Just a Sign of the Times
Blood Brothers
by Willy Russell
Bill Kenwright at Richmond Theatre until 15th February, then on tour until 31st October
Review by Andrew Lawston
Blood Brothers has been described by writer, lyricist, and composer Willy Russell himself as “the musical that’s loved by people who hate musicals”, and this would seem as good an explanation as any for the near-capacity audience at Richmond Theatre on a cold Tuesday night in February. It’s a show full of much-loved songs, but more than enough spoken drama that it feels like a play with music rather than a full-blown musical.
The story – a struggling working class mother can’t afford to raise the twin boys she’s expecting, so promises one to her affluent employer – is timeless in its simplicity, but is infused throughout with commentary on Britain’s class structure which is as relevant today, entering the third decade of the 21st Century, as it was back in the 1980s when the musical premiered.
Andy Walmsley’s simple but effective set has stood the test of time: a run-down street with a backdrop that switches between the Royal Liver Building and a pastoral scene, with various other set items flown in as required. The gantry and the balconies provide an effective multi-level playing area for the cast, under the tight direction of Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright.
The eponymous brothers may dominate most of the play’s action, but Mrs Johnstone is the character who carries her bat throughout this two and a half hour section, and she gets most of the best songs. As such she’s usually viewed as the lead character and this cast is no exception, with Lyn Paul showing a great range both in her acting performance and in songs that range from the haunting Easy Terms to the (initially) playful Marilyn Monroe.
Robbie Scotcher takes on the Shakespearean role of the Narrator, cutting an imposing and often intimidating figure on the stage. My wife named him “the bouncer of death” due to both his physical presence and his sober dark suit. He is an almost constant figure somewhere on stage, watching the action unfold, and only occasionally interacting. It’s something of a surprise to read the programme notes and realise that he only really has one song – although he gets to reprise it on several occasions, becoming ever more ominous as the story develops.
There’s a frantic pace to this production, and the audience only has to blink for the twins to be seven (but nearly eight) years old. Mickey (Alexander Patmore, the roguish beating heart of the play) and Eddie (Joel Benedict, playing the golden-haired Eddie with distinct cheeky relish) reunite, and spend the rest of the first half having carefree childish adventures. In an otherwise blistering chronology, this part of the story seems to have the most time to breathe, and rightly so. Quite apart from the comedy opportunities provided by adult actors depicting a gang of boisterous eight year olds, these scenes develop the audience’s sympathy for these characters, and throwaway elements become motifs throughout the rest of the show.
It may be opening night glitches on the mixing desk, or the actors straining the younger voices they’re using at this point, but these scenes do run into occasional problems distinguishing dialogue when all the “children” are on stage, and in parts of the lively number Kids Game the vocals become somewhat buried under Scott Alder’s small but impressively versatile band. Parts of Miss Jones suffer the same fate, as redundancy and economic uncertainty are intercut with and overshadow the celebration of Mickey and Linda’s wedding. However, the lyrics certainly shine through on the big ensemble numbers like Bright New Day and Tell Me It’s Not True.
In the second half, with the twins in their teenage years and beyond, the tone darkens quickly, and characters like Linda (Danielle Corlass in a wide-ranging performance) come into their own. Conversely, Mickey’s delinquent older brother Sammy becomes less interesting as he ages from the cocky leader of the childhood gang into a walking plot device to get the other characters in trouble. Paula Tappenden’s immaculate Mrs Lyons is credible as she deteriorates from friendly middle class housewife to a neurotic and vindictive mess. Her final act in the show defies logic, but Tappenden’s performance is strong enough to suggest that it’s motivated purely by spite.
The rest of the cast bring a brisk pace and bright energy to the whole show, but while this is very much the same production of Blood Brothers that I’ve seen on a couple of occasions over the years, I felt the overall tone was a bit darker. There’s underlying menace even to the carefree scenes from the characters’ childhood, and the Johnstone children’s legs are slathered with streaks of dark make-up to suggest a certain level of mud and squalor. Their childish jokes and insults seem pointed and hurtful, and even the delivery of Eddie’s first swear word to his mother seems to have a certain weight to it. Hints of the show’s tragic finale are never far away with this powerful current cast, even at the lightest moments.
