A Delight and a Joy
Still Life and Red Peppers
by Noel Coward, Double Bill
Teddington Theatre Club at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill Theatre until 25th November
Review by Eleanor Lewis
It’s probably compulsory to use the word ‘iconic’ whenever discussing Brief Encounter. I imagine questions are asked and authorities notified if the word doesn’t feature at least once in any review of it. So I’ll get it out of the way now before moving on: Noel Coward’s Still Life is the play from which the iconic film Brief Encounter grew and it, together with another short, one-act play Red Peppers can be seen at Hampton Hill Theatre this week in Teddington Theatre Club’s production directed by Mandy Stenhouse.
Fiona Auty’s set for Still Life is perfect. It’s obviously the first thing you see as you enter Hampton Hill’s Coward Studio and it’s delightful: a small, tidy and cosy 1930s station refreshment room, flowers on the tables, small cardboard menus. It makes you long for the days when railway stations actually had these places, staffed with people who poured tea for you and served you pastries which would be accompanied by real cutlery as opposed to wooden sticks. Noel Coward sings gently from the wireless in the background and trains can occasionally be heard arriving and leaving outside the window, Tom Shore’s lighting is soft but businesslike.
Into this beautifully created little world come the formidable Myrtle, manageress of the refreshment room, directing operations from behind her beautifully arranged counter, and waitress Beryl, together with ticket collector Albert and other characters with small but expertly written roles. These characters set the scene and establish their relationships with each other until the main players arrive on the set, one with a familiar piece of grit in her eye and the other to gallantly help her remove it and thereby fire the spark which begins one of Britain’s best known and most agonising romantic dramas.
Tracy Frankson and Charlie Golding played the famous Laura and Alec, both actors giving accomplished and efficient performances in roles more difficult than they seem. Laura and Alec are neither heroic nor particularly unusual characters, but ordinary – 1930s middle class ordinary, but ordinary nonetheless. They are anyone who has fallen in love with someone they aren’t officially committed to and then battled with their integrity because of it. To bring these characters to life and then to carry an audience with them as they fall in love and consequently struggle with the natural course of their affair is no easy task, particularly as Coward only allows them to interact with each other within the walls of the station tea room.
Tracy Frankson and Charlie Golding rose to the challenge and took their first performance audience with them all the way. I wondered a little at Charlie Golding’s use of a constantly softened, gentle voice of the type used by some adults when speaking to small children, as it seemed unnecessary, but it didn’t detract from his performance. Where voices are concerned though, the 1930s-40s upper class accent is too easily parodied to go for it wholesale (see Victoria Wood’s Brief Encounter sketch and many others) but possibly a few clipped vowels from time to time between Alec and Laura would have matched the ‘I should say so and no mistake’ accents of the station staff but these are only details against what were two strong performances.
Talking of the ‘lower orders’, Samantha McGill’s Myrtle was marvellous. She was totally engaging, entertaining and real, as was Andy Smith as ticket collector Albert, the beau she dangled at arm’s length … or closer … to the delight of both of them and all of the audience. They were a joy to watch. It’s worth noting too that the level of professionalism on view on the stage at all times – particularly for a first performance – was impressive. Focus naturally switched between the refreshment staff and Alec and Laura but at all times everyone on stage whether speaking or not was occupied appropriately and naturally, a credit to the actors and the director’s attention to detail.
The second play to be seen was Red Peppers. This very short play could be seen in its entirety as a barbed comment on the draining effect of a life touring in vaudeville. Husband and wife double act Lily and George Pepper are, as aptly described in the programme, “on their way down the ladder of success”. The two stagger through a song and dance number Has Anybody Seen Our Ship and then retreat to their cluttered dressing room – another impressive set – where they snipe mercilessly at each other but come together as one to highlight the shortcomings of the musical director and then the theatre manager, nicely played by Andy Hewitt and Edz Barrett. Noisy arguments ensue, disturbing the rest of Miss Mable Grace, a Shakespearean actress somewhat past her best, who floats in and provides an opportunity for new types of sarcasm to be employed by George and Lily who have little time for such types. Helen Smith is appropriately oblivious and other-worldly in this cameo role. The hapless two conclude the play, newly costumed, with a rendition of Men about Town which comes to a disastrous end, sabotaged by the enraged musical director.
It is a delight to watch and very funny, and tribute must be paid to the skill on show from Lottie Walker and Steve Taylor, two strong actors more than capable of getting everything that is to be got out of Lily and George but whilst doing so they are required to change out of one costume and into another, apply additional make-up, arrange and fit wigs and ultimately consume a plate of steak and chips each. Impressive.
Still Life and Red Peppers are two highly enjoyable plays, well produced and well directed. The level of consistency of performance across both productions was striking, every performance was rounded, every detail attended to. Highly recommended.
Eleanor Lewis
November 2017
Photography by Joe Stockwell
The monster consumes itself
Hercules
by George Frideric Handel, libretto by Thomas Broughton
Richmond Opera at Normansfield Theatre until 19th November
Review by Mark Aspen
Hercules, legendary strongman hero, tackled fearsome lions, hydras, bulls, boars, and monstrous dogs: twelve gruesome creatures, and others beside, hand-to-hand, alone. He succumbed to none, vanquished all these monsters … but then came the green eyed monster!
Sophocles, in one of his best tragedies, Τραχίνιαι (Women of Trachis), tells how Hercules’ death was brought about by the jealousy of his wife, Dejanira. Hercules is returning from Oechalia, where he has been victorious in a war against King Eurytus and his sons, whom he has killed. He is returning home to Trachis in Thessaly, with his army, much booty and many prisoners, including the beautiful Princess Iole, Eurytus’ daughter. Dejanira has been waiting many years for news of Hercules, but now she is not too happy about his principal captive, an aristocratic woman who is young and highly desirable. Seeds of marital discord soon germinate in Dejanira’s heart, with disastrous consequences.
Handel’s Hercules, which premiered in January 1745, had a bumpy ride in its early days. The part of Lichas, the herald, originally a minor tenor role, was rewritten for actress Susannah Cibber, one London’s most popular stage personalities of the time. Unfortunately, she was taken ill and the part was read in. The piece flopped and Handel offered his Subscribers (the production’s “angels”) their money back, but they stuck with him and the houses picked up later in the season. Nevertheless, Handel’s confidence in the work was shaken, and he continued to write and rewrite that piece for years.
Hence, Hercules has always had the feel of a work in progress, and Richmond Opera in its current production of Hercules continues this notion by presenting an abridged version and splitting some of the original roles between other characters, albeit characters with a mythological pedigree. Moreover, director Lucy Green has moved the action to Britain, and in the mid-fifteenth century, although the reason for this is not obvious. However, it does give a wonderful opportunity for scene designer Lynn Keay to blend her set beautifully with the Victorian medievalism of the Normansfield Theatre and the pre-Raphaelite feel of its paintings. It furthermore gives a complementary opportunity for costume designer Kate Cleeland to regal us some luxurious medieval garments, including featuring of the hennin, the tall steeple hat favoured by ladies at the start of the Wars of the Roses, the archetypical fairy princess hat.
