Poetry at the Adelaide
An Inauguration of Performance Poetry
Performance Poetry
at The Adelaide, Teddington 4th June
Review by Mark Aspen
Here’s a bit of prejudice: poets are consumptive young men with huge floppy bow-ties waning in garrets. No, no, no, we mean performance poets. Ah, they are shy lady librarians reciting quietly between the bookshelves … or are they musical Caribbeans? Oh, no, they are depressed Northern academics … or was it horny-handed farmers well-grounded with their livestock?
You see, until now it has been hard to tell, for poets in and around Teddington have kept themselves well hidden. Poetry has been one of the few art forms without a wide exposure hereabouts. That has now been redressed with the formation of Performance Poetry, an ad-hoc group formed at the initiative of Anne Warrington, a local RADA actress, and Bob Sheed, who has been running poetry workshops over a number of years. Sunday saw the inaugural meeting of Performance Poetry, in the convivial surroundings of The Adelaide at Teddington.
Poets are, we discovered, from diverse backgrounds and experiences. None, as far as we discovered are librarians, shy or otherwise, or farmers, horny-handed or otherwise. However, they had a wonderfully interesting and entertaining range of subjects and moods. Some were whimsical and nostalgic, some were romantic and philosophical, some were descriptive and very many were brilliantly humorous.
Some of the contributing poets included members of Bob Sheed’s The Luther Poets, a poetry working group. An inspiration-triggering technique that they used was to start with a key-word. So we had a number of poems on the themes, “outside”, “fashion” or “indecision”.
“Outside” inspired Heather (Montford)’s nostalgic recollections of children being free to play outside after the Second World War, Fran’s landscape portrait around Kingston, Pat’s Kew Gardens and (drawing from her experiences as a teacher) the perversity of young children who will find every excuse not to go outside into the playground, except when it is snowing. Graham took the outside theme to extremes, outer space in fact, musing on the beauty of space … but with a twist.
Children did feature in quite a few of the poems, Anne reflecting on how children can be unintentionally cruel. Bill, the church verger, whom they taunted as “the old geezer”, became warmly remembered after his death with the fond soubriquet, “Geezer Bill”. Her reflective mood continued in a duet with Bob, Duchess, about a grand elderly lady, now past her best in a nursing home, acted out by Anne, suitably clad in a moth-eaten fox-fur stole. Grandly passing orders to “her” gardener in confident aristocratic manner, we discover that, before the deprivations of dementia, she was in fact the landlady of The Duchess pub. It was a sad triumph of pathos.
And on the subject of pubs, Pat introduced a piece of protest nostalgia that elicited murmers of agreement. Why is it when a pub has had a name established for centuries, do new licencees feel the need to change it to something different (that everyone hates)? So a real traditional name is changed into a plastic pastiche of a “real” traditional name.
Bob combined two themes of “fashion” and “father” into a satirical poem: a description of the narrator’s father, a portrait sculptor who against his better judgement agrees to create a bust of Tony Blair, and chooses anthracite as his medium. Bob has quite a biting sense of humour, and in his retelling of the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, has the fate of the hapless Humpty consequent upon his being a lover of the Queen.
Heather (Moulson) brought some well-studied realism to her trio of poems, the cynical verse, Beautician, whose work is only skin deep; Evelyn, a warm epitaph to a deceased friend; and Babysitter, which ironically reveals the subject’s true motives.
Heather (Montford), who is also an artist, put Black on her poetic easel, a study in monochrome, Rembrandt’s skilfully nuanced use of the colour, its association with negative concepts, but its real contribution to the palette as a colour of strength and positivity.
Melissa also had well studied poems on tragic, reflective and philosophical subjects. There was a study of the duties of a soldier in a war, “many keys but no deeds”; a piece considering the now dented armour of chivalry; and the absorptive poem, To Sir with Love.
By way of contrast, there was plenty of humour. Graham came back with verses describing how difficult it was to find rhymes for Tintoretto, a task that had exercised him during a visit to Venice. However the master of comic verse was Robin. First he had a dig at political correctness, with a story about a worker at the Civic Centre, who ticked all the boxes with Equal Opportunities legislation by being a deprived, multiple trans-gender … green Martian! Taking up the theme of “indecision”, Robin then hilariously described a husband and wife in the marital bedroom, preparing for a night out, a “bit of a do”, and the age-old problem of what to wear. Finally, his spooky verse had plenty of scary twists and turns, but was really gripping (where it hurts).
Using the unlikely vehicle of a haiku to reminder us that this inaugural meeting of Performance Poetry was taking place on Whit Sunday, Keith shared some thoughts about the perception of time. The awe that the Apostles must have felt in receiving the Spirit at Pentecost was undoubtedly in a moment when time stood still for them. Taking the idea of time standing still to the romanticism of lovers fearing his pain of separation, he read Louis McNiece’s poem Meeting Point in which “time was away and somewhere else” for two lovers in 1939 about to be separated by war. Keith was the only contributor to read a published poem, but then followed this with his own, Our Room at Noon, which was on a similar theme.
As Keith had pointed out, the contrasting consciousness of time is that of “how time flies when you are enjoying yourselves” and everyone agreed that the two hours of varied verse, rich rhyme and personal poetry vanished very quickly. (Helped a little with fare from The Adelaide.)
Mark Aspen
June 2017
Photography by Graham Harmes
Barnum
by Michael Stewart, and Cy Coleman
Twickenham Operatic Society at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 27th May
Review by Mary Stoakes
Barnum tells the life history of the great American impresario and circus owner in terms of musical theatre and in his programme notes, director Ian Stark, mentions the difficulties of staging such a ‘big top’ entertainment in the confines of the Hampton Hill Theatre.
This was a less lavish production than the one which TOpS mounted just twenty years ago but ingenious use of the stage resources and a hardworking cast brought the ‘greatest show on earth’ to renewed and exciting life in Hampton Hill. Stunning back projections were used to delineate the many different locations and a huge elephant’s eye and part head represented the appearance of Jumbo to great effect. Parades through the auditorium helped to further the circus illusion, as did the ‘bricklayers’ juggling routines as they built Barnum’s famous Museum. Scene changing was slick and kept to a minimum with the more intimate scenes being delineated by the use of carefully managed drapes and screens.
