Garyswordz

This poem has had pan- generational appeal since it was written in 1957 by Dr Theodore Seuss. Its combination of rhyme, rhythm, fun and mischief captivating children, and their parents.

Adapting the original poem has been a labour of love for Katie Mitchell, who road –tested the project on her four year old daughter, an idea guinea-pig, as the production is aimed at the three to six year old age group. Mitchell enjoys a controversial reputation as both the best director of her generation and cultural vandal, tearing up the works of Handel and Chekhov, then reconstructing them.

This new production is directed by Lillie Collier, designed by David Shields and produced by Paul Taylor-Mills Ltd. It is presented through special arrangement with Josef Weinberger Plays Ltd on behalf of Music Theatre International (MTI). Vicki Mortimer’s designs are faithful to the simple original illustrations, and the lively recorded score by Paul Clark adds much to the production.

Mitchell’s approach to the Cat in the Hat has been tempered by the forensically controlling rights holders, Dr Seuss’s Estate, ensuring that the story we all remember, and introduce to our children, is the story brought to the stage. Mitchell bravely produces each page as a self- contained scene. This has the advantage of fleshing out the story as each series of actions is acted out, but the disadvantage that the rhyming narrative rhythm of the story is broken up, occasionally feeling a little disjointed as a consequence

The joyful narrative is a delight, performed by six actors, amidst a riot of colour and physical excitement as giant balloons roll around the stage, and fly into the audience. When the Cat and Things 1 and 2 charge into, and in and out, of the audience, the children squealed with delight.

Naturally the Cat is the star, complete with towering, flipperty-flopperty hat, creating mayhem for home- alone Sally and her brother. Thing One and Thing two ably assist the Cat. All the children loved it, laughing along and maintaining concentration throughout a fairly brief show of around forty five  minutes with no interval.

The reply to the closing question asking the children whether they would tell their mother of the chaos that had unfolded with the Cats’ visit  if they had been Sally and her brother was a resounding “No!”

A first class, well-produced, and well –acted, children’s  theatre piece. The modest turn out, following a cancelled matinee was a shame. The Garrick now has many one and two- nighters. As a result, promotional space is slight to non-existent in a non-virtuous circle, and no programmes were made available to acknowledge the hard working production team on the day.

 The show runs till 19^th April then continues on tour.

This review first appeared in Behind the Arras, abridged, where a comprehensive collection of reviews from the best of Midlands Theatre, from a range of reviewers, is available.

http://www.behindthearras.com/

This is a very special presentation . Not only is it a 60^th anniversary production, but John Osborne also worked at Derby Theatre, lived locally, and set the play in the locality. Legend has it that it was written in 17 days in a deck chair on Morecambe Pier. It was certainly inspired by Osborne’s ill-fated marriage to local actress Pamela Lane and the death of his father, Thomas.

Director Sarah Brigham’s production is neither a period piece, nor a modern interpretation. The striking set by Neil Irish reproduces a faithful facsimile of 50’s living space disappearing into doorways which gape into a black void into which the cast disappear and reappear as a header tank and piping hovers overhead.

The beating heart of this play is the Angry Young Man, Jimmy Porter, whose soliloquys and philosophy dominate proceedings. Patrick Knowles inhabits the character admirably delivering his trademark tirades with aplomb and conviction. His ambiguous relationship to his father in law, Army Officer of Empire Colonel Redfern (Ivan Stott) is pivotal. Does he hate him- or want to be him?

Porter’s wife, Alison, is the face of a disintegrating marriage, as boredom, angst, pregnancy, miscarriage and infidelity overwhelm her. Augustina Seymour imbues the character with dignity and poise, her post miscarriage visit to Jimmy is particularly harrowing, her drab clothes and drab countenance perfectly matched. Opposite her Daisy Badger is the perfect femme fatale as friend and love rival, her cut-glass accent as sharp as her red pencil skirt and jacket. Amidst the conflict, flat mate Cliff (Jimmy Fairhurst) metaphorically, and physically, wrestles for Jimmy’s attention.