The fairy princess of this story is Iole, who is finely acted by soprano Philippa Dodd, whose vocal precision lightly colours the baroque figuring. From the initial lament for her lost freedom, and for her slaughtered family, to being able to feel sympathy and love for her captors, Iole has a huge emotional journey to make. At first she contrasts, “Daughter of gods, bright liberty! … thou, alas, hast winged thy flight … removed for ever from my sight” with “Captivity, like the destroyer death, throws all distinctions down”. Whereas, later she recognises the effect of jealousy in her nemesis Dejanira, “Ah, think what ills the jealous prove. Adieu to peace, adieu to love”. In due course, she can feel deep sympathy with Dejanira, “My breast with tender pity swells at sight of human woe …”. Philippa Dodd achieves this task consummately.
Emilie Taride brings great mezzo fire to the role of Dejanira, giving her passions full rein. When jealousy takes hold, she knows how to spit the venom, and has a good turn of sarcasm for her hero husband, “Oh, I grieve to see the victor to the vanquished yield …. Your fame eclips’d, and all your laurels blasted!”. It may be true to the mezzo cliché of bitches, witches and britches but Handel is not very kind to poor Dejanira. Perhaps Taride could have turned down the heat, although not for the deranged full-blast arias such as “Where shall I fly”. Sophocles, in contrast to Handel, shows Dejanira as the victim of her own jealousy, not its mistress.
What is the consequence of Dejanira’s jealousy? While Hercules is away overseeing preparations for the rites to celebrate his victory, Dejanira remembers she has stored a “garment, dipped in Nessus’ blood”, which will “revive the expiring flame of love” in Hercules. She sends Lichas to the temple with it for Hercules to wear at the ceremony. Now, Nessus was a centaur, who had offered to ferry Dejanira across the River Evenus. In mid-crossing, Nessus attempted to rape her and Hercules shot him dead with an arrow steeped in the blood of the Hydra. The dying centaur claimed to Dejanira that a garment soaked in his blood could be used as an aphrodisiac specific to Hercules, and that he would never look at another woman again.
However, when Hercules dons the garment, the Hydra’s blood bursts into flames, burning the skin from his body, whilst irretrievably sticking the deadly garment to him. Choreographer Harita Stavrou has created an atmospheric ballet sequence for this gruesome immolation of Hercules with five young dancers from the Richmond Academy of Dance, a ring of silk flames surrounding Hercules as he dies. Hercules, played with rich bass resonance by Tony Moss, calls out in agony “I burn, I burn. Tormenting fire consumes me. Oh, I die. Some ease, ye pitying powers!”. But no help comes, although he calls, “Neptune, kindly pour Ocean’s collected flood into my breast and cool my boiling blood!”.
Handel referred to his Hercules as a Musical Drama, and dramatic it certainly is, to distinguish it in essence from his non-staged oratorios. It is much more in the style of the Italian operas of his time. Not only is da capo aria form prominent, but the chorus plays an important role. Here the link with the source material from Sophocles is evident, as the chorus has the same function of the chorus in Greek tragedy, commenting on the action as well as being part of the narrative itself.
Richmond Opera’s chorus greatly fleshes out the piece. It’s collective outburst “Jealousy! Infernal pest, tyrant of the human breast! How from slightest causes bred dost thou lift thy hated head!” forms a powerful climax to the first half of the opera, a massed fugato highlight. Its lament following the death of Hercules is striking: “Tyrants now no more shall dread on necks of vanquished slaves to tread … Fear of punishment is o’er. The world’s avenger is no more!”
Notwithstanding the strong presence of the chorus, the stage often feels congested and over-used. There are often occasions when groups of actors are there for no particular reason and sometimes pull the focus. Equally the temptation to over-use the renowned Normansfield scenery and fly in its magnificent painted backdrops overwhelms. (Incidentally the use of free-standing scenery blocks to supplement the Victorian flats is a very clever idea.)
We know that opera thrives on spectacle but sometimes less can be more.
The plot of Hercules is not all negative however. There is the underlying element of the transmutation of Iole’s despair, and her hated of her captors, into a growing love for Hyllus, Hercules’ son. Tenor Andrew Evans delivers an imposing vocal interpretation of the part, secure through the full range of his register, but could allow himself to be more impassioned in his physical interpretation of the role, particularly as Hyllus woos the lovely Iole, when, “Gods have left their heaven above to taste the sweeter heaven of love”.
Some of the Hyllus’ words are given in this production to Iolaus, in mythology Hyllus’ cousin. Luke Reader gives the role sharpened vitality, with vocal accuracy and a pleasing tone, particularly at the lower end of the register. Lichas, the herald, the part Handel originally intended for contralto Susannah Cibber, was later transposed for counter-tenor and Mark Fletcher ably demonstrates his remarkable vocal abilities in this role.
Handel shows his mastery of inventive contrapuntal and temporal variation. Dramatically, the music follows the moods of the plot and underlines the characterisation of the protagonists. Conductor Lindsay Bramley, Richmond Opera’s Music Director, runs expertly with all these nuances, pacing at the appropriate tempo, and pushing the anxious energy of the music. She gets the most from her fifteen piece orchestra under the experienced leadership of Jocelyn Slocombe. Whist mainly modern instruments, it has an authentic baroque feel, helped not only by Michael Keen’s harpsichord, but by the full expression of the foregrounding of individual instruments elicited in Handel’s narrative score.
Hercules is a work full of ironies. The ironies of Nessus’ words, of the guilt of the innocent, of love arising from hatred, set the foil for its greatest irony, that Dejanira’s love for her husband bring about his destruction. Keep the green eyed monster in its lair, for if love conquers all, it may commit suicide.
Mark Aspen
November 2017
Check In With Your Inner ‘Big’ Kid
Big the Musical
by David Shire and Richard Maltby Jnr
YAT at Hampton Hill Theatre until 18th November
Review by Georgia Renwick
However many years pass by, we never entirely forget what it is to be young. Big the Musical, which premiered in 1996 and which followed the 1988 film, is a nostalgic night out which will have you asking, when did you last check in with your inner ‘Big’ kid?
Josh is two weeks from thirteen, a normal kid decked out in 80’s backwards cap and jacket with a family, his dorky best friend Billy and a crush who doesn’t know he exists. I can relate – at thirteen, I wouldn’t leave the house without my ‘trademark’ over-knee stripy socks and though I went on my first date, we ate McDonalds and saw School of Rock, this was hardly the pinnacle of romance and I felt every bit as awkward.