The musically accomplished band was placed at the rear of the stage, high above the action. This tended to upset the balance with the singers below, who had difficulty in projecting over some rather overpowering accompaniment, especially in the more reflective songs. With that criticism out of the way, the colourful big production numbers were very successful, played with great energy by the bands, both real and mimed. The brightly costumed chorus worked their socks off with some remarkable juggling and acrobatic skills (there was even a ‘fire eater’!) There were some exceptional song and dance routines in which all the cast sang, danced and even mimed with great precision, beautifully choreographed by Lacey Creed: especially effective were Come Follow the Band and the very different Black and White.
PT Barnum, the great impresario, was played with loads of charisma by Ben Roberts. Many years ago Michael Crawford laid down the benchmark performance but Ben managed to bring something of his own to the role. The ‘humbug’ was put over with just a hint of self-doubt and the more thoughtful aspects of the character were developed very believably throughout the show. The Colours of my Life was delightful and the patter in some of his other numbers was well delivered. We speculated as to how Ben would manage the fabled tight rope walking scene. In the event, the illusion was well maintained and Barnum safely negotiated his way along the ‘rope’
Ellie Barrett, a newcomer to TOpS, was the perfect foil for Barnum, as his sensible and hard-done-by wife, Chairy. This was a well-rounded and touching performance, full of character with good singing and excellent interaction with both her stage husband and the rest of the cast.
Another stand-out performance was that of Charlie Booker as ‘General’ Tom Thumb. The illusion of his stature was imaginatively realised by seating him initially on a huge chair and, in the solo number which followed, Charlie’s delightful personality and song and dance skills shone out. He also made a vibrant contribution to the ensemble routines.
As Jenny Lind, hired by Barnum to perform in America after her success in Europe, Cate Blackmore with her powerful soprano voice made an instant hit in her opening appearance. Unfortunately during her solo number she was rather let down by the amplification which tended to distort some of her notes and this reviewer felt the band were less supportive than they should have been! Nevertheless the singing was great, following the traditions of Twickenham Operatic Society, and she looked and acted delightfully as The Swedish Nightingale
Fiona Stark, reprising her role of twenty years ago, contributed a humorous cameo as Joice Heth, the Oldest Woman Alive, whom it was claimed by Barnum was George Washington’s nurse. Dan Doidge was in good form as the Ringmaster, presiding over the proceedings with great aplomb and doubling as James Bailey, who eventually joined Barnum to mastermind their world renowned circus. The smaller roles were all well characterised by members of the company who showed their versatility by joining the ensemble as tumblers, jugglers, clowns, aerialists, acrobats, dancers, gymnasts, strongmen, bricklayers, passers-by, museum patrons, beefeaters, Bridgeport Pageant Choir and bands of every size.
This was the ultimate ‘feel good’ show and once again TOpS loyal and enthusiastic following left Hampton Hill Theatre full of praise for Ian Stark’s most enjoyable production.
Mary Stoakes
May 2017
Photographs by Ace
This Was a Man
By Noël Coward
West End Premiere of a Controversial Masterpiece
Venture Wolf at Leicester Square Theatre until 28th May
Review by Mark Aspen
What are society’s values? This is the question that Noël Coward asks in his This Was a Man. Unfortunately for Coward, it was also the question that the Lord Chamberlain was also asking in 1926. In September of that year, Lord Cromer, as Lord Chamberlain, banned the play as it “involves an amount of adultery, cynically and light-heartedly treated, which makes the play more than dubious”. Sir Douglas Dawson, his Comptroller, added, “What better propaganda could the Soviet instigate? Every character in this play, presumably ladies and gentlemen, leads an adulterous life and glories in doing so”.
Of course, 1926 was the year of the General Strike and then was a fear of revolution in the air, so Coward’s satirising adulterous aristocrats might have been incendiary. It may well be that some people, aristocratic or otherwise, might have considered a moral duty pointless after the slaughter of the Great War, a few years earlier. However, it was barely three years previously that Cromer and Dawson had reluctantly passed Coward’s The Vortex for licencing, in spite of the play being about a married lady from the upper echelons of society who has a toy-boy and whose son is a cocaine addict.
This Was a Man is a play clearly rooted in its time, and there it lay for nearly nine decades until the Finborough Theatre resurrected it in 2014. It has never until now had a West End production.
Hence, Venture Wolf’s production, now running at the Leicester Square Theatre, is to be greatly admired for its ambitious enterprise in taking a three-fold risk: resurrecting the play, showing it in the West End, and setting it in a different period. But it is a Noël Coward, so what could go wrong?
Coward wrote many unperformed or unpublished play scripts, including nearly a dozen in 1918, the year that he was discharged from the army on medical grounds, so there may well be good reasons why these scripts, and that of This Was a Man, have gone unproduced. The scenes all seem to be truncated, and seems as if This Was a Man is really a sketch-book for other pieces, (Private Lives perhaps, produced in 1929).
Society portrait painter Edward Churt circle is a thirties-something martini and mah-jong glitterati for whom adultery is as much a social must as the season. His attractive wife Carol enjoys a series of passionate affairs while he turns a blind eye.
This Was a Man is certainly not the best Noël Coward script to work from, but director James Paul Taylor has made the daring choice of resetting it forward by nearly a half-century to the early seventies. Unfortunately, however, this opens up many weaknesses in the play and undermines what might have been an outstanding production. Trim-phones, tie-dye slash curtains and unkempt butlers neither fit with the louche, insouciant amoral atmosphere that the play demands or with its stylishly sparkling background of privilege. Crucially, seventies’ non-contact dancing does not work for the crucial dance-seduction scene.
In spite of that caveat, the performance of Daisy Porter in the central role of Carol Churt, the vampish femme fatale, picks up the character with gusto. Carol is described as “governed by sex” but, somewhat unfairly, “with no intellect to provide ballast”. Although she seems to regard every man who comes past as a potential new plaything, she is by no means as single-dimensioned character as the other protagonists imply. Porter sizzles in the role, sensual, incisive and with a subtlety of expression and just enough clipping of her vowels to smack of classic Coward. With flaming red hair and dangerous red lipstick, matching Carol’s flaming red passion and dangerous red ensnarement, there is something as feline an Art Deco 1920’s Cartier panther about Porter.
The feline nature comes spitting out in her interactions with Zoe St Merryn, her husband’s “close confidante” for whom “marriage is an overrated amusement”. Zoe has just returned from New York, where she has been recuperating after her divorce, and is currently living in Claridges, which she regards as “austere”. (Currently, in 2017, rooms are up to £2,220 per night: I just checked!) When Carol and Zoe have the claws out, catty understates it!
