, Paige also gets to reveal her considerable acting talent, which of course she uses throughout to sell every number, but which really comes into its own with this moving segment.
The voice may occasionally be a little strident for everyone’s taste, and the sound balance may take a little while to get right, but there’s no doubting the supreme talent and consummate professionalism of the West End’s First Lady, and the delighted standing ovation has surely become the inevitable end to an evening in her charming company.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
February 17, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until February 28, then touring
KNEEHIGH Theatre Company has made something of a speciality of taking well-known stories and doing a number on them. In the past, they’ve done Shakespeare, Euripides, even Jules Verne, and their version of Noel Coward’s classic wartime film of Brief Encounter has already met with critical and box office success in the West End.
Now the company has recreated the show as a co-production with Northampton’s Royal & Derngate before embarking on a national tour, and the residual warm glow from the London run will undoubtedly count for much. But it makes for tricky reviewing when comparisons with the previous cast and former production spring inevitably to mind.
For one thing, the Royal’s compact stage means the whole grand design has had to be forced into a tight little performance space, with some effects sacrificed and others mangled to fit.
While this is not a problem for first-time viewers, and may not be an issue in some of the tour venues, it does generate something of a sense of a jumble of sparky ideas crammed into a container that’s too small for them.
Adapter and director Emma Rice has thrown every conceivable notion at the show, from filmed sequences and toy trains to actor-musicians and audience participation. While much of this is imaginative and entertaining, some also carries a whiff of fringe frolics and experimental navel-gazing, and the pace of the whole thing needs to sharpen and tighten before it takes to the road.
The performances are, on the whole, likeable and the central pairing of Hannah Yelland and Milo Twomey make a decent effort at the anguished lovers kept apart by the mores of the era. But some of the musical interludes are more intrusive than I remembered from last time round, and there are occasional tuning issues among the vocal harmonies that add to an overall feeling of everything being slightly off-key.
It may be harsh, and possibly clouded by rose-tinted recollections of the original production. It is certainly true that Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter is a highly creative, affectionate and charming piece of theatre.
If it lacks a little of the freshness and edge of its predecessor, maybe that’s no fault of the present company, who work hard to bring this Coward classic to exuberant life.
FLASHDANCE
February 16, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until February 21, then touring
THINK cheesy love story, think pink legwarmers, think disposable 80s pop. Then throw it all aside and look at what Flashdance really is.
Yes, it’s based on the of-its-time, Giorgio Moroder-scored movie from 1983 about a girl who spends her time welding by day and exotic dancing by night, and how she hankers for a place at ballet school while starting up a romance with the steel mill boss.
Yes, it includes fashion items of questionable taste, even in 1983, although many of the wearers were committing even greater crimes such as breakdancing at the time so maybe legwarmers could be overlooked.
And yes, it’s crammed with hooky, toe-tapping tunes aimed at a certain age. Which I happen to be.
But this Flashdance is a whole lot more than that. This Flashdance is a real musical.
Transformed by the screenplay co-writer Tom Hedley, with a pulsating original score by Robbie Roth, this Flashdance is recreated for the stage as a proper show with a proper theatrical pedigree and a proper production to go with it.
The stage is framed by a steel-wrought set (Paul Farnsworth) and people with seemingly hundreds of young singer-dancers, who thrash energetically through Arlene Phillips routines to play out the wilfully implausible yet utterly gripping tale of Alex Owens and her dream.
Much credit must go to director Kenny Leon for his deft pacing and blocking and to musical director Dave Rose for his stunning eight-piece live band that keeps things driving along fantastically (technical problems notwithstanding).
But the real stars of the night are the principal players, among them Bernie Nolan and former Hear’Say singer Noel Sullivan, who all perform superbly, with impressive acting to complement the stunning vocals throughout the company.
And at the top of the (dance) class is Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, whose brief and understated CV belies an enormous talent that surely marks her out as a name to watch. She’s an assured, confident singer, a highly watchable dancer and an actor of considerable depth and range, and her central performance as the welding wannabe is a tour de force that leaves you breathless.
And it’s a performance at the heart of a show which just demands to be taken seriously, no matter how you remember the source material.
SHAKESPEARE 4 KIDZ: ROMEO AND JULIET/THE TEMPEST
February 3, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until February 3, then touring
LIKE ignoring a Big Issue seller on a wintry day, there’s something vaguely conscience-wracking about reviewing Shakespeare4Kidz in anything other than glowing terms.
The company philosophy, to make the Bard accessible to children of virtually any age, is faultlessly commendable and has now been taken up with a higher profile by the Royal Shakespeare Company and its national Stand Up For Shakespeare campaign.
Similarly, the strategy of mixing iconic original text with modernised paraphrasing and – in the case of Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest – presenting them as knockabout musicals seems an obvious crowd-pleaser for the younger generation.
As for putting the tour out on the road with up to 14 actors, plus a couple of musicians and a backstage crew, one can only marvel at the sheer ambition of S4K’s enterprise and applaud its relentless determination to reach the previously unreached.
And yet there remains a niggling worry that children – universally recognised as the harshest critics – will come away from both these shows with a slight sense of being underwhelmed.
The cast double up between the two productions, both created by S4K’s Julian Chenery and Matt Gimblett, and work hard to whip through the tales in a couple of hours, apparently so as not to overstretch the attention span of an 11-year-old.
For audiences perhaps experiencing their first theatre beyond a panto, it amounts to a simple, workmanlike retelling of the basic story, with a few sub-Lloyd Webber numbers dropped in to keep the energy from flagging.
But the songs are too lame and the narratives too plot-driven to make these anything more than ‘Tales From Shakespeare’ rather than a taste of the real thing. And if you’re hoping for the magic of the poetry or the majesty of the language, forget it: that’s all as distant and forgotten as Prospero’s island.
It’s all a thoroughly worthwhile exercise undermined by a less than ideal execution.
BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1943
January 26, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until January 31, then touring
IT’S easy enough to please some critics. In this case, just stick a live eight-piece swing band on stage and he’ll lap it up till the cows come home.
Never mind that Alan Plater’s play seems to try just a little too hard to please, with its witty one-liners and supposedly wise-cracking musicians. Never mind that the technical team seemed to be suffering a bit of a mare with lighting and sound balance. And never mind that the task of finding eight cast members equally adept at playing, singing and acting proved just a touch of a tall order.
Because by the end of a night of nostalgic whimsy and blistering big band music, nobody cared about the minor flaws, enjoying instead the major virtues of this genuinely feelgood show.
Loosely hung around the premise of an all-girl swing band in the war years looking to recruit new members to make up for those ‘lost’ in recent gigs at US army bases, Blonde Bombshells plays heavily on notions of sisterhood, uniting against a common enemy and the indominability of the northerner.
Directed by Mark Babych from his original 2006 production in Bolton, it’s now touring extensively, and deserves healthy houses at the often small venues it will be gracing.
It’s worth the ticket price alone for the sensational second-act show the girls put on, which rattles through a programme of fizzing jazz numbers with sensational arrangements (courtesy of musical director Howard Gray) and impeccable vocal harmonies, all delivered with an energy that blows the audience away just as effectively as the considerable musicianship of the hard-working cast.
Like the Blitz spirit it encapsulates, Blonde Bombshells overcomes all obstacles to win a triumphant victory and make this truly a night to remember.
December 18, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until Sunday, January 10, 2010
IT’S fun, it’s festive, it’s fast-paced and frivolous – all of which scores major plus points for this glossy and professional panto.
But there’s no getting away from the one huge drawback – and it’s one that should be broadcast loudly across all the advertising and promotional material, for fear of misleading the ticket-buying punters. It’s a pre-recorded show.
At the risk of boring regular readers, it’s become an increasingly irritating hobby-horse of mine that productions purporting to be live performances are actually run and staged to backing tracks. This insidious habit has crept through pantoland (with notable exceptions) and is now regarded – by producers, at least – as accepted and acceptable.
All I can say is: oh no it isn’t!
Depriving the audience (particularly those younger members who may be experiencing a theatre for the first time) of a live band is the musical equivalent of serving up a McDonalds on December 25 and calling it Christmas dinner. This is not a musical: it’s karaoke with lipgloss.
Rant over, what remains of Snow White after ripping out its lifeblood is actually very serviceable, and husband-and-wife team Sam Kane and Linda Lusardi come across as polished, professional entertainers. Kane also directs, thus claiming much of the credit for the pace, while their 13-year-old daughter Lucy puts in a sweet turn as the forest fairy.
Elsewhere, Pete Hillier – CBeebies’ Boogie Pete – offers a cheeky, cheerful Muddles, while Richard Shelton and Emily Shaw support ably as Chambers and Snow White respectively.
The self-styled Magnificent Seven just about overcome the increasing uncomfortableness of putting short people in funny clothes and making them perform on cue, and there’s plenty to please the eye in the sets and costumes. Producer Jonathan Kiley and musical director Olly Ashmore provide a better-than-average script and score, and choreographer Chris Baldock makes good use of his large cast of all ages.
So for a traditional show, there’s lots to enjoy. Except for that most crucial of all musical traditions, a live band. Oops – there I go again…
HONK!
December 6, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until Sunday, January 3, 2010
THESE days they’re probably best known for tarting up Mary Poppins for the stage, but the musical writing partnership of Stiles and Drewe had a big success long before that.
Honk! The Ugly Duckling Musical has become a staple of children’s theatre since it first appeared in 1993, and this imaginative version on the Royal’s intimate stage offers a charming alternative to festive panto fare for the holiday season.
The plot is pretty self-explanatory – big grey hatchling rejected by the farmyard creatures takes himself off for the winter, returns a majestic white swan – and to be honest, it’s spread a little thinly across two and a quarter hours, with some sharply contrasting moments of brilliance and dullness in both the score and dialogue.
But the production itself is hard to fault, with director Andrew Panton and musical director Peter Woollard really getting the most out of their enthusiastic cast of eight adults and eight children.
Adam Barlow is an utterly charming Ugly, with a fine singing voice and full range of emotions. Fiona Dunn plays his mum Ida with a touching vulnerability, while other cast members play multiple roles with panache and humour.
The standout performance, though, comes from David McGranaghan as a fiendish feline intent on luring the ugly duckling away from his brood to put something “in the kitty” – lunch. The movement, characterisation and sheer wickedness created by this talented young actor make for a baddie as bad as any you could want in a Christmas show. All that’s missing is the booing.
Elsewhere, a tight pit band keeps the music rolling along, while Jason Denvir’s ingenious set design allows for flying geese, dancing frogs and hatching eggs to grace the stage with equal believability and a genuine sense of fun throughout.
And if there isn’t at least a hint of a tear in the eye by the end, then you’re a tougher critic than I…
BEYOND THE HORIZON/SPRING STORM
October 29, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until Saturday, November 14, 2009
YOU just can’t keep Laurie Sansom down. Maybe the ghost of Rupert Goold is still hanging about the Royal & Derngate. Maybe there’s something in the water in Northampton. But whatever the reason, artistic director Sansom is a man with a mission.
This time, hot on the heels of his groundbreaking Ayckbourn season in the summer, he’s unearthed two formative plays by the American giants Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, shackled them together under the banner Young America, and delivered them with the panache and style of a director who really knows what he wants.
The O’Neill, Beyond the Horizon, predates the Williams by almost 20 years, and the younger playwright acknowledged the influence of the earlier work on his own theatrical debut – which was only discovered in 1996 and has its European premiere with this production.
As dramatic pieces, neither is particularly outstanding. Both are lengthy, gloomy plays exploring young love and doomed ideals, and while the signs are clear of forthcoming greatness, the classics for both writers are still ahead of them.
