Never Mind the Rugby
We Gather: Poets on the Move
Poetry Performance, promenade at Richmond, 20th November
Part of the BE Richmond We Gather Programme
Review by Greg Freeman
To be fair, the rugby fans didn’t turn a hair when they encountered a group of poets beside the River Thames in Richmond while they were heading from the pub to nearby Twickenham. On the other hand, they didn’t break their stride. The poets, including myself, were from Poetry Performance in Teddington, a regular open-mic night which has run on Zoom during lockdown – and still does – but has now ventured back to its old stamping ground, upstairs at the Adelaide pub, as well.
We only not clashed with the England v South Africa match, but with the closing events of Richmond literature festival. Our walk around local landmarks was not on the festival bill, not even on its outer fringe. Perhaps it should have been?
No matter. The walk started outside Richmond Theatre, where a few poems were read, crossed the town’s expansive green, surrounded by historic and attractive houses, before stopping by a gatehouse which is all that remains of Richmond Palace, torn down brick by brick after the execution of Charles I. More poems were read, packed with interesting details about the old palace – the great fire, and the fact that Henry VII and Elizabeth I both slept and died there – with pauses while descending planes trundled over our heads.
Read more…Salon Culture
Rose Opera in Recital
Rose Opera, at the 1901 Arts Club, Waterloo, 17th November
Review by Mark Aspen
Here is salon culture in style, the intimate soirée, sans salonnières. Strip away that formality and conversazione and enter the charming 1901 Arts Club, the bijoux bolt-hole known only to aficionados of chamber music, tucked away near the hustle and bustle of Waterloo Station. Think a miniature version of a Pall-Mall club, but where you don’t need to wear a necktie. All is chintzy or bee-waxed antique furniture, comfy in a whisky-and-cigars sort of way.
Originally the headmaster’s house for the church school associated with the nearby St John’s, Waterloo (a magnificent Greek Revival church; think the Acropolis with a steeple), it was bought in 2007 by the philanthropist, Joji Hattori, to be used as a space for chamber music that had the intimate ambience of a private residence. Tonight we are welcomed by the genial Glenn Kesby on behalf of the venue, who invites us to stay afterwards for the aforementioned whisky; and then by Rose Opera trustee, Professor Alethea Tabor, who introduces the evening.
The programme comprises three sets of Lieder by Mahler, Richard Strauss and Rachmaninov, parenthesised by two pieces by the contemporary English composer, James Francis Brown, who is with us, an honoured guest in the audience.
Read more…Darts in the Ski Lodge
The Valkyrie
by Richard Wagner, libretto translated by John Deathridge
ENO with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, at the Coliseum, until 10 December
Review by Matthew Grierson
Richard Jones’s new staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle begins with a small fire downstage that, given safety concerns about the venerable Coliseum, is the largest conflagration we’re allowed. It’s a slow-burner, and in that respect rather like the opening encounter between separated siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde (Nicky Spence and Emma Bell). The burgeoning relationship could be human and affecting, easing us into the tetralogy after the pandemic rather than blasting us with the bombast that, as a Wagner novice, I’d anticipated. But instead the first act tends to be slow and, peculiarly, quiet.
The tone is also at odds with the sturdy, outdoor aesthetic of our ill-fated protagonists, with their sensible boots, jeans and tees, and the woodshop vibe of Sieglinde and Hunding’s marital home. I say ‘woodshop’, and in fact a huge ash tree grows in the middle of the self-assembly hut and right through the exposed rafters. It’s one way to juxtapose the domestic and mythic aspects of the opera, I suppose; but if this is a show home then I’m not buying.
Read more…Check the Gate
Stones in His Pockets
by Marie Jones
Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre until 20th November
Review by Andrew Lawston
Hollywood has come to Hampton Hill Theatre courtesy of Teddington Theatre Club, as two extras muddle through the filming of a costume drama in County Kerry, Ireland. Over the course of two hugely enjoyable acts, Stones in his Pockets by Marie Jones deflates every romantic notion you may ever have had about film-making, painfully plausibly.
Given that the setting is a film with a cast of hundreds, it’s appropriate that this play has a cast of two, playing dozens. Brendan Leddy plays Charlie, a video shop manager driven out of business by a corporate competitor, who has packed a tent and left his home to “do Ireland”, washing up on the film set apparently by chance. Ian Kinane plays Jake, a local man with a restless soul.
Both Jake and Charlie are played to perfection, two laddish men in their 30s who drink and exchange banter and ogle the actresses. When we first meet them, Charlie is trying to wangle an extra portion of lemon meringue pie from the catering truck, and this seems to be his main goal in life. They both begin the play apparently carefree, but it becomes evident that both are deeply dissatisfied with their aimless lives.
Read more…A Fundamental Hit
The Dragon of Wantley
by John Frederick Lampe, libretto by Henry Carey, arranged by Lindsay Bramley
Richmond Opera, at Normansfield Theatre until 14th November
Review by Mark Aspen
Take a bawdy late mediaeval poem about a raging dragon and a drunken knight, rewrite as an early Georgian burlesque opera, mount in a beautifully bijou mid-Victorian theatre, for a 21st Century audience; then you know you are in for a now-for-something-completely-different experience.
Johann Friedrich Lampe was almost completely different. Born in Saxony in 1703, he was a virtuoso bassoonist, who came from Hanover with Handel to a successful music career as a composer in England. Although now known (almost) as a hymnist, he was commercially canny in his choice of opera subjects for a London audience. Pyramus and Thisbe, based on Shakespeare, and Columbine Courtesan, based on a another Ovid story, Cupid and Psyche, chimed with the challenge to then the endemic Italian opera seria, a challenge made popular by Handel. The antidote was opera buffa with English libretti and earthy subjects and a tendency to parody the established genre. Lampe’s biggest London hit was his 1737 premiere of his The Dragon of Wantley, a risqué comic opera, a spoof on the Italian opera conventions and a political satire aimed at the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole; just what theatre-goers wanted in 1737 (and arguably in 2021). This was Augustan drama par excellence, but with superb baroque music. Moving from the Haymarket and then on to Covent Garden, the production was the biggest commercial success at the time, beating even the hugely popular The Beggar’s Opera, which is far better known today.