Bibi Lucille, pitches the character of Zoe as a foil to Carol, more resilient and flinty, playing the part with subtlety. (Incidentally, Lucille seems to be cornering the market in rediscoveries of famous playwrights, having recently acted in Shakespeare’s “lost” play Cardenio.) Zoe had been the scapegoat for her philandering husband in their divorce in order to protect his reputation. She regrets having taken a string of lovers in retaliation, but is now trying to rekindle the love of Edward. In many respects, she is a mirror to Carol.
In fact the various characters all seem to be holding up figurative mirrors to each other defects. Every one of them is nursing self-inflicted psychologic wounds, whilst keeping their real feelings well repressed, perhaps they don’t know what their real feelings are.
The melancholic Edward Churt, presumably the once-a-man of the play’s title, has had “all the vitality sucked out of him”. He believes himself to sophisticated and “civilised” by pretending to be indifferent to this wife’s quite open affairs. So, he supress his emotions and rationalises this attitude by taking the “modern” view that Carol is “not his property”. In fact he is stuck in a trap of his own making. Paul Vitty in this role, falls a little short in portraying the sense of sophisticated ennui demanded by Coward, and comes over more as depressed and impotent in his ability to act decisively, until it is all too late.
Enter Edward’s old school chum, Major Evelyn Bathurst, “Evie” to his friends, stiff upper lip, well starched, favourite adjective “splendid!”. Evie knows about his pal’s problems with his wife, and suggests that she should be “read the Riot Act”, and that he is the one to do it. What he doesn’t tell Edward, though, is the plan of action is to set a honey-trap in the form of a little tête-à-tête, an intimate dinner with Carol in his flat. We begin to suspect Evie’s motives, but, true to his plan, he does confront her when she steps up her practiced seduction routine: “You have the soul of a harlot”. But he is rebuffed with ridicule, then tears, then fainting. He is no match for Carol’s skilled manipulations, and eventually breaks down in tears … as she creeps into his bedroom. Tom Pyke growls away as Evie, postures and preens, but does not really convince as the polished military man with the brittle armour. One would expect him to be buffed-up to impeccable perfection, both literally and figuratively, and certainly know how to pronounce “subaltern” and “blackguard”. Evie may have feet of clay, but they wear mirror-finish boots.
Coward has badly served the five minor characters in the play, making them largely scene-setters. However, reference must be made to Blackwell, Evie’s manservant, and almost mute part, played by James Chadburn. Chadburn had Blackwell subtly eavesdropping on Carol and Evie’s intimacies, a slight nod, a hint of a raised eyebrow. It was just enough not to pull the focus from the main action.
In these intimacies, Carol defends her serial infidelities as a reaction against her husband’s indifference to her. Maybe it is a chicken and egg situation, but we do just begin to believe her. Coward’s writing often shows an incipient misogyny, that the woman is culpable every time: an archetypical Eve holds out the bitten apple to a poor defenceless Adam. But in This Was a Man, one feels some sympathy with Carol faced with the lot of emotionally incompetent oafs on the men’s side.
Just after writing This Was a Man, and having its performance licence refused, Coward had a nervous breakdown (on holiday in the Pacific!) and had been generally depressed about his work. One wonders if Edward Churt is a symbolic self-portrait and Carol is a representation of his thwarted writings.
Coward certainly takes the opportunity to take a side-swipe at the Lord Chamberlain’s censors. He has Edward suggest a trip to the theatre to see a play about a woman who takes a lover as young as her son, a play that the Church of England did not approve: clearly a reference to The Vortex. Later he suggests to Zoe that they go to see a “clean play, a love story without sex” because it will be easy to get tickets.
You see, there are some Coward witticisms but the humour in it seems hollow. Without Coward’s usual scintillating quips, there is not too much material to make the comedy zing. Add sophistry without sophistication, and a glitterati without glitter, the Venture Wolf company were on a hard call. It has used a low-budget vehicle to bring an almost-forgotten Coward to its West End premiere, and that is surely no mean achievement, for which the theatre world should be grateful.
Mark Aspen
May 2017
The Mikado
by W.S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan
Sasha Regan’s All-Male The Mikado
Regan De Wynter Productions at Richmond Theatre until 27th May
Review by Mark Aspen
Gilbert and Sullivan is fun! And The Mikado is probably G&S’s most fun piece. As a well-seasoned reviewer, I have seen many manifestations of it: local light operatic societies’ versions, Jonathan Miller’s acknowledged classic, even The Hot Mikado, but with Sasha Regan’s All-Male The Mikado the fun is turbo-charged.
Director Sasha Regan’s inspiration for all-male productions of Gilbert and Sullivan has its spark in her own experiences of single-sex school cross-cast productions, and the awkward humour that can emerge. Her The Mikado, is set in the fifties, as a typical all-boys’ boarding school take a camping trip to the exotic land of Titipu … and immediately goes native. In spite of the obvious play on the idea of “camping”, this is not a Julian and Sandy Polari knockabout, but rather the gentle half-innocence of schoolboys squirming at the idea of dressing up as … girls!! In fact, the only real camp elements were three tents and a campfire, continuously smouldering downstage (the fire, not the tents – although there was a lot of smouldering going on in these).
Ryan Dawson Laight’s economic design strips off theatrical embellishments: the highly mobile tents are almost the only set, and there is not a single kimono in sight. However, these are set against Tim Deiling’s atmospherically lit cyc-cloth, a luminescent forest of leggy trees.
This economy of approach allows the characters to come to the fore, but relies heavily on the performers. And my, how this works: for here is a truly multi-talented cast. These boys can act, they can sing and they can dance.
A strong dance sequence opens the show, and Holly Hughes’ choreography is relevant and lyrical, nicely setting the scene.
The self-deprecating style, which adds to the humour, is obvious right from the overture, delivered on a solitary keyboard by tireless Musical Director Richard Baker. Maybe my ear was falling in with the style of the production, but was the piano sound tuned to a slightly high pitch? If so, it certainly foreshadowed the falsetto voices of the “female” characters. How can singers take their so voices high in their register for a whole evening? There is no change of key and they stay true to the characters. It is literally breath-taking.