But however the production has evolved over the years, it heads inexorably to the same conclusion, and if there is a dry eye in the house at the end of the soaring climactic rendition of Tell Me It’s Not True, it certainly doesn’t belong in our section of the audience, or indeed to any of the front of house staff that we pass on our way out of the building.
Andrew Lawston
February 2020
Photography courtesy of Bill Kenwright Productions
Image-conscious
The Duchess of Malfi
by John Webster
Putney Theatre Company at Putney Arts Theatre, until 15 February
A review by Matthew Grierson
Webster was, according to Eliot, much possessed by death, and this much is clear from the corpse-strewn tableau that concludes The Duchess of Malfi. But this intelligent, inventive production shows the tragedian was just as possessed by images – images that director Jaz Manville realises highly effectively in her pacey, dynamic staging. Attending closely to Webster’s verse, she draws out its images both visual and textual to intimate its contemporary resonances without ever imposing them on the play, or indeed on the audience.
We are witness not only to the swift and often violent intrigues of the court, but to the way its protagonists manipulate these images: taking up a camera phone, they project close-ups of the action on to the wall behind, often contrasting with the full spectacle on stage. Live footage of the Duchess (Rachel Hewer) being primped at the opening of the play contrasts with the sotto voce exchange between her brothers below her, in which they express concern about preserving the popular image of her as a dutiful widow.
Although the Duchess is capable of using imagery to her own ends when she frames her clandestine husband, Antonio (Graham White), to enable his escape, she is just as susceptible to its power, and takes the jerky video of his supposed death – the ‘wax presentations’ of Webster’s dialogue – as reality. Even her brother Duke Ferdinand (Henry Peters), who masterminds her death because he thinks she has tarnished her own image, is vulnerable to the images he has helped to propagate: the motifs of wolves and of animal prodigies in men’s likenesses are consummated with his descent into madness, when he prowls the stage in lycanthropic form. Prophecies, like the horoscope cast for the Duchess’s eldest, become self-fulfilling.
Though each character pays homage to image, the cynicism with which they do so means they are prone to betray themselves dramatically before the audience – the one set of eyes they cannot hide from. The director is sudden with us in orchestrating these displays of hypocrisy, from the moment the Duchess tries it on with Antonio barely a beat after she has promised her brothers she will never remarry.
This does make her flirtation seem more wilful than passionate, however, and the chemistry between the lovers at this early point has the air of nursery children playing at mummies & daddies. This impression is somewhat confirmed by White’s boyish manner as the steward; he has a tendency to rush his lines, and looks at times to be dwarfed like an infant in his father’s coat. The scene in which Bosola feeds the Duchess apricots also strikes an odd tone, being played by Hewer with a comedy as bluff and broad as her northern vowels.
Where it counts, though, the cast convinces: a three-way exchange between the Duchess, Antonio and maid Cariola (Becki Dack) is touchingly natural in its light humour and shows the genuine warmth of the household, before the scene turns on a proverbial ducat to become menacing as Ferdinand arrives onstage. Peters glowers and stomps his way through the villainous role, until the murder of the Duchess sees a one-eighty in his conscience. Then, his performance deepens in maturity, as though his hatred and disgust of his sister had itself been so much childishness, and we see the hypocritical pity that presages the Duke’s descent into lunacy. Hewer likewise energises the Duchess’s distress in the darker second act with a raw and immediate performance, before facing her murder with a quiet dignity; ahead of her strangulation, which is pretty throaty, she reclaims her own image by composing herself for the phone being held by Bosola.