What these were however, were formative experiences. But formative experiences are not what Josh is looking for, and weeks from his thirteenth birthday, rejected and humiliated by his crush at a carnival, Josh loses patience and wishes on a spooky old carnival machine to be “big”. It isn’t any old carnival machine, and the next morning he wakes up in pyjamas many, many sizes too small – his wish has been granted. Left to navigate the grown-up world alone while Billy searches for the solution, will Josh learn to love the Big world of jobs and cars and money, or will the love of his best friend and family win-out over the possibility of unlimited toys and blossoming romance?
The ever-energetic YAT cast have an absolute ball with the show in the capable hands of director Sophie Hardie, who though new to YAT, has previously directed with TTC.
Seeing the adult parts played by actors who are still only young people themselves adds another whole generational dimension to what we are watching. Every one of them will be too young to have seen the 1980s first hand, so their families will be watching them re-live a generation they weren’t even alive to see … not that this matters of course, who doesn’t love legwarmers, mom-jeans, top-knots and neon?
Attention has been paid to lovingly recreating the era, from the costumes, to the posters on the boys’ walls to Pac-Man playing on a projection as the audience are seated. The set is painted like a 1980s music video in shades of neon pink and green; the full live band is enhanced with 80s-wave synthesises; and the stage is kitted out with flashing lights of green, purple and yellow and a projection centre stage which transports us to 80s America. The sound, lighting and visuals make a big impact on the senses.
Each of the young performers puts their heart and soul into their parts, not a line feels wasted, as we have come to expect from YAT’s talented ensemble.
Meaghan Baxter packs a punch giving big voice and a sparky attitude to young Josh, whilst Matt Nicholas pulls out all the stops in his energetic and adorably adolescent rendition of ‘Big’ Josh Baskin. His child-like innocence reads as genuine, which is essential to the likability of this slightly odd protagonist, whilst his socially awkward mannerisms such as pulling at the hem of his suit and running his hands over his hair are so well observed it is at times hard to watch without cringing knowingly on his behalf. Ah, to be young!
Nicholas shares quieter moments with Amy Hope as Josh’s colleague Susan Laurence, who he becomes close to. Hope’s voice is of a truly professional grade, and she tackles some challenging solos, particularly her opener Here We Go Again, with skill and bags of personality.
Whilst Hope’s nostalgic musings are touching, Katie Crawford’s solos as Josh’s mother Mrs Baskin are heart-wrenching. She summons tear-jerking real emotion to the stage as she sings Stop, Time to Josh’s uneaten birthday cake. I challenge any parent – or even child – not to be moved.
George Barden also stands out as an endearingly dorky Billy with a big heart and big voice, whilst Jojo Leppink brings sass and superb comic timing to everything she does as assistant Miss Watson, from holding a coffee pot to the less-than-exciting prospect of Billy’s algebra homework.
Overall, the choreography from Hardie is snappy, but avoids the trappings of being too polished: these are talented young people with the freedom to express their individual rhythms and not moving like oiled machinery. At times the stage often feels too small for the scale and ambition of some of the dance pieces! A few transitions do also feel a little awkwardly forced in places, as the show shifts from dialogue into dance and back again, but these do not interfere too much with the overall pace of the piece.
For a family-friendly show, it treads pretty close to the edge of what Josh can do as a grown-up… but on the whole, it is kept PG-13 friendly. The more grown-up jokes that do land seem to have gone over any younger heads.
In his few weeks Josh spends as a grown-up, he comes to the realisation that grown-ups, even ones that make toys for a living, are boring. They’ve forgotten how to dance, how to play games and lost sight of what makes ‘fun’, fun! In the context of the musical it only takes a little dancing and some 80s tunes to remind them to reconnect, perhaps that really is all we need?
“Fun isn’t programmed, it isn’t planned”, the cast sing, but though this is programmed and very well planned it is fun, so channel your inner ’Big’ kid, or bring your smaller ones, for a Big, fun evening out.
Georgia Renwick
November 2017
Photography by Sarah J Carter
A Thrill and a Chill
Picnic at Hanging Rock
by Tom Wright, adapted from a novel by Joan Lindsay
Wild Duck Theatre at OSO Arts Centre, Barnes until 18th November
Review by Georgia Renwick
On a cold, foggy, November night, you might think a trip to sunny Australia, via the OSO Arts Centre, Barnes, would be the perfect antidote, but if you take a trip to Picnic at Hanging Rock this week, expect a thrill – and a chill.
Adapted from the bestselling 1967 novel and critically acclaimed 1975 film which followed, Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the tale of the disappearance of several schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic out in the bush at the turn of the 20th century. In their virginal white corsets and silk petticoats, three layers thick, curiosity draws them across the threshold of their strict boarding school upbringing to venture out into the wilderness. What unfolds will never be fully uncovered, but the girls, and the community, will never be the same again.
But this is no ordinary ‘who-dunnit’ turn-of-the-century tale of mystery. The girls do not appear to disappear into the hands of a stranger, but into the arms of Australia itself, a “sea of flame”, an ancient land where lava bubbles under the surface of their white-gloved world of “refinement”. Do the girls wonder willingly into the wilderness, or are they taken back by its raw and unwieldy power?
The 80-minute play, which runs all the way through without a break, is held in masterful suspense by excellent acting and a high level of sound and lighting design.
Tom Wright’s adaptation, which having premiered in Australia, made its UK debut at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in January this year, is told partially in the third person. This can be a little confusing at times, but like a ghost story told round a fire, it draws you in. Another feature of this adaptation, which was originally written for five actresses but is taken on by Wild Duck theatre’s very accomplished cast of eight, is that each of the girls and women must multi-role. This really allows them to show their acting strengths and work together as a seamless ensemble.
Francesca Stone has the challenge of playing a man obsessed by the girl she was playing a scene earlier whilst Fiona Lawrie must play the Police Inspector searching for her former teacher self. I found the most effective of the pairings to be Georganna Simpson’s transition from intellectual schoolgirl to cussing horse-boy (“bloody pomegranates!”), complete with (temporary) tattoos. She brought an endearing and earnest spirit to their distinctly contrasting characters, and two distinct and well executed accents to boot. Indeed, voice work from the entire cast seemed to be of a professional standard all-round.
Susan Conte directs with the finesse of a seasoned horror fan, never showing the audience that which can be more horrifyingly heard through a long, echoing offstage scream. Before the actors have even taken to the stage the air hums with the sound of crickets and rattlesnakes and you can almost feel the prickling heat, along with the prickling of uneasiness. The instrumentation of composer Joe Evans is intertwined with the natural sounds, creating a score that heightens the tension as well as embodying the overarching theme of the play, the dichotomy of the wild and the civilised.