But what about the “chap” chaps? Our wandering minstrel, the hapless Nanki-Poo, is played straight down the middle by Richard Munday, a strong resonant tenor, as a somewhat bemused suitor, wandering in on all these bizarre goings-on. However, the Lord High Everything Else, Pooh-Bah, vain, ambitious and hyper-mercenary, is given full-rein by the rich-voiced baritone Ross Finnie. (There was something about Finnie that reminded me of Alex Salmond, but it may just have been the Sottish accent and tatty tartan waistcoat.) Then, of course, the Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko (a role created by W.S. Gilbert for D’Oyle Carte’s star, George Grossmith), here played by the lithe-limbed David McKechnie as an omnipresent éminence grise, who nevertheless has to wrestle with the difficult notion that Lord High Executioners cannot cut off another person’s head, until they have cut off their own. Ko-Ko also has to wrestle with tongue-twisting patter songs, including the “Little List”. I was waiting for the conventional topical additions to those about whom he notes “they’d none of ’em be missed!”, but even in the midst of a general election campaign, there was alas none of the “none”. No doubt the producers are playing very safe here.
The “chaps” form a very strong contingent within a very strong ensemble company, but (and this is probably inevitable in a cross-cast production) it is the “girls” who steal the show. The arrival of the “Three Little Maids” is always awaited with anticipation, but here the more so with our “girls”, Pitti-Sing (Jamie Jukes) and Peep-Bo (Richard Russell Edwards), played subtlety enough with just a hint of femininity (and shorts slightly rolled up) and their sister, Yum-Yum, the love interest of the show. Alan Richardson is wonderful in this role, balancing the characterisation between sympathy and humour, without straying into caricature. Perhaps typifying his approach is Yum-Yum’s solo “The sun, whose rays are all ablaze”, delivered with beauty without losing the irony. All three “little maids” are remarkable in maintaining flawless falsetto, seemingly effortlessly, whilst preserving the integrity of their characters.
For a grand entrance, that of Katisha must be hard to beat: in tweeds, on a “sit-up-and-beg” bicycle, and wearing three (!) hats, one top of another, with one upside-down. This entrance though belies the impact of Alex Weatherhill’s outstanding portrayal of Katisha, which brings out the pathos and poignancy of the part. The singing of solos pieces, such as “The hour of gladness is dead and gone” and “Alone, and yet alive” are poetic. Nevertheless, the humour is never lost, the duet with Ko-Ko, the well-known “Tit Willow” laced a delicate lyricism through the broad fabric of fun.
The rather complicated plot of comical contradictions, overlaid by Gilbert’s still applicable satirical social comment, comes to an end with the deus ex machina, the Mikado himself. Bass, James Waud strides into this part with great stage presence as the pragmatic despot, summoning up as much benevolence as one can from one who looks forward to boiling miscreants in oil.
Sasha Regan, was awarded the Special Achievement Award at the “Offies” earlier this year for her contribution to musical theatre, her all-male G&S shows, conceived at her home base at the Union Theatre. Of the current tour of The Mikado, she says it “is going to be a great year – it’s beyond exciting”.
Regan pitches The Mikado just right: never plays for laughs where they would be misplaced, but lets the mirth rip where it is right; never parodies where lyricism is best; but never slams on the brakes when the turbo-charger kicks in the fun. Titipu will never be the same again.
Mark Aspen
May 2017
Photographs Courtesy of Stewart McPherson.
Dashing Dalby and his Bountiful Daughter
By Keith Wait
SMDG at Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare, 13th May
Review by Celia Bard
Nestling on the River Thames in Hampton is a small, picturesque pleasure garden hiding a tiny treasure, Garrick’s Temple, built by David Garrick in the 18th Century to celebrate the talents of William Shakespeare. This delightful little building was a fitting venue for Keith Wait’s latest drama documentary, Dashing Dalby and his Bountiful Daughter, in which he draws heavily from social history, meticulously researched material of people closely associated with Hampton, and St.Mary’s Parish Church and its churchyard, situated just a few hundred feet away from Garrick’s beautiful folly. Indeed, the main inspiration for his story may be said to be the “funny tomb” of Three Men in a Boat fame, which turns out to be the tomb, positioned on the east wall at the end of the south aisle of St. Mary’s church, of Susanna Thomas and her mother, Lady Dorothy.
Although this was a rehearsed reading, SMDG succeeded in entertaining its audience with a thoughtful, imaginative, and well-constructed production. Skilfully directed by Helen Smith, narrators and actors gave life to these long dead folk, otherwise forgotten.
Photograph by Bill Bulford
Genteel music sets the scene for the entrance of the Venturers, businessmen involved in financial enterprises involving risk. The Venturers are carrying a gaming board, but before their game begins they are interrupted by the energetic entrance of Dalby Thomas, a merchant and courtier, described by the narrator as a “complex character, highly principled, rash and brash with a strong propensity to upset people”. Ron Hudson’s interpretation of this role was excellent. He was highly successful in portraying the many facets of this character’s personality, at times protagonist and then antagonist as judged from his life style and the effect this has on his wife’s perspective of their relationship. I would respectfully suggest that more dialogue between the two reflecting this would have added more to our understanding of these characters.
Lady Dorothy (Gina Way) and Mrs Thomas (Christina Bulford). Photograph by Doina Moss
Dalby’s wife, played by Gina Way, was credible in the way she could convey the age range expected of her. At the beginning of her relationship with Dalby she is romantic, young, and very much in love with him. But after two children and forced to spend many years apart from him because of his travels, she becomes disheartened, preferring to live away from Hampton and in her father’s estates in Blandford. This was reflected in her characterisation.
Sir T Archer (William Ormerod) and Mrs Thomas (Christina Bulford). Photograph by Bill Bulford
Although I am loathe to single out individuals, for the whole of the cast were admirable, I should like to further mention Christina Bulford. This young actress has a striking stage presence and gave a lively and thoughtful performance as Susanna Thomas, the daughter of Dalby. Susanna is an interesting character for she is clothed in a thin veil of mystery. The audience is never certain about the nature of her relationship with Sir Thomas Archer, the eminent architect, and whom Susanna describes as “witty and the epitome of charm”. The mystery continues for after her death one of the main beneficiaries in her will, Susanna Warren, is a five-year old orphan from Barbados, who is to inherit all her estates except those in Hampton. Why this should be so is not revealed. Perhaps Keith Wait will enlighten us in his next instalment of this series which he presents at Garrick’s Temple.
Further mention must be made of the director, Helen Smith. The actors only had a tiny area in which to perform but Helen managed to organise them so that they were never static for long. She made use of the central aisle for entrances and varied her groupings. This, together with the pace in which one scene moved from one to the next, the vocal pace and the suitability of their wardrobe which transverse the centuries, served to make this a most enjoyable, visually pleasing, and informative production.