As the character whose arc we follow throughout the play, Bosola’s may be the real tragedy of The Duchess of Malfi. ‘[A]s we observe in tragedies/That a good actor many times is curs’d/For playing a villain’s part’, he becomes the antihero the brothers have cast him as. He is afflicted by a persistent melancholy on being demobbed at the beginning of the play, which we might read as PTSD, and he falls into the brothers’ bad company as their ‘intelligencer’, reporting the Duchess’ doings back to them. Jerome Joseph Kennedy turns in a sardonic, haunted portrayal that ties together the play’s humour and horror. Always ready to speak truth to power, the murders he is commanded to undertake take their toll, and he turns on his masters, leading to the bloody finale.
Strong support comes from Alice Hope Wilson as Antonio’s confidant Delio, one of the few characters honest enough to survive the slaughter, Lucas Omar as the scheming Cardinal, and Lucy McIlgorm as his mistress Julia, a wanton contrast to the noble Duchess. The professional feel of the piece is enhanced by Cat Fuller’s simple but highly effective design, with a black stage augmented by a raised surround and steps and a wall of rivetted metal panels behind. Although access is freely made through a triangular section of curtain between them, and at either side, the space is quickly and effectively transformed into the Duke’s dungeon with light thrown through the rings of the ceiling. Hannah Hayden’s music, with its rhythmically eerie electronic cues, underscores this menacing ambience. The definite look of the piece is completed by the wardrobe, giving it a simplified mid-century feel – with their long coats and suitcases, the fleeing Duchess and her eldest child (Clara Tubiermont) put me in mind of evacuees during the Blitz – and goth flourishes for Bosola and the Cardinal.
The production’s ability to make memorable images means that, long after the deaths of the Duchess, Cariola and Antonio, their bodies remain on the stage, propped up ragdoll-like as the remaining action takes place between them. It’s a fitting way to dramatise the title character’s declaration that ‘I am Duchess of Malfi still’, and show how the moral consequences of the Duke and the Cardinal’s concern with image are closing in on them, restricting the scope of their power. Death-driven it may be, this is an energetic and engaging production that commands the audience’s attention, lingering in the mind’s eye like an after-image.
Matthew Grierson
February 2020
Photography by Ben Copping @benpretends
Three’s Not a Crowd
Darling It’s Not About You
by Julia Thurston and Sof Puchley
Threedumb Theatre at The Tristan Bates Theatre, 8th February
Review by Denis Valentine
At a time where shows like Sex Education 2 are being heavily watched on Netflix, Darling It’s Not About You is cut from very much the same cloth (imagine if Sex Education was about the love trials and tribulations of those in their early twenties rather than teenagers).
The style of the play changes throughout, addressing the main theme of love in three classic forms: it is a poem, a song and a story all intertwined together. Each of the three actors on stage break off at times to show their dramatic and straight acting skills before coming back together into the ensemble to tell the overall story as one.
In what would typically be a love triangle that forces the audience to take sides, it is testimony to the writing and strong character work that there is no clear hero or villain to the piece, and that sympathy and understanding are invoked by each of the three players.
Actress and co-writer Julia Thurston anchors the play with a great first opening monologue that does well to establish the mood and themes of the story that is about to unfold.
Amy Leeson has wonderful comic timing and elicits many genuine laughs from the audience with an almost throw-away style of interjection. Her character work is strong, and the audience never sees her as the cuckold but as someone genuinely trying to understand their own feelings.
As Joel it is a tribute to Chris Mohan’s natural charisma and presence that he brings humour and empathy to a character that could so easily have been more of the classic villain of the piece in his struggle to choose between two people to love.
The way the play is written, by Thurston and Sof Puchley, is clever in the sense that at times rhyme and poetry are suddenly woven in for brief interludes before the writing suddenly returns to a more straight prose style, which really brings to life the relatable thoughts and emotions one might feel or struggle with or relish in such relationships.
It may be due to the time constraints and what is possible in this type of production, but the only slight disappointment is that the ending creeps in rather than landing with a final dramatic punch.
Director Bethany Fox’s staging is excellent and makes the most of a stripped back set and minimal props. The stage always feels full and the way the play is crafted means there is never a clear hero or someone to root for but rather three people to try to understand.