But there’s little to fault in the staging of either, and the performances in both – including much doubling among the casts – are exemplary.
In Beyond the Horizon, Sansom has a fine vision of the expansiveness of the landscape, somehow managing to create open space and heat from the Royal’s tiny stage. By contrast, Spring Storm is all claustrophobic atmosphere and decaying decadence in the late 1930s Deep South. The designs of both shows, by Sara Perks, are impeccable in their service of the plays, as are the music (Jon Nicholls), sound (Christopher Shutt) and lighting (Chris Davey).
Among the players, Michael Malarkey and Michael Thomson lead the company superbly together, as tightly-bonded brothers in the O’Neill and fierce love rivals in the Williams. Liz ‘Life on Mars’ White is a sparkling talent in both shows as the object of the boys’ desires and cause of their ultimate tragedies.
But the strength of the casting – along with some consistently excellent accents – lies across the company, with little gems of characterisation in even the smallest roles, and there are many nuggets to lighten the burden through the long three-act plays.
It’s a worthy exercise in academic exploration of these two early pieces, and the productions continue Sansom’s fine tradition of the pursuit of excellence. If the plays themselves are a little stodgy and indigestible, there’s no blame attached to the Royal and its talented team.
SPYMONKEY'S MOBY DICK
September 21, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until September 26, 2009, then touring
ANYONE unfamiliar with the extraordinarily silly, marvellously anarchic talents of the Spymonkey troupe cannot hope to get a true picture of their genius from a few hundred words of type.
Trying to describe their productions is like stuffing a thimble with elastic bands: there’s so much extraneous flummery and uncontainable wriggliness that you can’t quite pin it down into words.
Thus the latest offering from the four-piece physical theatre experts, an adaptation of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick, defies logical description, reducing any attempt at categorisation or synopsis to a meaningless exercise.
The truth is that there is no substitute for seeing this wonderful creation in the flesh. It’s not until you’re exposed to the relentless onslaught of hysterical gags – visual and verbal – or the sublime absurdity of the storytelling (and yes, Melville’s original tale somehow survives the experience) that you can quite grasp just what an exceptional collection of skills and smartness is on display.
Performers Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss, Petra Massey and Toby Park have teamed up with director Jos Houben and associate Rob Thirtle to create a non-stop rollercoaster of utter silliness, using every tool at their disposal. There’s witty wordplay, pure slapstick, high camp and audience participation. There’s a singing ship’s figurehead bemoaning her lack of sexual organs, a hammy ultraviolet underwater sequence worthy of any amateur panto, and a great white whale whose final confrontation with the obsessed Captain Ahab provides a glorious climax to the daftness.
Last seen at the Royal and Derngate in their Gothic romp Cooped, Spymonkey have now officially teamed up with the venue for this co-production, which goes on a national tour after its stay in the Royal auditorium.
Word of mouth on Cooped rendered it a huge hit by the end of its run. If you take my advice, you won’t wait for the word to get round on this one.
MAN OF THE MOMENT
July 30, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until August 15, 2009
IT’S one way to win a five-star review: cast the critic in a minor role.
To be fair to Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who’s directing this revival of his 1988 play himself, I’d already awarded glowing reviews to the Royal’s two earlier productions in the theatre’s Ayckbourn at 70 season, long before landing the part of Ruy, the Spanish gardener.
And having declared my professional interest, I can now safely say, without favour or prejudice, this study of celebrity and the duplicity of the media is a masterpiece of the man’s craft, weaving wit, satire and the usual dose of wrenching human pain into an evening of stunning ingenuity.
On a complex, clever set (Michael Holt) that includes a real working swimming pool, TV reporter Jill Rillington arrives to interview Vic Parks at his Spanish villa for her new show, Their Paths Crossed. Seventeen years earlier, Vic was a bank robber who blasted an innocent girl in the face with a shotgun. Now he’s a TV celebrity himself, while the bank clerk Douglas, who wrestled with him all those years ago, is a forgotten nobody.
When Jill reunites the pair, her programme takes a turn she could not anticipate, and the play unravels into farce, tragedy and almost surreal comedy.
Malcolm Sinclair renders Vic as a fearsome creation, all false bonhomie and in-yer-face, larger-than-life character, while Laura Doddington as his wife Trudy offsets this menace with a hugely touching timorousness that hints darkly at the rebellious nature lurking beneath.
Ruth Gibson is the epitome of power-dressed 80s woman as the feisty but deeply insecure Jill, strutting authoritatively about as her plans collapse around her, and Haz Webb provides a wonderful cameo as the children’s nanny Sharon, whose secret love for Vic lights her own path to disaster.
Yet again in this season, it’s Kim Wall who delivers the sucker punch as the simple, good-hearted Douglas, steadfastly refusing to seek revenge on his former nemesis. With meticulous mannerisms and impeccable comic timing, he perfectly strips away the layers of quiet domesticity to reveal how Douglas could, in the right circumstances, be the hero he’d love to have been.
It’s a production handled deftly by Sir Alan, allowing a clutch of rich, skilled performances to tell his story with warmth, pathos and a host of belly-laughs. And then there’s that genius of a gardener…
CHICAGO
July 7, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until July 11, 2009
IT’S become the ‘done thing’ with this sassy piece of razzle-dazzle to cast flashy names in the big parts and watch the goggle-eyed punters pour in. In the West End version of the show, it’s Jerry Springer who’s currently pulling the crowds.
Mr Springer aside – on whom I can’t comment, since I haven’t seen his performance – there is more than a whiff of cynicism about this approach, since it appears to be concerned less with the quality of the production than with the bucks that can be garnered from celebrity casting.
Well, any hint of below-par performances can be confidently dumped at the door with the latest touring incarnation, which continues the extraordinary success of the Chicago roadshow by extending to December with Gary Wilmot in the role of smart lawyer Billy Flynn and one-time EastEnder Emma Barton as the vampish, amoral Roxie Hart.
