Garyswordz

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/

****

Dudley Little Theatre (DLT) are in their 62^nd year of performing, and this production, one of four a year they stage, was a shrewd choice.

Written by John Godber in 1977,  it has been subject to a number of revisions. Godber is now claimed to be the third most performed English playwright after Shakespeare and Ayckbourn, a tribute both to the quality of his writing, and  his popularity. This production incorporated the companion piece Shakers, co-written with his wife Jane, as the first Act, with Bouncers presented as Act Two.

In both pieces the four women, and four men, respectively, assume multiple roles, accents, and the opposite gender to tell their stories, but Shakers is more than “Bouncers for Girls” and serves both as a convincing stand- alone story, and effective counterpoint to its older brother. They also utilise the effective dramatic device of opening and closing their stories as an ensemble, speaking in rhyming verse, frequently addressing the audience directly in Brechtian style.

Shakers itself is a late 80’s trendy cocktail brasserie, providing a platform for the four waitresses to tell their story, arriving onstage to the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, apt for both the time and the opening line. The recreation of the era, and place, is painfully accurate. Bored floor staff struggle to complete their shift as awkward, lewd, aloof, groping, rude customers impede the smooth running of their evening. The cross-gender characterisations are dramatically even more effective for the women, than the men. For the men, seeing big burly bouncers affect feminine mores is comic in itself, sometimes impeding the message in the script. For the women, physically, this is less so, particularly as producer Lyndsey Parker has them androgynously dressed in trousers, waistcoats and flats. Julie Bywater, as Carol, captured male mannerisms particularly well.

Bouncers is set inside and outside Mr Cinders nightclub. My recollection is that every town had one, offering belligerent doormen, desperate males, indifferent women, and disgusting toilets. Comedians Hale & Pace had huge success with a routine involving doormen, and the script anticipates their interpretation, as the Inbetweeners  television series  echoes the base coarse reality of men behaving badly on a night out. John Lucock’s Lucky Eric is the pick of the bunch, ageing, careworn, philosophical, but ready to rumble at a moment’s notice. The scene where the bouncers, as women, dance around their handbags is a hoot, but the dramatic tension is sustained by the premise of those wanting a good time versus those stopping them.

If you remember Dragonara Casinos, Chelsea Girl, C&A and chicken in a basket, you will wallow in the nostalgia which this production faithfully, and lovingly recreates. The dialogue is funny, authentic, quick fire and poignant, relying for its appeal on the gritty, amusing realities of a night out clubbing  delivered by a strong cast supported by a sympathetic period soundtrack and a simple but effective stage set from Fred Waller. I do hope that as the run continues audiences will grow for this excellent production.

Bouncers and Shakers  runs until Saturday 12^th March. Come and see this production- if the door staff will let you in.

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/

Birmingham on a cold, early Spring Thursday night tends to offer a languid indifference to the world as it prepares for the weekend. But this Thursday offered something special. After a week in Cardiff, this was only the second auditorium ever to see the new opera, “Figaro Gets A Divorce”, which enjoyed its world premier less than a fortnight ago.

The score was written by the Russian-British composer Elena Langer to a libretto by David Pountney, and is created   as a sequel to Mozart’s 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro based on the 1778 play by Pierre Beaumarchais.

Opera fights an ongoing modern battle to win new audiences, and is at the mercy of a familiar theatrical paradox. Big audiences favour the familiar, established, successful opera, but in order to survive and appeal to new audiences, new work must be written to take the performance test that the classics first had to pass.

Pountney sets his cast in a time of forced migration, flight and revolution, a grand theme with a contemporary resonance. The plot itself is proven opera territory, star-crossed lovers turn out to be related, a woman’s child bearing desires are frustrated, lost fortunes are lamented, and an evil Major preys on the refugees with murderous results. Familiar characters from Marriage of Figaro are given new life, and new futures as they are tested by their challenging new circumstances. Pountney’s libretto is strong on narrative, with a colloquial, contemporary, feel, yet sometimes fails to match the poetic lushness of Langer’s score.

Langer’s Russian musical tutelage produces an eclectic, diverse aural montage.Although the orchestration is the same as for Mozart’s Figaro, with a few additions, the music eschews overt references to Mozart and Rossini in favour of Janacek and Weill, but is most at home in the night club scene.

Ralph Koltai’s set is a delight, with huge swivelling flats rotating, and closing in, to dramatic effect, Sue Blane’s costuming is sassy and sumptuous. Pountney also directs, the stand-out sequence being a brilliant travelogue taking them on a journey by train, car and boat, as well as across desert and snow driven wastes with inspired help from Langer’s score.

Vocally, and dramatically, the cast excel. Tenor Alan Oke as the double agent Major is the star of the show, combining psychopathic malevolence and comic elan.

Technically, soprano Marie Arnet’s brilliant Susanna sings flawlessly, has the best dress to wear, and glides effortlessly from frustrated aspiring mother to night club chanteuse. Young lovers Angelika, ( soprano Rhian Lois ) and Serafin, s (mezzo-soprano Naomi O’Connell in a travesti role) perform, and duet wonderfully, although their narrative is a shade underwritten in a show that is barely two hours long.