Denis Valentine
February 2020
Photography courtesy of Threedumb Theatre
Razor-Edged Exhilarating Bleakness
Rough for Theatre II and Endgame
by Samuel Beckett
Old Vic Baylis Company at the Old Vic Theatre, Waterloo until 8th March
Review by Heather Moulson
I was so glad to get to the Old Vic to see a revival of these two Beckett productions of Rough for Theatre II and Endgame, the former being rarely seen.
W
e open up to a very stark, albeit short, first play with Daniel Radcliffe, as “A”, and Alan Cumming, as “B”, sitting desk to desk in semi-darkness; a simple and strikingly clever set, but not unassuming. A large window frame is a focal point, where there is a silhouette of a man about to jump from a great height. A and B relish the painful aftermath of this suicide … but perhaps he had already fallen to his death. Or was he hung in suspension and the duo had to assess the situation?
A disturbing tableau, with mean and grudging lamplight, the two bureaucrats look over the potential suicide’s files, with detachment and bleak black humour. Plus A goes over to the victim twice, (wiping a tear?) dangerously hanging outside the window himself. There are some genuinely funny and profound lines about the human condition.
At the interval, you realised how tense you had actually been.
Daniel Radcliffe excelled himself as the bleak administrator, however I felt he was miscast in the second play, Endgame. Playing Clov, the lame and twisted valet to Alun Cummings’ Hamm, an invalid blind man, did not seem a comfortable role. However, that did not mean Clove didn’t produce some genuinely comical and unique moments.
The second set was subtle and innocent enough. This, however, was deceptive and not entirely straight forward. Menacing actor’s shadows appeared on the light wall, uncovering the true malevolence underneath.
Beckett’s macabre style shone through this hopelessness, making us work to unravel the situation. Richard Jones’ razor sharp and detailed direction peaks at this point.
The immobile Hamm sits in a chair centre stage, whose whims Clove grudgingly attends to. They share a grim rapport, and tangible pessimism. At will, the two wheelie-bins situated at the foot of the stage are opened. The excellent Karl Johnson is revealed as Hamm’s father, Nagg, followed by the vibrant Jane Horrocks as the mother, Nell.
Symbolic of an old people’s home? Where they can be visited at will? Or killed off? Overtones of old people treated like rubbish? Judging by Hamm’s neglect and disregard, this could well be the case.
From then on, the point, if one ever exists in Theatre of the Absurd, started to feel laboured.
However, the play’s title, Endgame, solves some clues for us, its very meaning being a particular outcome in a game of chess. At the least, it highlights the play’s pessimism and our general doom. We are already aware of the outcome.
Or does Endgame symbolise the end of the world as we know it? Are these characters survivors of a nuclear disaster? You can’t say they’re not grim!
One left the theatre, after just over two hours and fifteen minutes, in a trance of exhilarating bleakness.
Don’t let this one get away.
Heather Moulson
February 2020
Photography by Manuel Harlan
Passion on the Rocks
My Cousin Rachel
by Daphne Du Maurier, adapted by Joseph O’Connor.
Theatre Royal Bath at Richmond Theatre until 8th February
Review by Mark Aspen
Kernow. Now there’s a name of mystery: it’s different and almost exotic. Cornwall has a certain differentness about it, the only English county with its own language, its sea pounded rocky peninsulas, beasts wandering its moors, and of course all those differently named Cornish saints, names that don’t exist elsewhere. There’s a preponderance of the surname English in Devon, an historical relic of times when the Tamar was a big boundary and the them-and-us-ness was more marked, times like the mid-nineteenth century when Daphne Du Maurier’s novel, My Cousin Rachel is set.
Add in a mysterious stranger who comes from a different, almost exotic country, and you have a potential powder-keg of tension. And of course, we are all suspicious of strangers (think the high-vis man who knocks unannounced at your front door and offers to “repair” your roof). Moreover though, if the mysterious stranger is also beautiful then it ups the potential for passion, and you have all the ingredients for the gothic romantic thriller, one of the hallmarks of Du Maurier.