The set is kept simple, a few artfully decorated boxes become a log and the jagged, jutting out rocks of the Hanging Rock. The real Hanging Rock appears as a projection, an appropriate and ominous visual cue for those of us who have not seen the real thing. The lighting design from Martin Walton sees the stage bathed in red and blues, from fierce Australian sun to cool, mysterious night. The classic torch-under-the-face trick used by Stone as Michael, as he searches the rock in the dark may seem a little amateur-horror, but it is still disconcertingly effective. What we cannot see, once again, is more terrifying than what is there.
We as an English audience are placed in an interesting position in watching this play, which has not been altered since it played to an Australian one. We are made more conscious in the British character of Mrs Appleyard, whose stiff upper lip and stern brow are portrayed with malice by Nicole Doble, of our status as the colonists, as the outside, the other. Our English person’s ‘lack of understanding’, is voiced in her refusal to let any natural influence tamper with her pure, cultivated girls. To her, the rock is not a wonderous thing to be revered but, “a carbuncle in this anti-Eden”. Her teaching and her attitudes in her school in no way prepare her girls for the world of Australia, but for the colonised society in which she and their families imagine they will live.
“What is the purpose of spelling and algebra in Australia?” Irma cries at her headmistress, in a hot fit of revolt. Considering what chillingly becomes of her fellow students, she has a point.
Georgia Renwick
November 2017
Photography by Marc Pearce
Slick and Classy Classic
Death Trap
by Ira Levin
Salisbury Playhouse and TBO Productions at Richmond Theatre until 18th November
Review by Eleanor Marsh
Stephen King said of Ira Levin, “ [He is] . . . the Swiss watchmaker of suspense novels, he makes what the rest of us do look like cheap watchmakers in drugstores”. If he should be in the audience at Richmond Theatre this week during the run of Deathtrap, I don’t doubt he would say the same of Levin’s playwriting skills. The play starts as it means to go on – the first night audience jumped out of their seats before the curtain went up and Adam Penford’s production never lets the level of suspense or shock value drop throughout the entire play. This production, originating at the Salisbury Playhouse, hits its target perfectly. An ideal, highly accessible vehicle to tour the provinces, Deathtrap is just three months short of the 40th anniversary of its opening and this outing has excellent production values and performances throughout.
A vast amount of attention to detail has been paid to the set (apart from the disappointing lack of visible greenery in the “garden”) and costume design, which are complemented by effective lighting and sound, transforming the stage instantly from cosy living room to house of horrors. To provide too much detail around either plot or set would serve only to spoil the fun for those of you yet to see the play. Aficionados will find here all they would expect in terms of suspense and surprise in spades. It will not disappoint. I particularly liked the device of using snippets of classic movie suspense thrillers to mask scene changes and at the same time illustrate the various forms of murder depicted in Bruhl and Anderson’s plays.
Star casting in a production such as this always makes me nervous. I would rather see a good actor than a famous one, but in this case it works extremely well. Both Paul Bradley and Jessie Wallace are versatile actors and work well together as husband and wife, Sydney and Myra Bruhl. Perhaps Mr Bradley could play up the comedy a little less at the beginning of the play- the text does the job for itself and does not need to be laboured. But this is a small gripe: these are both strong performances that are complemented well by Sam Phillips’ portrayal of up and coming young author Clifford Anderson. Completing the five cast members crucial to the plot are Julien Ball as Porter Milgrim and Beverley Klein as the “comedy psychic” Helga ten Dorp. I would have preferred Ms Klein’s level of OTT mania to have remained where it was on her first entrance and not to have spiralled almost out of control towards the end of the play, but she knows her audience and her performance was well received at Richmond.
The play itself has stood the test of time and does not feel at all dated. It does however have a very strange (and unnecessary) final scene. In fact I felt so strongly that this scene was out of place that I feared it might have been added to assist the provincial audience; this would have been patronising in the extreme and after some last minute research I’m very pleased to report that Salisbury Playhouse are exonerated and the fault lies, sadly with the author. This did not spoil an otherwise slick and classy production of a classic thriller, which I heartily recommend.
Levin himself said his preferred medium to write for was the stage as it enabled him to see his audience’s reaction. He would have been very happy to have been at Richmond Theatre this week, I am sure.
Eleanor Marsh
November 2017
Play the Game
Rules for Living
by Sam Holcroft
RTK, English Touring Theatre and Royal and Derngate Northampton co-production
The Rose Theatre Kingston, until 18th November
Review by Melissa Syversen
On the surface Rules for Living, currently playing at the Rose Theatre Kingston, seems like your average farce. It follows a standard farce story line we have all seen time and time again: It is Christmas day and we are introduced to your seemingly normal middle-class British family as they gather for their annual Christmas lunch. The younger brother Matthew (Jolyon Coy) has brought his actress girlfriend Carrie (Carlyss Peer) to join the festivities for the first time. Older brother Adam (Ed Hughes) and his wife Nicole (Laura Rogers), a childhood friend of the two brothers, have brought their daughter Emma (doubled by Charlotte Coppellotti and Bonnie Kingston) who we learn is resting upstairs. The matriarch of the house Edith (Jane Booker), famous for her tight schedules and rigorous Christmas preparations, puts everyone to work to create the perfect lunch for Francis, the father of the family (Paul Shelley), who is returning from the hospital to join the family. We then follow this family as a seemingly pleasant Christmas tradition descends into chaotic revelations of secrets, hostilities and bitter grudges.
Rules for Living, however, despite its initial impression, is not your average farce. Playwright Sam Holcroft has created a format wherein the characters exist that sets this play apart from other similar ventures. By adopting a literal take on her title, she gives five of the seven characters specific rules they must live by. About ten minutes into the play, a big red sign is projected onto the set where everyone, including the character it applies to, can see. The first rule we see is this. Rule 1: Matthew must sit down when telling a lie. What follows thanks to this premise can only be described as top notch physical and non-verbal comedy, adding a nice layer to the already well written and witty script. As the play goes on each character is given their rules and, as the Christmas lunch continues, each rule is further expanded, growing increasingly demanding and ridiculous. I don’t want to give away anymore of the rules here, however, as the revelations and the timing of the rules are often as funny as the enactments themselves. And bless this cast, they really go for it. The audience is treated to some genuinely impressive contortions such as a desperate Matthew trying to get his bum on a seat so he can lie and get himself out of the figurative hot seat. As wonderful as all the rule-bound family members are, I must especially mention Paul Shelley’s Francis. Francis might be bound to a wheelchair instead of abstract rules but he is no less funny. The timing of his single words, grunts and facial expression are just as funny and well-timed as Carlyss Peers’ Carrie’s desperately compulsive dancing across the stage.