Read more…Well-Oiled Rollocks
HMS Pinafore
by Arthur Sullivan, libretto by W. S. Gilbert
Opera Anywhere, The Players Theatre, Thame, 13th November then on tour until June 2022
Review by Nick Swyft
“We sail the ocean blue” … Well, crossed the Chilterns actually. Saturday’s port was The Players Theatre in Thame where Opera Anywhere offloaded its cargo to a packed audience, a rollicking performance of HMS Pinafore.
HMS Pinafore’s maiden voyage was in 1878, when its London premiere ran for nearly six hundred performances, one of longest theatre runs at the time. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Savoy Operas towered over the musical stage for the rest of the century. But, who would have thought that 19th century comedy operetta could remain so popular in the 21st century? W.S Gilbert isn’t well known as a dramatist, nor arguably is Arthur Sullivan a great composer in his own right, but together the pair managed to produce a kind of timeless magic. The songs are the material of ear worms. Like it or not you will leave the theatre humming them.
Read more…Strangers Off a Train
The Ghost Train
by Arnold Ridley
The Questors, at the Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing until 20th November
Review by Emma Byrne
As Marie Curie famously said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” But can you keep your head when surrounded by the inexplicable? That is, in some ways, the theme of The Ghost Train – if a comedy thriller can be said to have anything as grandiose as a theme.
The play was originally written in the 1920s and has been in almost constant production since, both on stage and screen. The three act structure is an anthology of genres: a comedy of manners instigated by the overnight stranding of six passengers in an out-of-the way station; a ghost story; and a good old fashioned thriller.
This production leans heavily into the spooky, and also relishes the opportunity for a bit of sumptuous costume drama. In fact the entire venue pays homage to the heyday of the railway, and the Grapevine Bar is offering themed cocktails – the All Change and the Ghost-tini – that definitely added to the atmosphere, if not to the ease of composing this review the next morning!
Read more…We Live in Glasshouses?
Radiant Vermin
by Philip Ridley
Progress Company at Progress Theatre, Reading until 20th October
Review by Nick Swyft
Radiant Vermin is a morality tale, in which a young couple are offered a free house in a rundown estate by the mysterious Miss Dee (Liz Carroll). The house needs a lot of work. No problem for a young couple, you would think, notwithstanding that there is a baby on the way. Except that they need it done quickly and Ollie’s DIY skills aren’t really up to it. This is all well and good until the husband, Ollie (Adam Wells) accidentally kills a vagrant whom he finds in the kitchen. There is, of course, a minute’s consternation (66.6 seconds to be precise) before a piece of magic happens and the kitchen is transformed. They realise that the entire house can be done out, room by room, provided someone dies in each room. There are a lot of homeless vagrants around, and so plenty of people who could die without too many questions being asked.
Read more…Totally Engrossing Golden Revival
The Diary of Anne Frank
by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman
YAT at Hampton Hill Theatre until 13th November
Review by Celia Bard
I was delighted to be back in Hampton Hill Theatre on Wednesday evening watching YAT’s roller-coaster production of the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, a stage adaptation of the posthumously-published 1974 book. The opening scene takes us into Anne Frank’s terrifying world very quickly and, apart from some lighter and very funny moments, the Frank family and guests are never free of the awful reality of their situation. This production sees the incorporation of music by composers killed in the Holocaust, thus adding another level of poignancy to this harrowing story of persecution during WWII, viewed through the diaries of tragic teenager, Anne Frank.
The set remains the same throughout the play, the top floor of a warehouse building in Amsterdam, Holland. About five years ago I had occasion to visit the actual building in which the Frank family and friends were holed up from 1942 to 1944. Then I marvelled how this group of people managed to live in such cramped and unsanitary conditions. The YAT crew show that CoVid, and its enforced absence from Hampton Hill Theatre has not dampened their enthusiasm, or their ingenuity and skills in designing a set that cleverly resembles a makeshift attic, consisting of different nooks and crannies, with a staircase that leads to a tiny attic. The entire set is full of chairs, tables, beds, stools, complete with cooking ring and pots and pans, and a wireless. As more and more of the cast appear the cramped feeling is complete. The whole acting cast must be complimented by the professional way in which the furniture is re-arranged several times during the performance, thereby suggesting different times of the day that, as a by-the-by, is part of the monotonous daily routine for this group of people. An inspired detail of this set is the pages, representative of Anne’s diary, pinned to an attic wall and outside floor level of stage. Psychologically this establishes a narrative link between details of the diary and the people Anne writes about in her diary.
Read more…Second Chances
Private Lives
by Noël Coward
Theatre Royal Bath Productions and The Nigel Havers Theatre Company, at Richmond Theatre until 13th November, then on tour until April 2022
Review by Andrew Lawston
Some people carry memories of an intense relationship, and regrets about how it fell apart, and it’s only human nature that they reflect on how things might have been different, and how they might approach the relationship differently if they were given a second chance. Back in 1930, Noël Coward considered how this might actually play out for a particularly unhealthy couple, freed from such mundane considerations as money and employment.
The inaugural production from the Nigel Havers Touring Company, Noël Coward’s Private Lives has reached a packed Richmond Theatre. The blindingly white frontage of a hotel, all plaster moulding, wrought iron balconies, and thick curtains, is a striking contrast to the auditorium’s gloomy house lights.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 