Barton House is a fine country mansion on the Cornish coast, the home for many generations of the landed and wealthy Ashley family. Twenty-four years old Phillip is the current incumbent of Barton and, following the death in Italy of Ambrose Ashley, Phillip is due to inherit the estate on his twenty-fifth birthday. He had been orphaned as a young child and for most of his life Ambrose, an older cousin, had been his attentive and loving guardian. Now, in these months before Phillip is to become master of Barton, the estate is held under the trusteeship of the family solicitor, Nicholas Kendall, also a close family friend, affectionately known as Nick. Indeed, his daughter, Louise has been always Phillip’s childhood companion.
Notwithstanding the frequent visits of Louise, Barton House has been an exclusively masculine domain. Even the household servants are all men, the old retainer John Seecombe and the young Thomas Conners, given employment after losing a leg in an industrial accident. Masters and servants have a mutual loyalty and respect which binds them in this austere environment. Into this milieu, unexpectedly, arrives an Italian countess, Contessa Sangalletti, who is Ambrose’s widow and another cousin in the tangled branches of the Ashley family tree. She is Rachel Coryn Ashley.
The presence of Rachel has an unnerving effect on the settled household. Rachel is a stranger, an exotic foreigner, and most difficult of all, a woman. On all three counts, she is a cause for deep suspicion. Why is she here: is she merely nostalgically visiting her late husband’s home, or is she after something for herself? Did Ambrose die, deranged, from a brain tumour, or did she have some hand in his death? Has she come to give or to take, to build or to destroy? The feelings of Phillip and Nick, and even of Louise, see-saw between attraction and repulsion. Only the servants are delighted in what seems like a breath of fresh air from the self-assured Rachel, but the other men feel threatened. Moreover, she is very beautiful and her attractions, of which she is all-too aware, gradually outweigh the balance of the see-saw. Clues push feeling one way or another and the plot develops more twists and turns than a Cornish cliff path.
The atmosphere of this volatile situation is beautifully evoked in designer Richard Kent’s clever set, mounted on a revolve and symbolically symmetrical. Its overarching feature is an elegant sweeping spiral staircase, its helix embracing the gothic Barton house, black and purple with soot-blackened baronial fireplace on the inside and opening to the Atlantic seascape at Guinevere’s Point on its outside. David Platter’s mood-enhancing lighting and Max Pappenheim’s tingling soundscape complete the charged ambience.
The metastable balance is carefully handled by director Anthony Banks and his skilled cast. Banks is not afraid to use silence, not in the sense of an awkward hiatus but of a suspended moment, characters weighing each other’s motives, a look that betrays the words, or that eyes-meeting moment. There is “the awful daring of a moment’s surrender” as T.S.Eliot would have put it. Banks is a prolific director, and a past-master in the thriller, many of which have been seen at Richmond Theatre (most recently Dial M for Murder) and hits a zenith with My Cousin Rachel.
The Phillip Ashley we first see is grieving and not able to come to terms with Ambrose’s death. He is at the anger stage of grief and looking for something to blame. After the arrival of Rachel, his petulance becomes impetuosity as the charms of the older woman win over his suspicions. Jack Holden as Phillip depicts an immature young man, who would be a lairy “youf” if it were not for his sense of duty, but one who is genuinely troubled. He is a complex character, full of deep affection for his home and his household, including his loyal servants. Holden’s Phillip is buttoned-up with values instilled in him as a member of the landed gentry, but with another Phillip, impulsive and expressive, bursting to get out. Here is a young man with a long emotional journey from a misogynist, who equates marriage with murder, to a bowled-over lover who would give everything he has for the cousin with whom he has become infatuated.