This pair can do it. Wilmot, whose track record on the stage over the past couple of decades has won him deserved acclaim as one of our top musical stars, is an assured, accomplished pair of hands. You know you’re safe with his rock-solid confidence, and that wonderful voice has just the right amount of edge for the crafty but charming Billy.
Barton – she was Honey Mitchell, in case you’re wondering – also has a powerful presence, and her singing and dancing are more than technically strong enough to cope with the demands of the role of a cheating wife who weasels her way out of a murder rap after she guns down her lover in 1930s Chicago.
There’s a third leading player, too, in the shape of Roxie’s nemesis Velma Kelly, who vies with her for the fame and publicity that murderous notoriety can bring. Twinnie-Lee Moore brings a sultry energy to the part that works well alongside Barton’s wide-eyed Roxie, and the pair are a force to be reckoned with when it’s just the two of them and a spotlight.
Kander and Ebb’s musical, coupled with some classic Bob Fosse staging, is a sweltering, seething mass of sexiness, from Flynn’s brash Razzle Dazzle to the showstopping Cell Block Tango, and it’s all performed with style and pizzazz by a large, talented company.
With the addition of a 10-piece live band right there on stage, heaving the fabulous music relentlessly from one brassy number to the next, the pace never flags. It’s a hot ticket for a cool show.
PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES
June 24, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until July 11, 2009
A NIGHT on the sofa in front of the telly will never be quite the same again. For when you share your night on the sofa with a couple of hundred playgoers on the converted stage of Northampton’s Royal Theatre, it takes on a whole new dimension.
This second production in the company’s Alan Ayckbourn season to mark the playwright’s 70th birthday throws out the theatrical rule book in a bunch of different ways. Written in 2004 to a self-confessed filmic style, the play consists of 54 scenes in which the intertwined lives of six lonely people unravel to the point where only one relationship – a brother and sister – remains even remotely viable.
All of which makes it sound relentlessly miserable. It isn’t. Thanks to the intelligent crafting of its author, the barbed one-liners and the painful humanity at the heart of every character, there’s plenty of warmth and wit to offset the poignancy.
Artistic director Laurie Sansom – a one-time Ayckbourn apprentice at Scarborough – serves his former master well with this version, only the third professional production to be staged in the UK. Closing off the Royal’s auditorium, he instead places the audience in the thick of the action itself, using the full width of the wings and depth of the stage to create performances spaces from pools of light and suggestions of furniture. The actors wander among the viewers, playing out their dramas up close and personal, often sitting or standing just inches from the voyeuristic audience. It’s not so much theatre in the round as theatre in the altogether.
There are problems with this. While I enjoyed the luxury of a saggy settee, others struggled through the two uninterrupted hours perched uncomfortably on bar stools or shifting buttocks awkwardly on scatter cushions. Sight lines are sometimes impossibly difficult, and the height of the fly tower above occasionally soaks up actors’ voices, especially when they’re facing in the opposite direction.
But all that is ultimately blown away by two things: the boldness of the whole project, and a set of uniformly superb performances.
Sansom’s ambition continues to vault far beyond the apparent confines of his little Victorian playhouse, and the vision and flair with which he abandons the Royal’s physical conventions matches the vision and flair of the play’s author, who observed the press night from a balcony high above the action.
And both are brilliantly served by their cast, whose dedication to finding the truth at the core of their characters results in some magnificent performances. Lucy Briers combines quiet religiosity with a shocking secret, Matthew Cottle makes his lovelorn estate agent a three-dimensional figure of pity, and Laura Doddington as his sister turns loneliness into an art, while Ruth Gibson and Christopher Harper convey all the acute nuances of a relationship in meltdown.
But if anyone could be said to steal the show, it’s Kim Wall as the stoic barman Ambrose. In a remarkable performance, this highly intelligent and creative actor ranges almost imperceptibly from public dependability to private agony in a flawless illustration of the play’s themes.
It’s hardly a feelgood show and you’re strongly advised to get there early to claim one of the more comfortable (unreserved) seats, but even if you end up with a numb bum or aching limbs, there’s no denying Private Fears is another triumph in the Royal’s increasing litany.
JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES
May 27, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until June 13, 2009
IN case you hadn’t noticed all the fuss being made in Northampton, playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn celebrates his 70th birthday this year. But why mark it in Northampton? Because the artistic director of the Royal & Derngate, Laurie Sansom, was Sir Alan’s assistant at Scarborough before bringing his considerable talents southwards.
And who are we to complain? If it means plays of extraordinary calibre and poignancy, combined with the trademark Ayckbourn barbs and brilliance, staged by actors of acuity, wit and stature, then let the celebrations continue for as long as possible.
Just Between Ourselves is the curtain-raiser in a trilogy from across the Ayckbourn canon that will run between now and August. Dating from 1976, it has all the hallmarks that signal the prolific writer at his most acerbic and perceptive.
With a cast of just five, it follows the intertwining fortunes of Dennis and Vera and their younger counterparts Neil and Pam over the course of four birthdays in one year. The mechanics of the plot are less significant than the dynamics of the relationships, and Dennis’s quiet suburban destruction of his wife without ever suspecting what he’s doing is played out exquisitely by the supremely talented pairing of Kim Wall and Dorothy Atkinson.
Atkinson’s fragile disintegration at the witless hands of Wall’s immaculately drawn Dennis is perfectly judged to wrench tears alongside the laughs, while Matthew Cottle and Lucy Briers as the younger couple wring their own bittersweet heartache from their mutual imploding co-dependency. There’s a fine, painfully accurate Mother, too, from Marlene Sidaway, playing her own insidious part in Vera’s breakdown.
Director Mark Rosenblatt displays a deft touch, allowing a meticulous set by Ben Stones to offset the players’ sublime performances, without himself becoming heavy-handed or intrusive. The result is an impeccable opener to the Ayckbourn season that augurs well for the coming months as the same ensemble take on works from 1988 and 2004.
