Spark Gap
Double Indemnity
by James M Cain, adaptation by Tom Holloway
Trafalgar Theatre Productions at Richmond Theatre until 7th March, then on tour until 9th May
Review by Eleanor Lewis
Insurance salesmen don’t immediately bring to mind the idea of suspense and high stakes, passion-fuelled murder carried out in great style. This didn’t matter to James M Cain who wrote the book upon which this adaptation by Tom Holloway is based, nor did it prove an issue for the ensuing film based on Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder’s screenplay, but a stage is a different arena and presents a new set of challenges.
The current touring production of Double Indemnity, at Richmond this week, has risen boldly to some of those challenges. Ti Green’s grey, industrial but indistinct set dominates. At times it seems to be a vast ventilation system giving the human characters scurrying about in it the look of insects, or rats. It morphs into train stations, living rooms and offices, and together with Joshua Gadsby’s stark lighting it is an appropriately film noir evocation of depression-era America where life is hard, familial relations are strained, and no allowances will be made. Convincingly driving and parking a car however, albeit a stylised car on a stage with an audience willing to go with it, is a detail that’s been rather overlooked.
Read more…Citizens of Everywhere
Our Town
by Thornton Wilder
Welsh National Theatre at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 28th March
Review by Patrick Shorrock
This is one of those magical evenings when words, actors, movement, music, sound and lighting all fuse together to create theatre at its finest. This is a production that completely enchants its audience. It’s not simply that all the constituent parts work well, but that they combine together and reinforce each other, which makes it pleasurably impossible to locate where the magic lies, as everyone contributes to the spell.
To start with, there is Thornton Wilder’s quietly astonishing play that finds something wonderful in the ordinary without making a fuss about it. Wilder is best known as the author of The Matchmaker, the play that inspired the glorious musical Hello, Dolly. But he does something rather less feel-good and more weighty here, whilst still moving with the grace and lightness of touch of an instinctive man of the theatre.
Read more…Spark of Learning
Educating Rita
by Willy Russell
Reading Rep Productions at the Reading Rep Theatre until 21st March
Review by Sam Martin
Few modern plays capture the relationship between education, class and identity with the wit and warmth of Educating Rita. In this vivid new production at Reading Rep Theatre, director Annie Kershaw refreshes Willy Russell’s enduring two-hander with clarity and compassion, allowing its humour and humanity to shine while retaining the sharp social observations that have kept the play relevant for more than four decades.
At its heart, the play is deceptively simple: a working-class hairdresser enrols in an Open University literature course and forms an unlikely partnership with her disillusioned tutor. Yet Russell’s writing explores something far more complex — the struggle to belong, the fear of change, and the liberating potential of education. Kershaw’s production handles these themes with a thoughtful balance, never overstating the divide between Rita and Frank but allowing the social and cultural contrasts between them to surface naturally through language, gesture and perspective.
Read more…Sub Rosa
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Questors Youth Theatre at the Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing until 28thFebruary
Review by Polly Davies
Alex Marker’s audacious adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s much loved children’s novel proved to be a perfect way to showcase the talented members of the Questors’ Youth Theatre. The amuse bouche performance by the younger members of this group provided plenty of reassurance that there is a good supply of talent and enthusiasm in the wings of this youthful theatre company.
Read more…French Leave
Fallen Angels
by Noël Coward
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 28th February
Review by Heather Moulson
Fallen Angels was an unexplored part of the Noël Coward canon for me, so what might unfold? We were welcomed into a splendid and stylish flat in London, with intriguing alcoves and a tantalising glimpse of a room behind the door. Directed in charming detail by Mandy Stenhouse, who has an impressive background with Teddington Theatre Club, the production presented a nice use of the space and its dimensions and, with its tasteful twenties décor, opened up for us a window into 1925.
A postcard, a blast from the past, disrupts the married lives of friends Julia and Jane. As a result, we watch their composure unravel as they recall a former French lover . . . the same French lover. Their husbands off for the weekend, the women are thrown into turmoil with anticipated telephone calls and passionate memories. With intermittent and profound advice from Saunders, the new maid, played wryly by Isabelle Crean, and the use of the splendid grand piano and enchanting music and vocals, we follow their difficult journey.
Read more…Dark Chocolate
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, book by David Greig after Roald Dahl
BROS Theatre Company at Richmond Theatre until 21st February
Review by Heather Moulson
After a vibrant opening with the classic song Candy Man, sung by Nick Moorhead as the iconic confectioner Willy Wonka and backed by an impressive chorus, we concentrate on Charlie Bucket. This ambitious and colourful musical featured (for this particular performance) Anthony Eckley-Majercak as Charlie.