Some of the impact of its original performances is inevitably lost on modern audiences. The kitchen sink set, vibrant language, and anti-authoritarian tone are now familiar, even if the off- stage trumpet lament is not. Colonel Redfern bemoans the good old days which he has experienced, and lost, Jimmy bemoans the good days which he has never had, mirroring the post war uncertainty and crisis of identity experienced by the country.

Porter’s misogyny, and his wife’s response, feel anachronistic to a contemporary audience. Is Porter the disenfranchised voice of a generation, or just a spoiled, grieving young man, lacking empathy? To what extent does Alison stay with him because culturally that is what women did in unhappy marriages at the time, or was it just that emotionally Osborne could not write his female characters in more rounded fashion?

Brigham’s production neatly offers the questions without seeking to provide answers in a fulfilling and rewarding revival. My only criticism was that the diction and volume of Fairhurst and Knowles occasionally dipped making it difficult to hear. Nevertheless, this is a powerful and worthy revival of a fine work with a defining place in theatrical history- runs to Saturday 26^th March.

Gary Longden

This review first appeared in Behind the Arras, abridged, where a comprehensive collection of reviews from the best of Midlands Theatre, from a range of reviewers, is available.

http://www.behindthearras.com/

****

Although author Richard Harris is relatively unknown to the general public, his writing has figured in numerous hit television series and stage shows. For television, he was a regular contributor for forty years, from 1960 to 2000, writing for shows like The Saint, The Avengers, The Sweeney, A Touch of Frost, and Darling Buds of May. Some forty of his plays have been performed for stage. Thus his grasp of drama, and comedy, is a given. The only variable is the production. Harris fans will see similarities with one of his earlier plays, Local Affairs.

Events unfold in the back gardens of two adjacent neighbours, as Doctor Michael and his wife Roma’s fancy dress house-warming party descends into disaster and chaos, incorporating a notable shortage of guests, a shed engulfed by smoke, and an aerodynamic Zimmer frame. Grange Players have located the action in Walsall. Martin Groves and his team have done a marvellous job creating a back gardens set with full rear elevations, incorporating all manner of associated horticultural paraphernalia, and a mural of a Walsall church.

Next door, an elderly woman is being persuaded to sell up by her son, David. Mrs Hinson is curmudgeonly, scheming, duplicitous and has a Zimmer frame which her long suffering daughter in law suspects is for cosmetic sympathy purposes only. Her downtrodden, over-mothered only son David,  (Christopher Waters) stoically battles with his mothers’ foibles, not least of which is her refusal to accept his wife Jennifer (Liz Webster), while trying to improve his mother’s (bad) humour. Jennifer does not like being ignored, or being compared to David’s previous consorts, resulting in regular mutual sniping, culminating in her launching her mother in law’s Zimmer frame into the distance with considerable enthusiasm.

Rod Bissett as Dr Michael portrays a neurotic, fastidious man with an excessive estimation of his own talents, which sadly do not include an ability to procure defrosted food for a barbecue. His wife Roma,(Jill Simkin), struggles to help him to rectify this omission, and his serial other shortcomings, to repeated comic effect. She ends up as deflated as her squashed top hat. He ends up as a man on the edge.

Only two invited guests actually turn up to the barbecue, Toby (Andy Jones) and man-hunting Sandy, (Louise Farmer). Both milk the most from their supporting roles, the former, in a kilt, after free food and booze. The latter, after “up –for- it” men, sporting tight white shorts which are somewhat hotter than the barbecue, a rather good Welsh accent, and some good jokes. Both inject vital energy into the second half script.

However it is the abrasive and formidable long standing resident Mrs Hinson, wonderfully played by Sheila Grew, who steals the limelight. Initially she neither appreciates her upwardly mobile new neighbours, nor the gentrification of the area, until the benefits of having a doctor next door for her numerous ailments dawn on her. Her own property and her persona are perfectly matched- frayed around the edges.

Liz Webster, Christopher Waters and Sheila combine formidably in the first half to garnish a slight script with amusing bickering, and acid asides. The plot is enlivened overall by two unseen figures; David’s first wife Rosemary, who stalks Jennifer through Mrs Hinson’s rose tinted memory, and burly Gareth, husband of randy Sandy, who stalks the party as his arrival, and the consequences, are anticipated.