The impetus of that emotional journey of Phillip’s is the eponymous Cousin Rachel, an enigmatic figure of aristocratic bearing, fearless and self-confident. Helen George, currently best known for her role in the television series, Call the Midwife, here delivers an outstanding portrayal of Rachel as imperious and proud, her clipped tones adding to her authority. The multifaceted mystery of this winning widow only serves to add to her allure, and she is certainly not a lady to be crossed. She is intelligent and her multiple talents range from creating exotic tisanni, her herbal teas that raise further suspicions amongst her paranoid hosts, to landscape gardening. Helen George’s attractive portrait of Rachel is boldly painted, with strong characterisation, a particular example being her powerful speech when Rachel rejects a monetary allowance as unwanted charity, accusing Phillip of “ignorance and arrogance”.
Kendall regards himself as guardian of not only the estate of his friend Ambrose, but also of the good name of the Ashley family and, by extension, that of local society. He constantly admonishes Phillip for any perceived in impropriety or weakness, urging him not show his emotions in front of the servants, whilst himself at first falling for Rachel’s charms. His mantra, “Things are done a certain way” is taken up by Phillip, sometimes mainly to extract himself from embarrassment. An assured and insightful actor, Simon Shepherd cuts a sharp figure as Kendall, astute and protective, yet not impervious to distractions.
Phillip fails to see that Louise is in love with him, although Rachel understands this straight away. The light-hearted and patient Louise is played with fetching charm by the sparkling Aruhan Galieva, as a constant factor in Phillip’s life. Louise, like her father, is both alarmed by, and jealous of, Rachel’s hold over Phillip.
The only characters acceptant of Rachel are the servants, Seecombe and Thomas. Long serving and much trusted Seecombe is the epitome of the “true and faithful servant”. He is comfortable with the family and they with him, but Seecombe immediately warms to Rachel, delighted to have a lady about the house once more. He can replace stuffed stag’s heads with flower arrangements, and is happy to assist Rachel in re-planning the garden. Sean Murray plays Seecombe as an amiable, kind and down-to-earth countryman. Seecombe’s loyalty is unimpeachable, think Adam in As You Like It. He also has some great Cornish turns of phrase. The manservant Thomas Conners is equally loyal, and is grateful that the Ashley family has rescued him from penury after his life-changing accident. Thomas has a hobby making string marionettes; perhaps so that he can still vicariously control a limb that he has lost. John Lumsden plays Thomas as a likeable, but sometimes cheeky young man, reliable and steadfast.
As they are beginning to be reconciled to Rachel, perhaps too much so, and Kendall warns that “the word mistress has many meanings”, so in Act Two a new side to Rachel is revealed with the unannounced arrival of Guido Rainaldi, an old friend of Rachel’s in Italy and ostensibly her lawyer. Rainaldi makes a stark contrast to Phillip and Kendall, snappily dressed and suave, he is ideologically the antithesis of them. He expresses his laid-back approach, “While you Englishmen conquer the world, we drink wine and make love in the sun”. His recollection of “nights of folly” with Rachel draws barbed insults from Phillip, who is riposted with seeming good-humoured but equally slighting replies. Christopher Hollis clearly enjoys playing Rainaldi but wisely steers way from a too-easy caricature towards a relaxed urbanity.
Banks has an eye for composition. Rainaldi’s presence in the room could have been etched by Hogarth, the Rachel-Phillip altercation in the garden painted by Millet (indeed with the two manservants in the background it smacks of The Angelus), or the Christmas scene illustrated by John Leech, it so resemble a Dickensian Christmas. This particular tableaux, with family, visitors and servants singing carols to the accompaniment of Louise on the piano, gave a quiet moment of beauty, and greatly enhanced by Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter, touchingly sung by the cast. A bit of an anachronism (there are a few) but who cares when the best Christmas carol in the canon is sung so well, especially by the lady members of the cast.
Harmony is however, not maintained in the running passions at Barton. Pride and jealousy surge in turn and the gradual dismantling of propriety fires up the emotional stew-pot. The plot moves on with a palpable inevitability along a path strewn with red herrings. If the path were straight the dramatic ending would be one of overblown melodrama, but this is Du Maurier who has ensured that it is not. There are the checks of the unexpected turns, of the balance of emotions, and there’s the mystery, the exoticism, there’s Cornwall.