Whatever the initial justification for the celebration, Northampton should be rightly proud of its tribute to Sir Alan.
UNDER MILK WOOD
May 5, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until May 16, 2009
ONE of the great joys of Dylan Thomas’s most famous work, Under Milk Wood, is that as a play for voices – originally intended for radio broadcast – it allows the audience to generate its own pictures in the boundless arena of its imagination.
So how do you resolve this creative dichotomy when it comes to transferring the Welsh masterpiece to the stage?
It’s a conundrum that has plagued theatre productions throughout the play’s history: how much of Thomas’s vivid and vibrant imagery do you present literally, and how much do you leave suggested, making the audience work a little for the full picture in their minds?
Director Adele Thomas, helming her first full piece as part of a Royal & Derngate training scheme, has gone for the literal approach, with almost every descriptive line illustrated by a prop, a costume change or a sight gag.
Working with a cast of five, she dresses four of them in 1950s-style underwear – all cami-knickers and combinations – and then uses their corset-clad bodies as blank canvases on which to impose the whole extraordinary array of characters, up to 10 per actor.
Matthew Bulgo, Arwel Gruffydd, Sara Harris-Davies and Katy Owen all cope admirably with the weight of this expectation (the costume changes alone would challenge lesser mortals), but the experimental, fringe-style approach to the production ultimately detracts from Thomas’s masterly, colourful vignette of smalltown life.
On Hannah Clark’s simple set, lined either side with huge racks of clothing, the multitude of weird and wonderful characters have to scurry frantically from one snatched line of text to the next, with the gentle, lyrical humour forced to unnatural lengths – there’s even an anachronistic swine flu gag elbowed in.
But all the half-ideas crammed into this overflowing cauldron can be forgiven for the sound of Aled Pugh, a mellifluous presence acting as narrator, whose lilting Welsh tones guide the audience assuredly through the day in the life of Llareggub. Evoking memories of the classic Richard Burton recording, his charismatic voice and steadying manner become almost dangerous, sorely tempting you simply to close your eyes and let the music of the words wash soothingly over you.
This attempt at scaling Llareggub Hill is a brave stab at a probably unclimbable peak. But with Pugh as sherpa, the team definitely gets further than they otherwise might.
ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR
May 4, 2009
Derngate, Northampton
IT must have seemed like a gift: open access to the back catalogue of one of this country’s most successful pop and stage singers. For any writer and producer – let alone Jon Conway, who’s made a speciality out of jukebox musicals – it must have seemed like Christmas had come early.
So why does All the Fun of the Fair, a show woven around the songs of David Essex, feel like a missed opportunity?
Maybe it’s the ropey old plot, in which an ageing fairground run by an ageing widower faces predictable hostility from the local thugs, while young lovers from opposite sides of the tracks are driven to desperate measures and ultimate tragedy.
Maybe it’s the cliché-ridden dialogue and characters, who ramble for at least half an hour longer than necessary in pursuit of a story to match the quality of the songs.
Or maybe it’s the criminal use of a pre-recorded soundtrack instead of a live band, which robs the wonderful music of much of its life and passion.
Certainly, the surprisingly sparse Derngate audience was split down the middle over it, with die-hard Essex fans leaping to their feet alongside oddly mute customers steadfastly refusing even to applaud.
Among the actors, there’s a mixed bag. Essex himself, playing the grey-haired, old-fashioned fair boss Levi, turns in a typically relaxed, comfortable performance, looking as if nothing – not even an enforced 20-minute emergency evacuation of the venue – can put him off his stride.
In his professional debut, Paul-Ryan Carberry is volatile, angst-ridden and testosterone-fuelled as his wilful son Jack, while Tanya Robb and Emma Thornett struggle with under-written and two-dimensional characters to provide an unfortunately unbelievable love triangle for the tormented youngster.
The big start and supposedly poignant finish are both given to Louise English as Gypsy Rosa, whose rendition of A Winter’s Tale is clearly intended to be as moving as Blood Brothers but – thanks to some wavering pitching and a little comedy snow – doesn’t quite bring a tear to the eye.
While there's much to enjoy, including an evocative fairground set (Colin Richmond) and that terrific Essex back catalogue, this is essentially a show for the fans. And there's little doubt that they just love it.
dinnerladies
April 27, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring
WHEN you’re stepping into the shoes of Victoria Wood, Julie Walters et al, you could be forgiven for shying away from the more extreme traits of your character and playing it safe.
Fortunately for a delighted audience of this stage version of the TV sitcom, there’s no sign of any of that among the cast of dinnerladies (the lower-case ‘d’ being part of the show’s quirky charm).
For anyone living in a parallel universe for the past decade, dinnerladies was Victoria Wood’s first foray into the form, constructing a painfully funny and poignant microcosm within the one-set confines of a factory canteen. Peopled by many of her usual troupe of actors – including Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston – it used the ordinariness of their lives to make an extraordinary comedy.
Now adapted and directed on the stage by David Graham, this production from the Comedy Theatre Company retains all the main characters with just two of the original cast, a neat trick that could have fallen awkwardly flat, but which actually injects a sense of freshness to the portrayals that only endears them further.
At the heart of this show is Bren – the Wood character brilliantly recreated by Laura Sheppard – and her on-off relationship with canteen manager Tony, played by his TV incarnation Andrew Dunn. The question of whether they will ‘get it on’ before Christmas Eve underpins the evening, while a host of other diversions sparkle away in the background.
Much of the spectacularly funny comedy comes from Wood’s typically confident, pinpoint dialogue, which weaves one-liners together with remarkable characterisation to create fully-rounded, warm and lovable people about whom the audience genuinely care.
But credit must also go to this wonderful team of actors who, rather than simply impersonating the TV personas, use them instead as a starting point, making them real on the stage and crafting them as their own characters.
The usual Wood blend of quickfire wit and utter charm, coupled with a cohesive, polished set of performances, lays out the groundwork for an evening of delightful fun, gentle pathos and loads of big laughs.