Rules for Living once again allows director Simon Goodwin to show off just how good he is at directing ensemble comedy. If you happened to see Twelfth Night at the National Theatre this year, you can expect just as many laughs and attention to details in Rules for Living. It might sound like it will be difficult to keep track of all the rules throughout the show, and in less sturdy hands, I am sure it would have been. However, the creative team has devised a clever and efficient way to help the audience keep track. As each rule is projected on to the set, each sign is also colour-coded to the character it belongs to. Nicole is wearing a purple dress for instance; therefore, her rule sign is purple. In the second act, there is an added, I’ll call it a ‘traffic light system’, that signalises which rules are ‘active’ at any time. The family’s compulsive following of arbitrary rules continues to expand and escalate through a very tense round of a card game called Bedlam (It is a tradition for one member each year to bring a game for the family to play) and through an even worse lunch. Eventually, as it usually is with these comedy family dramas, the chord finally snaps and the family break into a combined fist and food fight cleverly choreographed by fight director Kevin McCurdy (who has also fight choreographed As You Like It, running concurrently at Richmond Theatre).
In the end, Rules for Living offers a lovely bit of poignancy and commentary about the rules we often inflict upon ourselves in life and the relations we have with others. These rules often start out harmless but can reach intolerable and unhealthy levels if left unchecked. Rules for Living further illustrates that we do have the power to break these rules, though the process of change can be a painful and difficult journey. But even if change and growth are possible, it is also something many do not have the strength or even desire to go through, preferring to stay with what feels safe and familiar. It is a bittersweet ending which I think will ring true with many.
What could have been a somewhat lacklustre, ‘by-the-numbers’ farce, Rules for Living is lifted into an enjoyable comedy thanks to the clever concept and writing by Sam Holcroft, clever staging by director Simon Goodwin and the creative team, and acted by a cast clearly having a blast.
Melissa Syversen
November 2017
Photographs by Mark Douet
Kooky Capers in a Bare Forest
As You Like It
By William Shakespeare
Shared Experience, in co-production with Theatre by the Lake
at Richmond Theatre until 11thNovember, then on tour until 9th December
Review by Mark Aspen
When Richmond Theatre opened on 18th September 1899 as Frank Matcham’s latest architectural tour de force, it’s first offering was As You Like It , but would that staid audience have recognised the latest offering of William Shakespeare’s much-loved comedy that opened its national touring version this week?
They may have been a little bemused by Shared Experience’s colourful kooky setting, and perhaps by the exuberant inclusion of contemporary dance and music, but they would have been at home with the familiar words, as the production has been true to Shakespeare’s script. All of the play’s well-known songs are there, but with sparkling new adaptations by composer Richard Hammarton, whose powerful sound designs set the mood. With the inclusion of movement director Siân Williams’ dances, the production edges towards “As You Like It, the Musical”.
Now, what about this setting? It is meant to be 2017, and has modern paraphernalia such as mobile phones. However, it often feels more 1967 with its flower-power hippies and Gilbert Scott red phone box. Shakespeare clearly wanted to contrast the two worlds of As You Like It , the stern court in the city and the idyllic Forest of Arden in the countryside. Designer Libby Watson has certainly achieved the contrast. The court becomes a politicians’ committee room (Portcullis House rather the Palace of Westminster), black and white, charcoal coloured faux-suede walls, off-white faux-marble floor; Nespresso machine, water cooler: stark. The countryside is full of colour, open, bare; Phone box, bench: exposed. When the back wall of the room unzips to reveal the country, it impacts with a momentary wow … but then there follows wait-a-minute thoughts. The pastoral pastel of the foreground clashes with the lighting designer Chris Davey’s cyclorama of saturated light-washes. There are beautifully stylised poetical images projected across the cyc, but also across the stage items, leaving their shadows on the scene and with their edges visible. Isn’t this meant to be a sanctuary beyond the reach of the Duke’s henchmen? It looks like the edge of Richmond Park, but scruffy, a recreation ground accessible by supermarket trolleys. Why has Arden got the Duke’s water-cooler? Why is the telephone box crammed with bookshelves? And why does a forest have only one Waiting for Godot bare tree, that doesn’t so much sway in the wind as wobble at the roots?
Strangely though, all this quirkiness works, even if its surrealistic symbolism doesn’t percolate through. It its own characteristic way, Shared Experience has for forty years championed a style that merges physical theatre with a rediscovery of the text. Director Kate Saxon, in this As You Like It , has a natural fluent telling of the story, savouring Shakespeare’s words, but its potency comes from a juxtaposition of styles from film noir to pastoral idyll to panto comedy. Hence the country comedy is highlighted against the threatening city, and what a contrast.
The strong opening pitches brothers Oliver and Orlando in an explicitly violent fight. (Fight director Kevin McCurdy aims to shock at several points during the play.) Orlando’s near strangulation of Oliver prompts him to use Charles the wrestler as a hit-man to get his revenge, but Orlando triumphs in a no-holds-barred punch-up across the committee room table. Equally, Duke Frederick is a hard man, a yer-don’t-mess-with-me geyser, not averse to personally meting out a good beating, followed by water-boarding using one of the ubiquitous water-coolers. These, thankfully short, Tarantino-esque episodes form a foil for the broad comedy to follow.
Some of the actors are called to play multiple roles, which with great versatility and a variety of accents they differentiate admirably. Hence, in a very strong performance, Alex Parry plays not only the violent Duke Frederick and in contrast his laid-back brother, Duke Senior, whom Frederick had usurped, but the sheep-farmer Corin.
Perhaps the widest versatility is asked of Matthew Darcy, who amongst other roles dexterously portrays Oliver, Amiens (as a Scottish New-Age musician!) and the country wench Audrey. His Audrey, pig-tailed and bobby-socked, is reminiscent of a pubescent Grayson Perry. The comedy is taken towards knockabout pantomime in Audrey’s scenes with her amoretto, the joker Touchstone, played with expansive mock-gravitas by Matthew Mellalieu, as a Screaming Lord Sutch lookalike in orange crocs and red velvet drape jacket. Mellalieu earlier doubles as Adam, Orlando’s faithful old servant and one of the most sympathetic characters in the whole Shakespearean canon. He plays the part well, but casting such a robust heart-of-oak actor as the frail and halt octogenarian doesn’t quite work.
Having doubled as Charles, the wrestler, we later see Adam Buchanan as Silvius, the young shepherd, whom he plays to the hilt as a gormless, lovelorn swain. The object of his affections is Phoebe, pertly portrayed by Josie Dunn, whose lithe and vivacious acting is complemented by lively musicianship: a plaintive clarinet solo and energetic saxophone accompaniment to the music played live by five members of the cast. Their music and dancing keeps the pace of the play moving.
Richard Keightley, a very camp Le Beau at the beginning of the play, makes a fine Jacques (here described as Cultural Secretary to Duke Senior) in an insightful interpretation of the role. His rendering of the Seven Ages of Man speech, growingly despairingly morose at the prospect of old age, makes perfect sense in view of his self-proclaimed melancholia.