Celia Bard
May 2017
Footloose the Musical
Sell-a-Door at Richmond Theatre until 20th May
Review by Georgia Renwick
Oh, to be footloose and fancy free! Footloose the Musical, which is appearing at Richmond Theatre this week as part of a UK tour, is a slice of life in Southern-State 1980s America. Bursting with vivacious songs and energetic, aerobic dance moves, whilst also bristling with teenage angst and rebellion. It tells the story of teenager Ren and his mother, who have moved to the fictional town of Bomont where dancing, liquor and rock and roll have been banned – but they don’t let that stop them! It is a rip-roaring retro blast of 80s nostalgia; denim cut offs, pom-poms, milkshakes, roller skates, baseball caps and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll all make an appearance, but then some things never go out of style! And Footloose still has the recipe for a foot-stomping, fun night out.
The original 1984 movie was loosely based on events that took place in the small, rural town of Elmore, Oklahoma – and if you have seen the 1984 movie (or the 2011 reboot) you may be thinking you’ve seen it all before – but you would be wrong. This revival takes the 1998 screen-to-stage musical version, which featured new songs as well as the hit title track Footloose and other big 80s hitters including Holding out for a Hero and I’m Free, and gives it a kick for a new generation. The newly remixed songs (under the direction of David Keech) are played with panache by the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist actors, including, besides the usual keys and guitars, a flute, clarinet, harmonica, three saxophones with the drummer conducting it all from his drum cage on high. Having the musicians perform on stage for us brings a freshness and playfulness to the sometimes synthetic musical style. Lauren Storer silences the town council with her flute, seeing the strict town pastor give a solo on the electric guitar is a special moment, and there’s even a credible rap.
The addition of instruments has the ensemble cast gelling in a collaborative water-tight way that is rarely seen, and it’s a joy to watch. The vocal talents of the girls are given the freedom to really shine, belting in faultless harmony. They may not have as large a chorus to play with as some of the larger West End musicals, but their pace and energy more than make up for it. It never sounds too thin. Designer Sarah Perks has also done a fantastic job of creating a compact set that encompasses the organised chaos of a instrumentalist-actor company, who are able to move about slickly. The neon lights flash to the pulse of the show, it’s a real party atmosphere!
Joshua Dowen and Hannah Price lead the cast as Ren (made famous by Kevin Bacon) and Ariel, their chemistry as a pairing is very natural and heats up as the show goes on, as a surprising amount of emotional depth comes into play. Gareth Gates puts paid to the pop star cliché of playing the romantic lead by taking on the comedy role of Ren’s friend Willard. With his deep-south accent, straw hat, dungarees and toothpick he was almost unrecognisable from the gawky Pop Idol I remember and he proves in this production he is more than just a famous face with the cheekiness, charm and excellent comic timing he lends to his role. His cameo in Holding Out for a Hero also showed off some other new … ahem … assets.
It was a pleasure to see Maureen Nolan as mother to Ariel and school principal, after her many years in both the West End and touring productions of Blood Brothers. Her throaty vocal is the most passionate of the production, a credit to a show which gives voice not only to the younger generation but also to the feelings of their parents, caught between trying to protect their children and wanting them to be happy.
Footloose tells a story of young people kicking up against the rules and making themselves heard, which teens of any generation can relate to but at present more than most. The presence of Trump in the American and indeed world consciousness is unavoidable, and by the young people, largely unwanted. (Statistical aside: If just the votes of 18-25 year olds had counted, 93% of electoral votes would have been Democrat blue. Here in the UK at the minute it is a similar story. If just the votes of our 18-25 year old’s had been counted in the referendum – out of a 63% youth turnout – we would have remained in the EU.) In Footloose the pastor has to concede that his fears cannot hold back an entire generation from their birthright to dance, 33 years since the script first aired, are the grown-ups still making the same mistakes?
It’s not a question that this production tries to answer, but young and old alike we could all use for a night of footloose and fancy free fun and foot-stomping, and this is just the ticket.
Georgia Renwick
May 2017
Jerusalem
By Jez Butterworth
Teddington Theatre Club
at Hampton Hill Theatre until 20th May
Review by Melissa Syversen
I am just going to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The original production of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem back in 2009 was such stuff as theatre legends are made of. It premiered the Royal Court Theatre to critical acclaim and subsequently transferred to the West End, to Broadway and back to the West End. It was directed by Ian Rickson and it starred acting royalty Sir Mark Rylance who won every acting award imaginable including a Tony and an Olivier for his portrayal of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron. Playwright David Hare has claimed it is the last successful ‘State of England’ play of the proud English theatre tradition. So, you know, no pressure.
Ok, now let’s shoo the elephant on its way.
It is St. George’s day in the imaginary village of Flintock, Wiltshire. The local county fair is on, with its wet sponge throwing and Morris dancers dancing. Through the air, we hear songs and laughter coming from the village square and into the forest clearing where local gipsy and former daredevil Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron lives in his caravan. Rooster is a highly sought-after man. The local council wants him out, having given him his final eviction notice to be gone by the end of the day. The local youths want access to his wide supply of drugs, alcohol and tall tales. His son wants to spend the day with him and a local thug wants to know where his missing step-daughter is.
The role of Rooster is the kind any actor would kill for. Rooster encapsulates the subversive spirit of England. He is both old and new, local legend and outcast, delving in the edge of society. He has an unmatched spirit of life but a darkness beyond what can fully be put into words. This duality is what writer Jez Butterworth excels at capturing so vividly throughout his body of work. He has an unmatched ability to blend social commentary, personality with something larger and mythical: a sense of spiritual folklore that gets under one’s skin. It is easy to laugh when Rooster tells a story of how he one morning met a giant who claims to have built Stonehenge, and yet one is left with an unsettling feeling that it might just be true.
Jerusalem is not an easy play to do. But together the creative team and the cast rises to the challenge and perform this modern English myth with a strong sense of comradery, heart, and joy that they generously share with the audience. Given the strength of the ensemble work, I am hard pressed to pull out any single performance amongst them. Steve Webb centres the cast and gives a solid Rooster Byron. He makes the role his own instead of trying to imitate any predecessor, which is exactly what is needed for this sort of role. His Rooster Byron is younger and fitter with a charismatic, former Rockstar sex-appeal that works well. In the hands of Marc Batten, Rooster’s would-be sidekick Ginger is portrayed almost like a lost puppy, both dependent and resentful of the lifestyle he never grew out of. Steve Taylor too, impresses as the local pub landlord Wesley.