SPYSKI!
April 7, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
THE importance of the theatre in bringing truth to a benighted public and exposing uncomfortable realities behind cosy lives is the dramatic thrust driving this politically inspired, socially vital piece of contemporary agitprop.
And if you believe that, you’ve probably also fallen for the hokum publicity trumpeting this production as a sincere attempt to perform The Importance of Being Earnest.
It is, of course, all part of the nonsense surrounding high-velocity farceurs Peepolykus, who use Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” as a front for an evening of anarchy, Pythonesque flights of fancy and lots of silly accents.
The troupe of five –co-writer John Nicholson, absurd Spaniard Javier Marzan, ultra-versatile Paul Mundell and the multi-faceted Flick Ferdinando and Rhona Croker –attempt to provide a bizarre, ramshackle recreation of the preceding few days leading up to this apparent performance of the Victorian classic.
In their world, they have become enmeshed in a real-life spy drama involving shady Russians, masked assassins and sinister Chinese gangsters, and the actors are now on a mission to expose this world-shattering nightmare to their discerning audience through the power of theatre.
Where the cast’s “reality” ends and sheer lunacy kicks in is a constant question throughout proceedings.
Which is to say that this is a production that rattles along with enormous good humour, some considerable talent and plenty of belly-laughs along the way. Director David Farr lets neither his actors nor his audience rest up for long and the result is a breathless tour de force by a tight team in complete control of their off-the-wall material.
Just don’t go expecting Edith Evans. It’s much funnier than that.
CINDERELLA ON ICE
March 31, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring worldwide
REALITY television has a lot to answer for. Not only does the current vogue for ballroom dancing owe much to the Saturday night schedules, but ice dance has achieved a fascination with the public that far outweighs its significance as an artform.
Or so I thought.
Then ice dance entrepreneur Tony Mercer brought his Imperial Ice Stars to Derngate. He built a square rink on a projected proscenium stage, dressed his huge team of skaters in fabulous one-off costumes and created perhaps the most beautifully expressive interpretation of the Cinderella story to have graced a theatre since Charles Perrault dreamed up his definitive version of the fairytale more than 300 years ago.
Told without words, this worldwide touring production relies heavily on a combination of Mercer’s own thrilling choreography and a sumptuous new score from composers Tim A Duncan and Edward Barnwell. There are lush melodies, vast, sweeping string arrangements and some incredibly evocative moments in the music, and it’s all reflected and intensified by the stunning performances on the ice.
More than 20 hugely talented skaters create memorable image after memorable image as the story unfolds, with a strong central theme of time holding it all together effectively. Both in individual displays of technical excellence and ensemble routines of dazzling style, the Imperial Ice Stars reveal a fluency and flair for their art that constantly catches the breath and amazes the eye.
Alongside set pieces of impressive scale – including a wonderful monochrome art deco ball – there are heartstopping moments of sheer beauty and tenderness. Flying has never looked so graceful or natural as in Cinderella’s final touching duet with her hero.
Olga Sharutenko and Andrei Penkine make a handsome couple, matching their blade skills evenly with sincerity and passion, and Vadim Yarkov as her father leads a supporting cast of highly polished entertainers to deliver a fantasy of breathtaking proportions.
Even a technical hitch requiring instant ice repairs – which allowed the genial Mr Mercer himself to chat informatively to the audience for a few minutes – only served to enhance the experience.
So even if Dancing on Ice did nothing for you, then at least allow the Imperial Ice Stars to show you exactly how powerful, elegant, majestic and moving this artform can be.
SPIDER'S WEB
March 30, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
IT’S camp, it’s quaint and it’s got all the credentials to pack in audiences of a certain age. The Agatha Christie Theatre Company is here again.
Under the production umbrella of Bill Kenwright, this enterprising group attracts well-known faces from stage and TV to tour the country with material written by the mistress of 20th century crime herself.
This time round, Casualty’s Duffy, Catherine Shipton, joins Butterflies heartthrob Bruce Montague and ill-fated Bill bobby Melanie Gutteridge among a high-speed cast of 11 playing out the country house murder mystery Spider’s Web, written as an original play by Christie and featuring none of her regular cast of curious detective types.
Instead, in archetypal Cluedo fashion, the rascal Oliver Costello is bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the drawing room. But how? And why? And what is the significance of the secret drawer in the desk?
All these questions and more are answered in the usual clever and witty Christie style, and director Joe Harmston keeps the pace rattling along for more than two and a half galloping hours, aided and abetted by a talented cast.
A sparkling Gutteridge holds the whole thing together with machine-gun delivery of crisp lines, while Montague provides delightful gravitas and warmth as her elderly guardian. Denis Lill and Mark Rose make a fine double act of solid coppers, and Shipton puts in a somewhat eccentric performance as the jolly-hockey-sticks gardener Miss Peake.
It’s all good, reliable fare, elegantly designed by Simon Scullion and staged with a respectful tongue firmly in the cheek. And while Christie may seem a little dated to those brought up on Spooks or The Wire, there are plenty of more senior theatre-goers who will rejoice in this old-fashioned escapism.
THE BFG
March 17, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
IT’S hard to find fault with a show that has clearly benefited from so much time, effort and enthusiasm. Certainly the scale and ambition of this new co-production of Roald Dahl’s children’s story are to be applauded.
Northampton’s Royal and Derngate have worked with independent producers Fiery Light to stage the production, initially in the cosy Royal auditorium and later on a huge national tour scheduled to run until September.
Adapted by veteran children’s specialist David Wood and directed by Phil Clark, the show employs the device of a play within a play, in which guests at young Sophie’s birthday party agree to create a performance of her favourite book after the anticipated entertainer fails to turn up.
This allows for all kinds of horrors, including grotesque giant masks and on-stage child-eating, to be undertaken without scaring the young audience overmuch – this is, after all, only a play, isn’t it?