Although As You Like It has a number of parallel themes including a four mirrored love stories, it really revolves around Rosalind, the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior, who herself spends most of the play banished to Arden disguised as a the young man, Ganymede. In this role, Jessica Hayles makes a charming and playful fugitive, energetic in her hopes and highly animated in her emotions, expressed in neatly choreographed mute movement sequences. Orlando, love-struck for Rosalind, and seemly fooled by the Ganymede masquerade, is convincingly acted by Nathan Hamilton in a strong performance, full of teenage urgency and anxieties. Rosalind has escaped from the court with her cousin, Celia, the daughter of Duke Frederick, who in Shakespeare’s script shares in the despairs, hopes and aspirations of her cousin. However, Layo-Christina Akinlude’s performance in the role was totally tangential to these emotions. She puts across a bored and cynical take on the character, antithetical to Rosalind.
It may seem sniffy to say that production is clearly pitched at the first-time Shakespeare audience, but it seems to want to say more than that. (There are some side-swipes at current politics, Duke Frederick coming across as a Jean-Claude Juncker, an unelected tyrant usurping the legitimate sovereignty of Duke Senior, while a poster in the forest proclaims “Stags for Remain”, oblivious that they will soon become EU venison.) The production may want to say something about current social conflicts around the roles of men and women, but falls short of pulling that from the text.
Nevertheless, with its bold visual impact, musical interludes and intelligent dialogue As You Like It was well received by the young Richmond press night audience. It is fun and makes for enjoyable entertainment; it is colourful and makes for good visual theatre; it enjoys Shakespeare’s words and makes for good story telling. Enjoyable entertainment, good visual theatre, good story telling: all the things that the Richmond audience of September 1899 recognised… oh, and Shakespeare’s words.
Mark Aspen
November 2017
Photography by Keith Pattison
Consumed by the Drama of Himself
The Dramatic Exploits of Edmund Kean
The Exchange, Twickenham, 5th November
Review by Matthew Grierson
Can we love a fine performer who is a dreadful man? It’s a question we should ask of the Romantic tragedian Edmund Kean in Ian Hughes’ absorbing one-man show, as practically the first thing we learn about him is that he – Kean – is making his wife, who is six months pregnant, walk 180 miles to Swansea where he has been offered a job. Yet he – Hughes – pursues the tragic arc of Kean’s career from strolling player to West End star, then to sozzled has-been, with such virtuosity that it is difficult not to sympathise with him.
This is partly a function of Hughes’ writing, which aims to showcase both his own and Kean’s versatility, and he deftly manages the lightning changes required when, for example, his joy at being invited to perform at Drury Lane becomes bereavement and impotent rage at his son’s premature death. But it’s also partly that Kean has to be built up, because a performer from the age of the stage leaves no direct record for the present in the way that (say) his contemporary Lord Byron does. So Hughes’ Kean is a wry raconteur, an intimate sharing his life story and interspersing it with displays of admirable range to conjure the various company managers and committee members he comes across. His manner is indeed so engaging that it overcomes the limitations of the production. For instance, the changes of scene that calibrate each act are largely unnecessary, because Kean is rather so free and easy with his narration, his showman’s sleight of hand shuffling past and present, that the Turner-lite backdrops become redundant when a tavern or dressing room might be more appropriate to the retrospective relation of the life story.
Hughes thus ably conveys the greatness that was evident to men such as Byron and Hazlitt (not many actors would commend their reviewers as “astute young men” as Kean does the latter). But because there is little distance between audience and performer – no, performers – it is difficult to see the tragedian’s own fatal flaws. With more flecks of arrogance, delusion or inconsistency, we would have been better able to glimpse him in his less pleasant but truer complexity. Yet with Hughes on his side, Kean will always seem more heroic than tragic.
As a result, when his downfall does come midway through the second act, it is not altogether clear where it has come from, as we’ve been party more to his joys and japes than to his demons. We’ve seen how he is affected by poverty and by the death of his son, certainly, but these are flashes of darkness in a tale that is otherwise reminiscent of Henry Fielding in its picaresque quality. Though the brandy has been with him since the first act, where the impoverished Kean hails its advent as that of a lifelong friend, it enables more humour than horror, as though he is a Regency Withnail; and when we see Kean preening at the height of his fame, there is still a loveable twinkle in Hughes’ eye, and the little jig he gives upon reading that his performance of the Dane has “brought down the classical school” is not only joyous but a nice callback to earlier comic roles as a monkey or Harlequin. Rather than have us take Kean’s word that his acting style was “innovative” or “revolutionary”, Hughes also begs, “Let me illustrate” – whereupon we are treated not only to a rendition of his Shylock and Richard but also to his rival John Kemble’s stilted, singsong delivery and the pirated Shakespeare of the off-West End performances, giving us a sense of the broader theatrical context. That said, it’s odd to note how much Kean’s tragic style is not realism as we have come to know it but somewhat hammy and formulaic, especially compared with the easy, modern idiom with which Hughes’ Kean comes across.
When we again see the tragedian in his cups, Hughes’ portrayal of a man about to undo himself communicates that moment with conviction.But I would have appreciated a little more insight into the causes of it, of the kind the best tragedy provides. Why, having fulfilled the ambition that has nursed him through the vicissitudes of the preceding hour, which we and his offstage wife have endured, does Kean regale us with the arrangements he makes to have young actresses available to him in his dressing room? It’s a pointed and sadly timely reminder of the abuse of power by public figures, but reading his decline and fall as a modern narrative of celebrity denies us an opportunity to see what makes Kean’s story truly distinctive, and thus properly tragic.
Does it lie in the further remove of Kean’s childhood, recounted but not performed, which saw him abandoned by his mother and brought up by a strict aunt, also an actress? Kean does after all quote Hamlet in his misogyny: “Frailty, thy name is woman.” Like the prince, he too is haunted, and the touching end to the first act sees him take the ghost hand of his younger self, Hughes imagining Kean in turn imagining the boy’s presence – while all the time we are imagining his son Howard, dead at the age of four.
Perhaps the true tragedy of Kean is not of a man undone by ambition, drink or lust, but of one who cannot separate his life from the performance of it. While he can, at his height, imagine claiming Kemble’s crown as the King of London’s Theatreland, at the end he cannot even reach the prop crown of Henry V off a chair as he lies prostrate with gout on the dressing room floor. So if it is the case that a man who lived for tragedy has made a tragedy of his life, then he is lucky to have an actor as understanding as Hughes is to perform it for him.
Matthew Grierson
November 2017
Photography courtesy of Ian Hughes
Editor’s Note:
Ian Hughes is an acclaimed Shakespearean actor and member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Dramatic Exploits of Edmund Kean was first performed at The Other Place (the RSC’s studio theatre) earlier this year.