Mark Aspen
February 2020
Photography by Manuel Harlan
No Score
The Maestro’s Last Words
by Barry Langley
A Trevor Hartnup production at the OSO Arts Centre, Barnes, until 8 February
A review by Matthew Grierson
An old white man from a privileged background with an international reputation finds out he has lymphoma, but the lump is swiftly and successfully removed in a private hospital: it would be difficult to spoil the surprise of The Maestro’s Last Words as, sad to say, there isn’t any.
The play attempts to overcome its dramatic deficit by being fortissimo from the outset, but, with so little at stake much of the incident feels contrived, bearing little sense of a reality with which we can engage. I appreciate we’re in an operatic milieu here, but there’s no modulation of the self-involved tone orchestrated by Sir Charles Ackroyd (Edmund Dehn). When, for instance, the conductor’s entourage visit him in hospital as he convalesces, they waste no time in running around screaming the place down with the threat of a lawsuit. There is no sense of crescendo, it’s a forced farce.
Yet the play doesn’t seem to be pitched as a comedy either. What jokes there are have little weight or build-up, as exemplified by the ill-judged interjections made by Sir Charles’s hapless secretary Hickton (Alexander Jonas) when his employer is entertaining morbid visions. The one joke that evidences some sense of structure is when soprano Madame Fontana (Violetta Gapardi) is invited to sing: assuming an operatic posture she then simply offers an anticlimactic: ‘No.’ I had thought this was to avoid the need to cast a trained singer, but Gapardi acquits herself admirably in this regard when she does get to sing.
Intimations of mortality ought to give an author something worthwhile to work with, whether they were going for introspection or dark comedy, but Barry Langley’s script is a series of rococo flourishes off the idea without taking it anywhere. This is typified by dumping information into the dialogue so we know exactly how he has conceived the characters, rather than taking us on a journey with them. Exhibit A: ‘You know I always conduct without looking at the score,’ says Sir Charles, telling Fontana something that she is explicitly already aware of. ‘Yes,’ she replies, ‘you’re world-famous for it.’ So now we know.
For a play so ostensibly concerned with music it’s surprising that all the characterisation is one note: Hickton is a toady, producer Herr Kleist (Stephen Riddle) is hysterical, Fontana is a diva, the Sister (Robin Miller) is firm but fair. If the story doesn’t develop, then the characters seemingly can’t. That’s not to say that Dehn isn’t watchable as Sir Charles, and present onstage for much of the play he sustains what momentum it has. He manages to convey something of the man’s ego and the physicality of his illness, but he is never allowed the opportunity to show the distress or vulnerability that would make us sympathise with, if not warm to, him. Is his doctor trying to kill him? Will Fontana leave him for a rival? Or has he really thrown her over for a nurse? It’s not so much that I wasn’t clear, it was that I didn’t care.
Surgeon Professor Galt (Martin Wimbush) fares a little better. Former schoolmate to Sir Charles – and long-time rival in a tiresome ‘two cultures’ debate that rears its head every now and again – he has a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour that the twinkly Wimbush brings to life, as when he joshes with his patient by sharpening a carving knife before an operation. But then I suppose am inclined to sympathise with a man who only goes to a show because he was given a complimentary ticket.
Nurse Hodges could be a breath of fresh air, too. Certainly in Mimi Tizzano’s unaffected performance she’s the most relatable of the characters, with a lighter touch when it comes to humour – I did actually chuckle when she told the recumbent conductor: ‘Your famous last words might be “Nurse! Get your pen out!”’ But the script largely lumbers her with being a dim-witted caricature of a working-class professional.
The show ends with Fontana’s rendition of ‘Song to the Moon’, a resurrected Sir Charles clad in his dressing gown conducting her, but the significance of her doing so is, like much of what happens in the play, unclear. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy and not plausible enough to be drama, so I still can’t see what The Maestro’s Last Words is trying to be.