Director John Buckingham has given the cast a freedom to play and breathe which serves the production well. It allows the text and the actors to really shine. The only thing I had an issue with was the random peek-a-boos through the fourth wall. For most of the play, the cast works hard to construct the world around them, envisioning the trees of the forest, the county fair in the distance etc. However, three of four times during the play, usually as a character tells a story or has a longer speech, Buckingham has the actors directly address the audience. It stands out because they break the rules of the world they themselves have created. I am all for audience interaction in theatre, but if one decides to take that route (and there is defiantly an argument to be made for doing so in Jerusalem, with its almost Shakespearian qualities) one must commit to that choice fully. Here it felt more jarring than engaging.
The design team has put together an impressive and beautiful world on the Hampton Hill Theatre Stage. Mart Stonelake and Alan Corbett have designed and constructed a highly-detailed set, complete with caravan and chicken coup, which is complemented with beautiful projection and lighting by Aaron Lobo and Mike Elegy respectively. James Bedbrook’s music and Charles J Halford’s sound design have put together a lovely and efficient soundscape and Lesley Alexander and Margaret Boulton have put together wonderful costumes.
Teddington Theatre Club has been ambitious in their choice of play and I commend them for it. Disregarding the theatrical and technical challenges of a play like Jerusalem, the timing of this play is arguably even more pressing now than it was when it premiered eight years ago. With the rise of globalism and as a counter result, nationalism, the question of what constitutes Englishness is more loaded than ever. Not only in the United Kingdom but in countries all over the western world have issues surrounding national identity, citizenship and patriotism. Plays like Jerusalem and characters like Rooster Byron can help us to see ourselves and who we are, where we come from and where we want to go.
Melissa Syversen
May 2017
Photgraphs by Jo Jo Leppinck for Handwritten Photography.
Fracked!
by Alistair Beaton
Chichester Festival Theatre Company
at Richmond Theatre until 13th May
Review by Eleanor Marsh
I have recently been researching my family tree. Apparently I come from agricultural stock; the ladies of my family until the middle of the 19th century were straw plaiters in Biggleswade. When free trade was introduced in the 1860’s and the English market was undercut by cheaper imports from Italy the trade died off and my ancestors were forced to relocate closer to London to seek their fortune. So imagine the chord that Fracked! struck with me when only ten minutes into this most relevant of satires there was mention of more jobs for village locals if no one minded the environmental impact; and that the unscrupulous PR team determined to get the fracking show on the road was named “Moxley Biggleswade”. That could be a coincidence, but Alastair Beaton’s extremely funny and thought-provoking script didn’t seem to allow for coincidence. The research that has gone into this well-crafted play is evident throughout, as is Beaton’s obvious desire to try to see all sides of this contentious subject by creating in Hal, the head of Deerland Energy an amiable soul who doesn’t like bad language and is motivated by the altruistic desire to “keep the lights on”.
As one would expect from an author steeped in the tradition of Spitting Image, the play has not been allowed to rest on its current affairs laurels since it was first shown last year. There was a laugh out loud moment at the expense of Diane Abbott and much resigned chuckling from the Richmond audience in recognition of the “strong and stable” slogan.
Although the opening of the play is somewhat Ayckbournesque with stock parish council types being caught unawares by an unlikely protester it quickly becomes a clarion call for the protest movement. The audience is never lectured, but is continuously informed of environmental facts that are quite shocking (just look up the carbon emission of an AGA) and drip-fed the rather frightening truth of the erosion of the democratic process through the infiltration of both academic establishments and corridors of power by big business. This is all done in such an entertaining way that at times people were, I’m sure, laughing through tears of frustration.
James Cotterill has designed a truly impressive set that is stylish and does exactly what it is supposed to. The action moves very smoothly between the clinical PR office and the cosiest of cosy country kitchens. The irony of this kitchen – home to environmental activists – was not lost. The above mentioned AGA was in situ and there were some nice touches in script and direction with regard to online shopping and general recycling. Apart from one or two moments when characters nearly – but not quite – went into caricature mode, Richard Wilson’s direction was spot on and the attention he has paid to small details really enhances the piece.
The publicity for this tour has, as so often is the case revolved around the two “star names” from TV – in this case Anne Reid and James Bolam, both of whom gave sterling individual performances playing somewhat against type but they were really cooking with gas in their scenes together. They have known each other a long time, have worked together frequently and slipped into the roles of long married couple with ease. Casting them was a shrewd move in order to guarantee audiences. However, it is to the credit of writer, director and both Miss Reid and Mr Bolam that although they are very obviously lead characters they never appear to be “stars”. This play is a true ensemble piece and given the nature of the democratic process it is trying to salvage that is as it should be.
Fracked! (or Please Don’t Use the F-Word) is a highly entertaining night out. If you can get a ticket I urge you to do so. As they said about the ozone layer – it will be too late when it’s gone!
Eleanor Marsh
May 2017
Editor’s Note:
Alistair Beaton’s clever and thought provoking satire led us to think about the facts behind fracking, so we asked Paul Lawrence, former Director of Technology with Technip, and expert on shale gas development in the US and the UK, to put us in the picutre. Here’s what he said:
Shale Gas and Fracking
Shale gas is defined as natural gas from shale formations. The shale acts as both the source and the reservoir for the natural gas. Older shale gas wells were vertical while more recent wells are primarily horizontal and need artificial stimulation, like hydraulic fracturing (fracking), to produce.
Some analysts expect that shale gas will greatly expand worldwide energy supply. Increased shale gas production in the US and Canada could help prevent Russia and Persian Gulf countries from dictating higher prices for the gas it exports to European countries. However, potential leakages of methane gas from shale gas wells could offset the carbon dioxide reductions and climate benefit of switching from coal to natural gas, as methane is 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, ton-for-ton.
Although shale gas has been produced for more than 100 years in the Appalachian Basin and the Illinois Basin of the United States, the wells were often economically marginal. Higher natural gas prices in recent years and advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal completions have made shale gas wells more profitable.
The natural gas boom in the US due to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has provided the country with a cleaner burning, inexpensive fuel source that has lowered energy bills for industrial facilities and homeowners alike. The fracking process is still a hot topic of controversy wherever it is used to extract fuel. Environmentalists claim it will ruin watersheds and leave scars on the earth, and other concerns range from flammable tap water to carcinogenic soil. Here are just three things fracking won’t do:
Shale has low matrix permeability, so gas production in commercial quantities requires fractures to provide permeability. Shale gas has been produced for years from shales with natural fractures; the shale gas boom in recent years has been due to modern technology in creating extensive artificial fractures around well bores. Horizontal drilling is often used with shale gas wells.