Operatic finale’s tend to either offer a big finish, or a poignant stripped down farewell. Pountney offers the latter, which I found somewhat perfunctory, albeit perfectly formed, as the Count and Countess await their fate.

A first viewing, and hearing, of a new opera is a demanding experience, particularly when performances are still in single figures. Yet it was a tremendously impressive and rewarding experience driven by the accomplished and enthusiastic stage cast and a disciplined and pleasing score, sensitively brought to life by conductor Justin Brown. The performance was warmly received by the adventurous operatic devotees who did attend, it is just a pity that their number was so modest, underlining the problems of bringing new work to audience.

WNO have undertaken a gigantic enterprise, and triumphed. The national tour, including Barber of Seville and Marriage of Figaro continues, dates at: https://www.wno.org.uk/whats-on

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/

The British love a murder a mystery, and Agatha Christie epitomises the genre at its best. The plays, like the novels, draw heavily for their appeal on period settings, and mores which may always have been more artistic creation, than fact. A shocking murder, solved by a curious old lady, in well- dressed middle class settings, with secrets that will out, is the formula that works, and is one which is skilfully exploited by Middle Ground Theatre Company who have been combining a programme of classic and alternative drama since 1988 with an increasingly impressive roster of acting talent.

“A Murder is Announced” was written in 1950, reprising an earlier short story “The Companion”, and features detective stalwart Miss Marple, whose character has been reimagined contemporaneously in the hit television detective series “Vera”. It was around ( depending on how you count) Christie’s 50^th novel. Even then, the fealty of her followers was legendary, and it was an instant success with its established, and proven, melange of ingredients. Leslie Darbon has adapted this for the stage.

At the centre of the story is a startling conceit. In the Personal Column of the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette is an advertisement : ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m. Friends please accept this, as the only intimation.” Miss Marple (Judy Cornwell) arrives to unravel the murderous consequences.

Cornwell is best known for her portrayal of Daisy in the TV sit-com “Keeping Up Appearances” and imbues her Miss Marple with vim, eccentricity, and warmth as she knits, spinning out her purls of wisdom, in tweed skirt and sensible shoes. Christie’s legendary legerdemain means that working out the identity of the murderer is futile, instead it is best to sit back and enjoy the well-crafted drama. Jennifer Helps costuming is a delight complimenting a satisfyingly appointed drawing room offering luxurious comfy chintz sofas and armchairs.

Rachel Bright steals the show as Julia , looking gorgeous in elegant figure hugging dresses and with secrets to hide. But as Inspector Craddock, Tom Butcher also shines in a three piece suit and an intellect which his ponderous mannerisms initially obscure. It is a large cast, some twelve strong, and unusually for Christie, a comic figure in the guise of Mitzi is included, a role which Lydia Piechowiak clearly enjoyed playing as much as the audience enjoyed her performance of the role.

The story, directed by Michael Lunney, and 1977 adaptation, does veer between period charm, and uncomfortable anachronism. Full further education grants, the Police dismissed as “Gestapo”,  dodgy foreigners  and “Leftie” writers, all feel like a long time ago now, but the world of Agatha Christie sets its own agenda and is part of the appeal. The audience enjoyed the show, but its profile was steadfastly of pensionable  age. Whether Christies’ murder mysteries will attract a new generation of theatre goer is by no means certain.

Runs until Saturday 27^th February and continues on National 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/

http://www.middlegroundtheatre.co.uk

F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is a literary classic, one which transferred well to the cinema but which rarely appears on stage. Blackeyed Theatre have sought to put that right with an adaptation by Stephen Sharkey which incorporates song, dance and live music.

Victoria Spearing’s set eschews detail in favour of minimalist tiered white blocks, seemingly straight out of IKEA , and back projection images with the colour and glamour for the production coming from the lavish and stylish costume design by Jenny Little.

The story is a century old, the theme older still, of a love that cannot be, nestling in decadence and deceit. The cast have to work hard, acting, singing, dancing, and playing instruments, and apply themselves with energy and dexterity. “Gatsby’s theme/Party music” opens the show as an ensemble piece, setting the tone, leading to a series of enjoyable musical set pieces of period standards. It stops short of becoming a musical as the music and songs play to compliment the mood, rather than advance the narrative.

Adam Jowett excels as a charismatic Nick Carraway, narrating the story as it unfolds. Tristan Pate revelled in the unappealing character of Tom Buchanan. Celia Cruwys- Finnigan is the star of the show as Daisy, shimmying and sashaying around in the best dresses, and generally looking gorgeous, but it is Stacey Ghent’s Myrtle who has the most fun.

Sharkey’s script is a decent stab at translating the page to stage, with the poetry of the prose nicely to the fore, but challenging F Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the story as a novel is a pretty impossible task. The strong student contingent in the audience will have much to reflect upon in assessing this rare staging of the novel. Sharkey’s affection story is self-evident, but this adaptation fails as a stand alone entity. The cast have too much to do beyond acting, and the singing individually, and collectively fails to convince too often.

This production is bold in its conceit, and innovative in its approach, a credit to Director Eliot Giuralarocca, and Musical Director and arranger, Ellie Verkerk and runs till Saturday 13^th February then continues on national tour.

Gary Longden

For further information on The Great Gatsby on tour visit http://www.blackeyedtheatre.co.uk

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/