The Exchange, Twickenham is the country’s newest theatre, which opened in October and is opposite Twickenham railway station.
Rings of Brass
For Love or Money
by Blake Morrison adapted from Turcaret by Alain René Lesage
Northern Broadsides
at The Rose Theatre, Kingston until 4th November, then on tour until 2nd December
Review by Mark Aspen
Let’s sit down, have a nice chatter-watter, and natter about For Love or Money. Now here’s a nice tale if you like, a fun-filled farce about folks’ foibles.
Halifax has come to Kingston with Northern Broadsides’ tongue in cheek play about a concatenation of conmen, with more fiddles than the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra. The company often works with journalist and author Blake Morrison to adapt plays from the past, ranging from Aristophanes to Kleist, into the Yorkshire vernacular. This time round the source is Turcaret by Alain René Lesage, which was first performed at the Comédie Française in 1709, and which in turn is based on Tartuffe by Lesage’s muse Molière. How does the play cope with its 220 year transplant from Paris to a Yorkshire mill town in the late 1920s ? Surprisingly well, for human vices like lust and greed, which are the peccadilloes that form the driving force of For Love or Money, are real hardy perennials.
The Great War took the colonel who lived in the grand mansion on the outskirts of the Yorkshire town. Ten years since, he never returned from the front, and his young and attractive widow Rose is finding it hard to cope financially. The furniture has been sold, as have the oil paintings, witness the shadows of the frames on the William Morris wallpaper (one of many inspired touches by designer Jessica Worrall, which include some colourful pastiches of period dress by Lucy Archbould).
The scene is set at the opening with Rose in conversation with Marlene, her housekeeper and one remaining servant. The bluff Marlene, robustly played by Jacqueline Naylor, speaks in broad Yorkshire vernacular, which the opening night audience at Kingston found almost impenetrable, but it mattered not, as her whiplash tongue said it all. Marlene is warning Rose about the predations of some of the local men, whose intentions may not be honourable. For her pains Marlene is given the sack, but Rose loses her rough-edged guardian. She doesn’t know that her husband, the late colonel, sent Marlene a letter to ask the she look after Rose as he believed her to be very vulnerable. Well, perhaps she is, but perhaps she isn’t.
Rose is wooed by two suitors, the well-heeled banker Algy Fuller, and the louche gigolo Arthur. However, Arthur is a con-man and is fleecing Rose, but Rose is taking Algy for all she can, while Algy is embezzling from his bank, and a great merry-go-round of greed tootles its merry way around the story.
The guileful but gorgeous Rose is played by the Sarah-Jane Potts who skilfully balances the demure innocent-abroad against the shrewd schemer in Rose’s psyche, coy one moment pert the next. She is the flapper par excellence, fringed hair, satin dress the colour of, well, a peach. For Rose is the focus of the action, the honeypot cum money-pot to which the men are drawn, some for the honey, some for the money. Arthur is after both; the money to feed his gambling addiction, the honey to feed his voracious sexual appetite. Neither his promiscuity nor his ego know any bounds. He describes his liaison in a back alley with an older woman as “performing an act of mercy”. Jos Vantyler has the part of Arthur to a tee, oozing debauchery from his coiffured hair to his co-respondent’s shoes; even his movements are dissolute. Now, Algy has plenty of money of his own, or is it his own? For Algy runs so much of a double life that it probably counts as a triple life. Suited and booted, smiling and moustache twirling, Algy bursts onto the scene adamant to achieve his goal of seducing Rose. His armoury includes gifts of jewellery (fraudulently acquired), verses proclaiming his love (witless doggerel) and promises to build a magnificent new house for her with orangery and haha (castles in Spain). Barrie Rutter portrays Algy as an effusive convivial man, opulent and expansive, comfortably rotund and very self-satisfied. He his lost his wife to the ‘flu epidemic, or was it the flew epidemic? Algy is wary in matters of business, particularly dodgy-business, but totally blind in his enthrallment by the alluring Rose.
Barrie Rutter is also the Founder and the prime mover of Northern Broadsides. Describing himself as a “theatrical animal”, he has grown the company to world-wide recognition, with its mission to promote the richness of the dialects of the North of England. Rutter has himself taking on the direction of For Love or Money, and has run with the vivacious dialogue and the sinewy humour, the emotional slapstick that is the engine of this play. At some points the play has a late music-hall feel, such as at the opening of the second half and the pre-curtain call which involve quite elaborate song-and-dance routines: much credit is due to Beverley Norris-Edmunds’ choreography with Conrad Nelson’s music. There is a bit of the shoulders back “I say, I say, I say” to the setting up of gags. The play is certainly stylised with every character having a distinct but exaggerated style of moving, and all the first entrances are down-stage right into a spot, with an unspoken “Dah! Dah!”. The effect of this somehow smacked in my mind of a comic strip unfolding across the stage, with the “Umphs” and “Ouchs” and “Ooos” imagined in the air. It is a distinctive style that gives the piece so much vibrancy.
Much of the comic strip reference comes from Jordan Metcalfe as Jack, with his quiff a Tin-Tin overdosed on E-numbers. With a Jack-the-lad twinkle in his eye, he energises his part to the brim. Jack is described as an odd job man, and they certainly are odd jobs. He is the general run-around for Arthur, doing all his dirty work. Then he takes up the same services for Rose, and then for Algy, but concurrently. Here is a sharp sharper who knows how to play all ends against the middle.
Jack’s girlfriend is Lisa, who is a young woman with a strapping way with words and who knows how to look after herself. She has worked as a char and as a street-walker, hence Jack’s honest introduction of her as “the best scrubber in town”. Jack insinuates her into Rose’s household, putting another tangle in the thread of farce. Kat Rose-Martin makes a gamine Lisa, pouting her scarlet lipstick. She plays the role with a warmth that makes one disregard her felonies as mere naughtiness. The audience though is itself seduced by Jack and Lisa, maybe because everyone in this play is an anti-hero, so we root for the best of a bad bunch in these characters. And we know that they will be the ones who will win out in the end.
This wild welter of nefarious plans begins to unravel when wronged parties appear. Martin, a farmer, has been tricked by Algy in his dealings with Algy’s bank, and tricked out of his late mother’s jewellery. Martin’s addiction is to booze, but he is looking for a wife to change his life. He also has some wonderful turns of phrase, including a very apt spoonerism: his riposte to Algy’s “I run a tight ship”, as “Yes, a shite tip”. Jim English delivers these lines for maximum comic impact with spot-on timing, playing Martin as a lanky sot, somewhat simple. Martin is the susceptible victim at the bottom of this food chain of deception.