Charlie lives in extreme poverty with his overworked mother and elderly grandparents. The young boy has longed for a golden ticket to get to Willy Wonka’s fabled factory. Tash Willis’ clear singing voice, playing Mrs Bucket, makes the sadness of their situation all the more poignant. The hardy, witty, long-suffering stoical oldies, Grandpa Joe (Nigel Cole) and Grandma Georgina (Deb McDowell), and Grandpa George (Steve Taylor) and Grandma Josephine (Faye Brann) provide the encouraging background to Charlie’s life. A humorous touch by the dubious fruit seller Mrs Green is nicely paced in by the likeable Clair Jardella, who shows a business-like affection for Charlie.
Read more…Deep Currents
The Seafarer
by Conor McPherson
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 21st February
Review by Harry Zimmerman
There are currently a bewildering plethora of musicals, and one person shows, for the curious theatregoer to choose from these days.
It is, therefore, refreshing to encounter a more traditional piece, with an innovative story, combining humour and pathos, (with more than a sprinkling of the supernatural), that is well performed and holds the attention throughout its two hours.
This is what we have with Putney Arts Theatre’s resurrection of Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer. First performed at The National Theatre in 2006, the play followed McPherson’s acclaimed hit The Weir and, whilst sharing some of the constructs of its more famous predecessor, it stands up extremely well in its own right as a beautifully observed and nuanced exploration of the bonds of friendship, family, love, pain and loss. In short, a whisky-soaked allegory of the way in which long repressed guilt can creep up and threaten to overwhelm every aspect of life.
Read more…Fire Guard
The Bodyguard
by Lawrence Kasden, music by Chris Egan, book Alexander Dinelaris
Crossroads Live at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 21st February, then on tour until 29th August
Review by David Stephens
Last night’s performance of The Bodyguard at New Wimbledon Theatre arrived carrying a considerable weight of expectation. Any review of this story inevitably risks drifting toward comparisons with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, whose performances in the original film have become culturally iconic. Their portrayals remain etched in popular memory, and the soundtrack in particular has achieved legendary status. The challenge, therefore, is to judge the stage adaptation on its own theatrical merits rather than through the lens of cinematic nostalgia. Encouragingly, this production makes that task far easier than expected. Through subtle narrative adjustments, performances that forge their own interpretations, dynamic staging and an unwavering commitment to high-energy spectacle, it confidently establishes an identity distinct from its film predecessor.
Read more…Wit’s End
I’m Sorry, Prime Minister
by Jonathan Lynn
Barn Theatre Production at the Apollo Theatre, West End until 9th May, then on tour until 18th July
Review by Mark Aspen
Arriving rain-soaked, in tourist-trap seedy Shaftesbury Avenue, via disrupted rail and tube journeys, just in time for curtain-up, might seem not to create the right atmosphere to see a much-hyped comedy. Yet somehow, it is just right for I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, a pertinent caricature of what is outside the theatre, of all that is wrong with present day Britain. Laughter is the panacea. It’s the banana skin effect, guilty laughter gleaned from vicarious pain.
The much-loved Yes, Prime Minister TV series of the nineteen-eighties is given a new shot-in the-arm by its co-creator, Jonathan Lynn, now writing solo (the late Antony Jay died a decade ago), bringing its two priceless main protagonists back from retirement.
The two characters find themselves in a world far more treacherous than twentieth century political government, circumnavigating the not-so brave new world of culture wars and identity politics.
Read more…All the Fun of the Fair
Così Fan Tutte
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English National Opera at the London Coliseum until 21st February
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Just how hilarious an opera Così Fan Tutte is supposed to be remains an open question. Two men attempt to seduce one another’s lovers for a bet, because they are convinced of their faithfulness, and get a rude awakening from their romantic illusions – or perhaps, more accurately, a taste of their own medicine. This sounds like a recipe for something witty, ironic, and funny, but the music is so intense and so magnificent that it never quite feels like a joke, even in Act One when everyone is either pretending or bigging up their emotions for effect.
Previous generations rejected the piece as immoral because the lovers experiment with other people; or as an affront to the romantic spirit because everyone goes back to their original partners at the end. Nowadays, there are concerns about the extent to which it might be sexist: whilst the men in it certainly are, it remains much more ambiguous whether the opera itself is. The men are excessive in both their idealising and denigration of their women and have no self-awareness as they collude in the destruction of their own illusions, oblivious that they are applying a double standard and are just as unfaithful as the women whose loyalty they discover is not absolute. These days, there seems something quite healthy and sensible about the 18th Century view that you can’t completely trust anyone because everyone is fallible and needs a bit of forgiveness.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 