The energetic cast of ten are all on stage pretty much the whole time, and combine their acting with providing an almost non-stop musical accompaniment using a host of different instruments, ranging from toy drum to bass recorder.
At the heart of the story is Anthony Pedley, turning in a likeable and appealing performance as the BFG himself. As part of Sean Crowley’s ingenious and evocative designs, in giant land he plays opposite puppets, but he becomes a huge on-stage puppet himself when we’re in life-size human territory.
It’s all good clean fun and the fart gags help to ensure plenty of giggles from young audience members. Personally I could have done without the incessant drone of the musical ostinato, which seemed to have no functional purpose and merely served to irritate and detract from the momentum of the piece.
But if the whole doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, there’s plenty of time and opportunity over the coming months to bed this down into a thoroughly serviceable touring commodity.
A SONG AT TWILIGHT
March 3, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, then touring
DIRECTOR Nikolai Foster must be the Midas of the touring circuit. With The Witches of Eastwick and the David Essex musical All the Fun of the Fair currently selling out all over the country, he’s now added a classic Noel Coward play to his roster.
And his deft hand with the material certainly adds a golden touch to the already brilliant casting of Belinda Lang and Peter Egan in the vast central roles.
Lang plays Carlotta Gray, a mediocre retired actress who calls on Egan’s pompous writer Sir Hugo Latymer more than 30 years after they enjoyed an affair. But her motives in tracking him down after all this time, and her reaction to his teutonic wife/protector Hilde have more than a few surprises in store as an evening of acerbic wit and venom plays out.
Staged on a sumptuous period set by designer Matthew Wright, this 1966 piece by the master of manners glories in the virtuosity that Coward deliberately created for himself, but it’s also extraordinarily risky, frisky and emotionally powerful. There’s plenty of the sparkling dialogue you’d expect, but as the evening darkens and the hidden motives become clearer, the meticulously crafted writing deepens into dangerous profundity as an exploration of that most modern of themes, celebrity.
It’s all performed superbly by a well-matched cast of just four. Lang is flighty, feisty and full of the not-quite-successful bravado essential to her complex character, while Egan emerges triumphant as the overblown egotist Sir Hugo, whose descent from reputable icon to broken man is perfectly judged. The final moments are as moving as anything you’ll see on a stage.
There’s terrific support, too, from Kerry Peers as Hilde, who plays her relationship with Hugo at exactly the right pitch, whether she’s domineering or defending him, and from Daniel Bayle, whose delightful turn as a smarmy Austro-Italian waiter adds much more than a mere cipher to the unfolding drama.
It’s painful, provocative and persuasively powerful viewing, and an absolute joy for the student of first-class acting. Not to mention the director…
ELAINE PAIGE
February 26, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, then touring until March 16, 2009
ASKED to list a few Broadway divas, you might come up pretty quickly with names such as Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli or Bette Midler. Do the same for the West End and the list stops with one.
Elaine Paige – or EP, as she modestly likes to be known – is a true musical theatre diva, with all the positive connotations of the word. Amazingly, she has now been at it in the West End for 40 years, and she’s currently touring some of the country’s top venues with a special anniversary concert to mark the occasion.
As Don Black says in the accompanying programme, it’s all too easy to take this diminutive little firecracker for granted: she’s down-to-earth, she’s a pal on the airwaves with her weekly Radio 2 show, and she makes her talent look effortlessly easy.
But take a glance at her track record and you start to realise just how significant EP has been to the development and spectacular success of musical theatre over the past four decades. Hair, Evita, Cats, Chess, Sunset Boulevard, Piaf – not bad for a sub-five-footer whose first job on graduating from drama school was modelling children’s clothes.
This concert tour, in which La Paige is supported by a tight, versatile eight-piece band under the direction of Chris Egan, tracks this extraordinary career in an intelligently constructed, largely chronological programme.
After a couple of warm-up numbers, there’s a beautifully performed version of Broadway Baby, from Sondheim’s Follies, which she cleverly uses as a backdrop for a quick run through her early CV. Then it’s one smash showtune after another, spread across two halves and ranging from I Don’t Know How to Love Him (Jesus Christ Superstar) to I Know Him So Well (Chess). Memory is reserved for the first encore.
Among an evening of many highlights, the most thrilling is the selection from Piaf, in which EP dons a simple wig and some scarlet lipstick to transform into the Little Sparrow. Using part of the Pam Gems play as a scene-setter, Paige also gets to reveal her considerable acting talent, which of course she uses throughout to sell every number, but which really comes into its own with this moving segment.
The voice may occasionally be a little strident for everyone’s taste, and the sound balance may take a little while to get right, but there’s no doubting the supreme talent and consummate professionalism of the West End’s First Lady, and the delighted standing ovation has surely become the inevitable end to an evening in her charming company.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
February 17, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until February 28, then touring
KNEEHIGH Theatre Company has made something of a speciality of taking well-known stories and doing a number on them. In the past, they’ve done Shakespeare, Euripides, even Jules Verne, and their version of Noel Coward’s classic wartime film of Brief Encounter has already met with critical and box office success in the West End.
Now the company has recreated the show as a co-production with Northampton’s Royal & Derngate before embarking on a national tour, and the residual warm glow from the London run will undoubtedly count for much. But it makes for tricky reviewing when comparisons with the previous cast and former production spring inevitably to mind.
For one thing, the Royal’s compact stage means the whole grand design has had to be forced into a tight little performance space, with some effects sacrificed and others mangled to fit.
While this is not a problem for first-time viewers, and may not be an issue in some of the tour venues, it does generate something of a sense of a jumble of sparky ideas crammed into a container that’s too small for them.
Adapter and director Emma Rice has thrown every conceivable notion at the show, from filmed sequences and toy trains to actor-musicians and audience participation. While much of this is imaginative and entertaining, some also carries a whiff of fringe frolics and experimental navel-gazing, and the pace of the whole thing needs to sharpen and tighten before it takes to the road.