Isolated incidents of pollution to freshwater wells have been caused when drilling is done too close to the surface, and natural gas companies have settled several cases where damage is attributed to the gas wells. The point is, however, that the horror story of flammable drinking water is extremely uncommon. For one thing, the drilling components used to trap the natural gas are encased in steel and cement to prevent it from escaping. If the casing is done properly, it is nearly impossible for methane gas to escape. Also, fracking is done so far underground, that escaped methane would have to travel through solid rock in order to contaminate aquifers.
There are several claims that fracking activity has spurred a number of low-registering seismic disturbances. A 2013 study by Durham University found fracking to be “not significant” in causing earthquake activity. The study explains that seismic disturbances caused by hydraulic fracturing are minimal. So small, in fact, that they would only be detectable by the sensitive instruments used by geoscientists.
Fears over pollution and contamination of drinking water and the environment from fracking fluid seem to stem from a lack of information about what this rock-shattering mixture actually is. The secret to fracking fluid is water and sand. Those two components make up about 98% of the fluid mix. The remaining 2% is composed of ingredients that are familiar to many of us, such as citric acid, guar gum (a common food additive, used to suspend the sand in the fluid), and even common table salt. Certainly not all of these chemicals are harmless to the environment or to drinking water. But, the fracking industry has a habit of recovering most of its fluid and recycling it. This does not prevent every drop of fluid from being spilled, but it certainly means that most of the material is recovered. This saves the company doing the drilling money as well as improving its environmental impact.
Like any method of recovering fossil fuels, hydraulic fracturing does do damage to the environment. But, even accounting for methane leakage during extraction, the total carbon cost of natural gas is less than that of coal or oil. The transition to natural gas for power generation in many places has led to a drop in carbon emissions.
In support of arguing against any ban on fracking, the journal Science recently said that worldwide, “more than one million hydraulic fracturing treatments have been conducted, with perhaps only one documented case of direct groundwater pollution resulting from injection of hydraulic fracturing chemicals used for shale gas extraction.” The report acknowledges that “there is no question that the technology poses some risk to air quality, water quality, and ecosystem health. It also poses a risk of increasing greenhouse gas emissions”. However, it asserts that these factors can be mitigated sufficiently with current technologies as to not pose a risk that is significant enough to justify a ban on the practice.
Read Paul Lawrence’s full note here
The Pillowman
by Martin McDonagh
Teddington Theatre Club at The Coward Room, Hampton Hill Theatre until 6th May
Review by Thomas Forsythe
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin … …
… … but I guarantee that you will not be sitting comfortably for very long.
If you like your humour to be black, then The Pillowman is the vantablack of humour. And the humour is the foil to as gruesome a tale as ever entered the Brothers Grimm’s corpus.
Then come out from behind the sofa, peep between your fingers, and I’ll start again.
Once upon a time, there was a director called Kelly Wood, who specialises in plays that intertwine horror and humour and a writer who specialises in plays about … er, rural life in the west of Ireland?
Yes, Martin McDonagh is better known for stage plays set in bucolic Celtic surroundings, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara orThe Cripple of Inishmaan. Breaking the mould, The Pillowman was his first play not to be set in County Galway, the home of his parents. It had its world premiere at the National in 2003 (although it did appear as a rehearsed reading at the Finborough Theatre in 1995). However, interestingly, it was not until 2015 that The Pillowman had it Irish premiere (in Galway), having had premieres in nine other countries in the interim.
Kelly Wood’s first full directorial piece for TTC was in the controversial Night of Dark Intent in 2013, another piece of black humour and horror, albeit with a slightly lighter touch than The Pillowman. In this remarkable piece, she demonstrates clearly that she has mastered the genre. The Pillowman is a play that is highly disturbing, full of uneasy humour and at the same time deeply touching. It unnervingly lurches from explicit violence to tender lyricism. It is also cleverly written, as stories sit within stories and the plot can be interpreted in several ways. Wood has therefore a challenging piece to move from page to stage, and the challenge was undoubtedly well met.
McDonagh never makes the time nor the place setting of The Pillowman clear, but it is set within a totalitarian police state in the recent past, which smacks strongly of Eastern Europe in the 1960s. We are in the subterranean interrogation cells of the police headquarters. The outstanding skills of TTC’s inventive set designer, Trine Taraldsvik, have transformed the intimate space of the Hampton Hill Theatre’s Coward Studio into a menacing and claustrophobic space. The walls are brutal concrete blocks, rendered in trompe d’œil; the floors pierced with drains and grilles; the furniture steel. The details are ironic statements of the nature of the room’s business, sacks marked “Police Evidence” stacked high, a “No Smoking” sign.
Even as the audience foregathers, there, sitting on a chair, is a prisoner with a black bag over his head. At the start, a policeman enters and tells the prisoner to remove the bag, as it simply looks silly. At once the prevailing tone of the play is struck: a building and dissipation of horror to humour and of humour to horror.
The prisoner is Katurian K Katurian, a writer of fairy-stories that describe macabre killings of young children. However, these killings are identikit matches of those of real life children found murdered after being horrifically tortured. His inquisitors are Tupolski, the lead detective, who declares himself to be the “good cop” and Ariel, the brutal and short-tempered “bad cop”. Or is it the other way round? In this play, there all the time hovers a feeling that what you see is not what you get: the question of what is real and what is a story is left ambiguous.
Ariel’s methods of interrogation are to the point. His opening is to bang the head of his prisoner so hard on the steel table that everyone in the audience gasps (and that’s just for starters). Tupolski’s methods are more psychological, he has a good line in sarcasm peppered with ironic non-sequiturs … and he is the one who wears the gun. Katurian is also the carer for his older brother, Michal, who is “slow to get things”. When we learn that Michal has also been taken into custody from his school for special needs, we know that the police interrogation methods will take another tack. Both brothers are suspected of implication in the children’s murders. They are threatened with summary execution. Then Katurian hears Michal’s voice, screaming in agony from a neighbouring cell. He is being tortured… or is he?
Luke Michaels as Ariel (last seen at TTC as the sinister taciturn waiter in Dinner) pitches the level of menace just right, never understated but never straying into caricature. Brooding and introspective, his portrayal nevertheless allows room for hints of humanity to glimmer through the cracks. Charles Golding plays a Tupolski that is controlled and controlling. He is the puller of strings. The sharp knife of sarcasm and even sharper tool of ridicule are whetted to perfection. Golding knows how to balance the black comedy with a sense of menace. When extracting a confession, Tupolski says, “It’s just like being at school … except that school didn’t execute you … unless it was a tough school”. The timing was spot-on.