This is escapist fun, with improbable, implausible plot twists, cross-dressing, and a big fat smile on its face. Director Martin Groves and producer David Stone have realised a fast-paced farce that depends upon rapid exits and entrances, timeous sound effects, and perfect verbal and physical timing. It delivers in spades, and with plenty of laughs. Party Piece runs to 19-03-16, returns only for this sold out show.

Gary Longden

 Sutton Arts company is as inspired in its sourcing of new work to perform as it is in producing it. Having unearthed the little known gem “Mind Games” by Anthony Horrowitz last year, this year they have found Visitors, the debut play by Barney Norris, first performed in 2014 for which he won the Critics’ Circle Award and Offie Award for Most Promising Playwright. Only twenty nine years old, Oxford graduate Norris is also a published poet and novelist.

Remarkably his youth has not stopped him from tackling a story which is ostensibly about dementia and old age, but is underpinned by an examination of love.

Set in a farmhouse on the edge of Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, we are introduced to pensioner couple, farmer Arthur, and Edie, in the home they have lived in throughout their long marriage. They are to enjoy no balmy sunset to their lives, as Edie’s memory, and health, deteriorate. Carer Kate, with problems of her own, tries to make things better, awkward son Stephen makes things worse, as he pushes his parents to sell up and put his mother into a care home.

But this is no depressing two hours watching the misery of others.  It is much harder to write interestingly about happiness than it is about misery, and it is the former task that Norris undertakes, and succeeds in.

Norris was inspired by two themes when writing this play, the love  his grandparents had for each other, and the moral questions raised by the financial collapse of 2008.  What do we value? What really matters? His lyrical prose subtly juxtaposes with the jarring dislocation of dementia, drawing humour and wit, as well as evoking poignancy and lament. The beautiful Wiltshire countryside is an ever present and tranquil backdrop to Edie’s developing dementia. A holiday on the Dorset coast is meticulously and fondly recreated, a memory of love, happiness and moment, the image of a white wedding dress cascading like champagne over a waterfall quite exquisite. Things which cannot be bought, and can never be lost. Individualism is eschewed in favour of self-sacrifice, and sharing.

Edie and Arthur’s generation preceded the “greed is good” era with Arthur working the land, and material possessions secondary to their lives. As such their story is, in part, a snapshot of a time almost gone, of rural life, and of distances. The distances between birthplace bound parents and upwardly mobile offspring, and the distances and silence that dementia can create. It is also about the value, and joy, of sharing, and of marriage and of love. As Edie starts to ebb away those virtues are thrown into only greater relief. Norris boldly examines love beyond   lust, infatuation, longing, meeting, and parting, into the experience of what loving someone looks like, what it means. Although the temporal virtues of belonging and permanence fade, a sense of the glory of love takes its place.

Director Barrie Atchison is associated by numbers with his skill at producing farce. Here he demonstrates his grasp of pace in quite different ways. Silence, gaps, pauses, and distance are all used to profound effect. His task was not made easy by an absence of stage directions, props and set scheme by the author, the script being presented to him almost as a radio play. However this has afforded him maximum leeway in putting his own stamp on a production which could be subject to quite different interpretations. He delivers a drama of beauty, part funny, part tender, part lament for loss of people and a way of life. A life in which we are all just “visitors”.

Dexter Whitehead plays Stephen with great sensitivity taking him from thoughtless grasping offspring to a denouement which garners our sympathy as his fortunes shift. Carer Kate (Kira Mack) injects youthful vitality into her role, countering Arthur’s experience of working on the land with her own “woofing” ( working on organic farms!). But it is Len Schofield as Arthur, and Dorothy Goodwin as Edie who are the beating heart of this production, and as Edie’s physical and mental faculties fade, so her insight increases, culminating in a beautiful, laconic, elegiac closing soliloquy, faultlessly and tenderly delivered as the stage spotlight fell, then dimmed on her.

Visitors is a hymn to love, and  a plea for us to reassess and recalibrate our lives. It runs till Saturday 19^th March.

This review first appeared in Behind the Arras, abridged, where a comprehensive collection of reviews from the best of Midlands Theatre, from a range of reviewers, is available.

http://www.behindthearras.com/