The performances are, on the whole, likeable and the central pairing of Hannah Yelland and Milo Twomey make a decent effort at the anguished lovers kept apart by the mores of the era. But some of the musical interludes are more intrusive than I remembered from last time round, and there are occasional tuning issues among the vocal harmonies that add to an overall feeling of everything being slightly off-key.
It may be harsh, and possibly clouded by rose-tinted recollections of the original production. It is certainly true that Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter is a highly creative, affectionate and charming piece of theatre.
If it lacks a little of the freshness and edge of its predecessor, maybe that’s no fault of the present company, who work hard to bring this Coward classic to exuberant life.
FLASHDANCE
February 16, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until February 21, then touring
THINK cheesy love story, think pink legwarmers, think disposable 80s pop. Then throw it all aside and look at what Flashdance really is.
Yes, it’s based on the of-its-time, Giorgio Moroder-scored movie from 1983 about a girl who spends her time welding by day and exotic dancing by night, and how she hankers for a place at ballet school while starting up a romance with the steel mill boss.
Yes, it includes fashion items of questionable taste, even in 1983, although many of the wearers were committing even greater crimes such as breakdancing at the time so maybe legwarmers could be overlooked.
And yes, it’s crammed with hooky, toe-tapping tunes aimed at a certain age. Which I happen to be.
But this Flashdance is a whole lot more than that. This Flashdance is a real musical.
Transformed by the screenplay co-writer Tom Hedley, with a pulsating original score by Robbie Roth, this Flashdance is recreated for the stage as a proper show with a proper theatrical pedigree and a proper production to go with it.
The stage is framed by a steel-wrought set (Paul Farnsworth) and people with seemingly hundreds of young singer-dancers, who thrash energetically through Arlene Phillips routines to play out the wilfully implausible yet utterly gripping tale of Alex Owens and her dream.
Much credit must go to director Kenny Leon for his deft pacing and blocking and to musical director Dave Rose for his stunning eight-piece live band that keeps things driving along fantastically (technical problems notwithstanding).
But the real stars of the night are the principal players, among them Bernie Nolan and former Hear’Say singer Noel Sullivan, who all perform superbly, with impressive acting to complement the stunning vocals throughout the company.
And at the top of the (dance) class is Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, whose brief and understated CV belies an enormous talent that surely marks her out as a name to watch. She’s an assured, confident singer, a highly watchable dancer and an actor of considerable depth and range, and her central performance as the welding wannabe is a tour de force that leaves you breathless.
And it’s a performance at the heart of a show which just demands to be taken seriously, no matter how you remember the source material.
SHAKESPEARE 4 KIDZ: ROMEO AND JULIET/THE TEMPEST
February 3, 2009
Derngate, Northampton, until February 3, then touring
LIKE ignoring a Big Issue seller on a wintry day, there’s something vaguely conscience-wracking about reviewing Shakespeare4Kidz in anything other than glowing terms.
The company philosophy, to make the Bard accessible to children of virtually any age, is faultlessly commendable and has now been taken up with a higher profile by the Royal Shakespeare Company and its national Stand Up For Shakespeare campaign.
Similarly, the strategy of mixing iconic original text with modernised paraphrasing and – in the case of Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest – presenting them as knockabout musicals seems an obvious crowd-pleaser for the younger generation.
As for putting the tour out on the road with up to 14 actors, plus a couple of musicians and a backstage crew, one can only marvel at the sheer ambition of S4K’s enterprise and applaud its relentless determination to reach the previously unreached.
And yet there remains a niggling worry that children – universally recognised as the harshest critics – will come away from both these shows with a slight sense of being underwhelmed.
The cast double up between the two productions, both created by S4K’s Julian Chenery and Matt Gimblett, and work hard to whip through the tales in a couple of hours, apparently so as not to overstretch the attention span of an 11-year-old.
For audiences perhaps experiencing their first theatre beyond a panto, it amounts to a simple, workmanlike retelling of the basic story, with a few sub-Lloyd Webber numbers dropped in to keep the energy from flagging.
But the songs are too lame and the narratives too plot-driven to make these anything more than ‘Tales From Shakespeare’ rather than a taste of the real thing. And if you’re hoping for the magic of the poetry or the majesty of the language, forget it: that’s all as distant and forgotten as Prospero’s island.
It’s all a thoroughly worthwhile exercise undermined by a less than ideal execution.
BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1943
January 26, 2009
Royal Theatre, Northampton, until January 31, then touring
IT’S easy enough to please some critics. In this case, just stick a live eight-piece swing band on stage and he’ll lap it up till the cows come home.
Never mind that Alan Plater’s play seems to try just a little too hard to please, with its witty one-liners and supposedly wise-cracking musicians. Never mind that the technical team seemed to be suffering a bit of a mare with lighting and sound balance. And never mind that the task of finding eight cast members equally adept at playing, singing and acting proved just a touch of a tall order.
Because by the end of a night of nostalgic whimsy and blistering big band music, nobody cared about the minor flaws, enjoying instead the major virtues of this genuinely feelgood show.
Loosely hung around the premise of an all-girl swing band in the war years looking to recruit new members to make up for those ‘lost’ in recent gigs at US army bases, Blonde Bombshells plays heavily on notions of sisterhood, uniting against a common enemy and the indominability of the northerner.
Directed by Mark Babych from his original 2006 production in Bolton, it’s now touring extensively, and deserves healthy houses at the often small venues it will be gracing.
It’s worth the ticket price alone for the sensational second-act show the girls put on, which rattles through a programme of fizzing jazz numbers with sensational arrangements (courtesy of musical director Howard Gray) and impeccable vocal harmonies, all delivered with an energy that blows the audience away just as effectively as the considerable musicianship of the hard-working cast.
Like the Blitz spirit it encapsulates, Blonde Bombshells overcomes all obstacles to win a triumphant victory and make this truly a night to remember.
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