Tom Cooper’s depiction of the retarded Michal put across his damaged and vulnerable nature whilst showing a child-like but crafty other edge. It is through Michal that we hear the tragic back-story of the brothers, their years of physical abuse at the hands of their parents. Michal was tortured by his parents so that his harrowing screams would filter into the talented young Katurian’s dreams to inspire him to become an eminent writer. To this extent the parents’ grotesque experiment succeed in that it produced Katurian’s hypnotically ghoulish fairy-stories.
These fairy-stories of Katurian’s are symbolically auto-biographical, and in these stories sit others like the figures in a Babushka doll. Interestingly, in the real world McDonagh and his brother were abandoned by their parents in London when they returned to Galway when Martin McDonagh was eleven years old. Maybe the nested Babushka dolls reflect an auto-biographical element into real life.
It is in the recounting of these stories that McDonagh’s style widens into a broad lyricism, a poetic form that has a strange mesmerising beauty in spite of its horrific subject matter. And here the TTC’s production is astounding. Katurian tells his stories from the intimacy of a tightly spot-lit circle, to a mesmerising soundscape and accompanied by projections of sepia drawings with a wabi-sabi quality. Mention must be made at this point of the creative team. Steph Pang’s lighting design is subtlety atmospheric, often with candlelit feel, but incorporating nice effects such as a black-light special to revel blood splashes on the wall and floor as luminous traces; Nick Eliott’s edgy soundscape included music from Ghosts by NIИ (the industrial rock band, Nine Inch Nails); whereas the drawings by illustrator Michelle Sabev are influenced by The Brothers Quay. Tom Wright’s costume design is crisply to the point, white for the “innocent” prisoners, black for the “evil” torturers.
Katurian tells his stories, some juvenile such as The Little Green Pig; some ostensibly reassuring like The Pillowman; others with terrifying endings, The Little Apple Men, The Three Gibbet Crossroads, The Tale of the Town on the River and The Little Jesus, or the auto-biographical The Writer and the Writer’s Brother; but all with utterly shocking conclusions.
It is in the telling of these stories that the outstanding acting of Tom Shore as Katurian comes to the fore. He is a consummate story-teller and has the audience transfixed. Set this against the totally engaging portrayal of Katurian, which has the audience gripped with every direction of his feelings, fear, defiance, pain, exasperation, then it was a tour-de-force. Katurian has multiple dilemmas, but the ultimate is does he save himself, his beloved brother or his life’s work, his stories?
As each of the four main characters’ backstories emerge our sympathies swing between them, but the ending, never predictable, is not what the audience expected or hoped. However, as throughout the play, the ending has more twists than, say, a little green pig’s tail.
Katurian is interrogated at one point about the style of his writing. He replies, “It is something –esque; I’m not sure what”. The same could be said of McDonagh’s treatment of The Pillowman. Think Grimm-esque overpainted Kafka-esque, with Orwell-esque shading and a little Pinter-esque or even Orton-esque detailing.
We are told that writing is “worth getting your elbows broken for”, but is this a play about the responsibilities of the writer, about the power of the pen, or about power itself? Is it about fidelities and values? Or is it about the nature of reality and what you can believe? Whatever it is about, The Pillowman is a cracking multi-layered story and, for all its unsettling horror, TTC’s version is utterly mesmerising.
… but don’t expect that fairy-story ending … “and they all lived happily ever after”.
Thomas Forsythe
April 2017
Photographs by Jonathan Constant
The Seagull
by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Torben Betts
Richmond Shakespeare Society, at The Mary Wallace Theatre
Review by Catherine Wilson
By kind permission of Essential Surrey
Located just off The Embankment at Twickenham, you’ll find a hidden gem, The Mary Wallace Theatre, which for the forthcoming week hosts one of Chekhov’s great works, The Seagull. As the audience gathers in the auditorium, so too do the cast on stage, a veritable mix of summer guests, assembling for the opening of an avant-garde play set upon an idyllic Russian lake. It is quickly apparent that this is an ensemble of individuals all who are all deeply concerned with their own self happiness, individually vying for attention and each striving for change.
We are introduced to the playwright Konstantin (a strong performance by Liam Hurley) a man clearly consumed with the pursuit of Art, who is not only suffering in his artistic endeavours but too in the field of love – and he is not the only one. The subject of his desire is Nina, the protagonist of his play and Magdalena Jablonska sets the pace and standard with a flawlessly over the top performance of Konstantin’s new work.
Through the dialogue Chekov hints to the complex relationships that link the ensemble. He does not reveal the characters at first encounter, instead the audience must piece together the motives behind each individual’s behaviour. The play is centred around a string of unrequited love – Simon is in love with Masha, who is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with Nina, who falls in love with Trigorin, who eventually reverts to his affair with Arkadina, who really only loves herself. This makes for compelling viewing and it is in the intricacies of the characters that the failings and frailty of the human condition is wonderfully portrayed. Resultantly, the play is as relevant today as when it was written in 1895.
This is in part due to Torben Betts’ adaptation of the classic, which is a startlingly modern and thrusts the language into the 21st century. In this, perhaps some of the subtleties in language of the Chekov original are missing, however this is a fast paced evening which was provocative and captivating from start to finish and every actor should be applauded for portraying the variety of characters with realism and insight.
Despite the narcissistic and negative tendencies, we are able to relate and there are many laughs afforded throughout the course of the evening. Perhaps one of the funniest interactions is between rejected and unheard Simon (Peter Easterbrook) and the brusque and unfulfilled Masha (Rachel Burnham) and yet, despite the comedy we can only feel sympathy as we watch the characters unravel before our eyes.
The play is cleverly staged with the action taking place amongst the aisles, from all angles, and this along with the use of recorded inner thoughts there is a real sense of being an intimate witness to the events unfolding. The set design, whilst simple, is beautifully evocative and effectively translates the passage of time.
The members of the cast work superbly together with the comedic relief ultimately making the finale all the more poignant and tragic. For me, Dorothy Duffy as Arkadina is the star of the show (both as a character and actress!) and she is well supported by the self-obsessed Trigorin (Darren McIlroy) and the quiet discontent of Peter (John Mortley).
Richmond Shakespeare Society has created an engaging and interesting production of The Seagull and I look forward to their upcoming season with anticipation.
Catherine Wilson, Essential Surrey
April 2017
Mark Aspen 