Then comes Ruddles (Matthew Booth), Algy’s bank clerk, coerced into getting his hands dirty for Algy, with a list of chickens coming home to roost; and Gwen (Jacqueline Naylor doubling) an “antiques dealer”, who turns out to be Algy’s sister and proceeds to tell more than a few home truths. A bailiff, Hever, arrives to seize some of Rose’s land, but this is Jack in disguise perpetrating another fraud. All adds to the general mayhem.
Finally, Teresa, “a visitor” joins in the party. She comes as Martin’s fiancée, a “classy French” woman of a certain age. Arthur recognises her as his “act of mercy” but stays mum. But when Algy appears his recognition of her is … (to avoid a spoiler) … not welcomed. Sarah Parks is priceless as Teresa, multi-coloured and grotesque, complete with cod French, she grabs the stage by the throat. A deep Fanny Cradock contralto enhances the far from understated picture of the wronged woman. Algy is in, as Teresa puts it, the merde.
For Love or Money makes an hilarious evening’s entertainment, but underneath it is a salutary allegory to human greed. Everyone exploits everyone in a riotous Ring a Ring o’ Roses; everyone abuses everyone in a way that would make Arthur Schnitzler blush: everyone milks everyone else, but the most loveable scoundrels run off with the cream.
Oh, a “chatter-watter” is a cup of tea, so we learn proper Yorkshire too.
Mark Aspen
November 2017
Photography by Nobby Clark
The Musical That Ticks All the Boxes
Made in Dagenham
BROS Theatre Company, Hampton Hill Theatre until 4th November
Review by Eleanor Lewis
The single most frustrating thing about Richard Bean, David Arnold and Richard Thomas’ musical Made in Dagenham is that you can’t sell it to someone who’s never seen it. It’s the story of the women machinists at Ford, Dagenham and their struggle for equal pay in the late 60s and early 70s. Standard response to this as an evening’s entertainment is: “right, lovely, all for equal pay (who isn’t?) loved the film but do we really need a musical as well?” And that would be the point at which that individual’s quality of life would be a tiny but significant bit reduced.
Dagenham is that rare thing, a musical that ticks all the boxes, It’s well written, very funny, the music is memorable with grown up lyrics, and it tells a complex story efficiently and without patronising its audience, including those people who don’t do musicals – “God no! Is it a musical? You didn’t say it was a musical, I loathe musicals!” was the genuinely horrified reaction of a friend’s girlfriend, not paying full attention to what she’d been invited to. More of her later.
A strong show done by a strong company in the depths of October is going to sell out and Dagenham duly did, quite early. The production then had to live up to expectations which it also did, seamlessly. The energy and talent on show at Hampton Hill did not disappoint nor were there any visible signs that the challenges of putting on this spectacle had been too much. Dagenham is a long show – not that you notice – it covers a lot of ground and therefore requires a director who knows what he’s doing (not to be taken for granted in amateur productions). Wes Henderson Roe, as well as directing, also created a set that worked on all levels, allowing scene changes to take place efficiently with no extraneous activity and including an upstage office on a balcony accessed by a surprisingly unobtrusive, almost centre stage staircase, making use of the entire visual playing space. Clever.
Under the guidance of shop steward Connie, the show’s central character, Rita O’Grady is persuaded to lead the machinists’ protest and then the strike despite having no previous experience. The story is based on true events but Rita and her husband Eddie are fictional characters, emblematic of the Ford workers at the time. O’Grady is therefore the type of character that actors probably dread because she’s an unremarkable, ordinary, nice wife and mother. Her husband, Eddie is unremarkable, nice and ordinary too. How therefore do you make them engaging? How do you take an audience with you, make them sympathise with your character and want what they want? What do you have to work with? I have no idea, I’m only the reviewer but Dagenham is well enough written to give you plenty of clues. Lacey Creed and Martin Wilcox as Rita and Eddie evidently found the clues and succeeded not only in creating a believable family unit, with some talented younger actors as their children (Emily Pegler and Noam Sala Budgen), but also in drawing the audience into their world and making them care about them.
There were many and varied opportunities for actors to shine in this show in every kind of role and BROS Theatre Company is fortunate in being able to provide a consistently high level of performance across the show. There was the trio of shop stewards Bill, Sid and convenor Monty played respectively by John Paul Sutherland, Berni Messenger and Carl Smith, sometimes in their elevated office commenting on the action, sometimes interacting with the rest of the cast their banter authentically delivered, their characters believable. There were Rita’s workmates, notable among them the verbally challenged Clare played astutely by Aggie Holland whose job it was to sing the fabulous Wossname. Many women sing well, fewer can do comedy. Aggie Holland does both but understands how to do comedy better than a lot of people.
Where comedy is concerned it might be overdoing it to wonder wistfully whether Steve Taylor and Clair Jardella should be available on the NHS in these trying times, but for those of us old enough to remember the 70s, Harold Wilson lives, still. Steve Taylor is a talented actor but his portrayal of Wilson as a combination of eccentric, spasmodic intellectual desperation could only be described as weirdly adorable. Clair Jardella, surely not old enough to remember the force of nature that was Barbara Castle nonetheless played her entirely convincingly, her rendition of Ideal World a showstopper.
The singing in this production was outstanding, as might be expected from this company, every set piece choreographed expertly by Susi Pink, filling the stage with energy. The technical skill of Edz Barrett’s This is America and the poignancy conveyed by Martin Wilcox’s rendition of The Letter were only two of many strong individual performances.
Other gems amongst a raft of sound performances included Lizzie Brignall who was playing against type and gave a subtle and accomplished performance as Connie, the women’s shop steward a character who had battled all her life for the equality she began to see as being within Rita’s reach. Not the easiest role to play but Ms Brignall did an impressive job with it, she was totally convincing. Greg Smith, a young actor beginning what may be a promising career, played a couple of small parts very efficiently, in character all the time, at no point either over the top or self-conscious
Any issues with this production were tiny ones: Kerry McGee’s Beryl veered rather more towards caricature than it needed to. It’s true to say that if swearing were an Olympic sport, Beryl would lead the British team, but despite this the character is an authentic working class woman with more than one dimension. Lacey Creed as Rita struggled a little with pitching, an opening note sometimes eluding her and I wasn’t entirely convinced she understood the running gag about Martin Luther King, she rather threw it away a couple of times. (Whenever Rita lacks the confidence required to take the lead and wants to compromise in some way, she is reminded of King’s struggle for race equality and she responds with “you know they shot him”). These are only details and in neither case did they matter significantly, Beryl got all the laughs she should have in all the right places and Rita had the audience on side the whole time, in fact the audience reaction to this show – standing ovations both times I saw it – is probably all you need to know.
If Made in Dagenham were still on this reviewer would highly recommend it, it was a strong, highly entertaining and well executed show, but perhaps its best recommendation would be from the previously mentioned friend’s girlfriend who loathed musicals: “I loved it, absolutely loved it – did you say they were an amateur company?”
Eleanor Lewis
November 2017
Mark Aspen 