Matthew Grierson
February 2020
The Mother of All Rom-Coms
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen, adapted by Simon Reade
The Questors at the Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing until the 8th February
Review by Emma Byrne
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is once again à la mode, with the film adaptation of Emma landing for Valentine’s Day, all decked in tulle and ringlets.
On the tulle and ringlets front, the Questors production of Pride and Prejudice refuses to be outdone. It has a wardrobe department of twenty under the direction of designer Carla Evans. That’s one more costumier than the nineteen-strong wardrobe department for the upcoming film. With gowns and petticoats aplenty, Pride and Prejudice doesn’t shy away from the ‘costume’ challenge of costume drama.
In some places, the costumes themselves deserve supporting actor billing: the gown and chapeau of Lady Catherine de Bourgh deserves a spotlight of its own. Wisely, director Sukhi Kainth allows us to revel in the visual feast of the gowns and breeches, as well as the effective and impressionistic set by Bron Blake, by opening with a dance number before hitting us with Mrs Bennet’s opening line: one of the most recognised lines in the canon of English novels.
And here is the challenge; Pride and Prejudice is such well-worn stuff that there is a danger that it can become threadbare with use. Cutting and stitching to display the material at its best is the job of the playwright and the director, and here they have done a deft job. Some things are necessarily compressed. Reade’s adaptation focuses on the will-they-won’t they pairings of the two elder sisters and gives only brief asides to the darker core of Austen’s work: the unenviable lot of women whose role was to remain in a marriageable state until a suitable match could be made.
But what Reade’s adaptation does, it does well, and the cast carry the pace beautifully. Anthony Curran plays Mr Collins with an oleaginous self-satisfaction that is both great fun to watch and utterly horrifying to imagine in one’s partner for life. Sarah Morrison’s Mrs
Bennet and Robert Gordon Clark’s Mr Bennet play beautifully together. Alexandra Rose Wilson’s Jane is so sincerely lovely, and James Burgess’ Mr Bingley so sweetly affable that it is impossible not to wish to see them reconciled. This is a beautiful change of pace from some adaptations that make the two of them such simpering simpletons that the cynic in me fears for the intellect of their offspring.
And while it is unfair to pick out favourites among such a strong ensemble, Kitty Cockram’s Lizzy and Madeleine Tavare’s Mary both won my heart in different ways. Cockram’s performance is rangy, bringing a truly rounded presence to a character that could so easily become a wafer thin portrait that is simply entitled ‘Feisty!’ Meanwhile Tavare takes what really is a wafer thin portrait (here entitled ‘Nerd!’) and imbues Mary with sweetness and a crippling lack of social poise. Tavare’s comic timing and consistent character deservedly got some of the biggest laughs of the night whilst also making me ardently hope that Mary gets her happy ever after, not through matrimony but by living out her days in a library. It is a truth universally acknowledged that we all need to get lost in a good story from time to time.
Emma Byrne
January 2020
Photography by Carla Evans
Taking the Bull by the Horns
Carmen
by Georges Bizet, libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy
English National Opera at the London Coliseum until 27th February
Review by Nick Swyft
The cover of the programme for ENO’s revival of Calixto Bieito’s 2012 Carmen presents the sultry image of an angry dark-haired beauty. This is probably how most people see the character of Carmen. Arguably this is mis-selling, since the title role is played by Justina Gringytė, the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano, who is unashamedly blonde.
The running time for this opera has been advertised by other companies to be around three and a quarter hours. Valentina Peleggi, conducting, opened with the overture at a cracking pace, and although the rest of the music didn’t seem rushed, we were still out of the theatre in two and three quarter hours. This is great for catching the last train, but was symptomatic of a fast paced modern world that doesn’t suit the atmosphere Carmen was always supposed to generate.
Indeed one messes with the basic production of Carmen at one’s peril. The main focus should be on the four central protagonists. How those roles are interpreted is the core of any performance, not the set. It seemed pointless, for example, to make Lillas Pastia’s bar a Mercedes car, which only served to distract.
As for Carmen herself, the passion that Justina Gringytė has clearly brought to the role in the past, was missing here. This may have been first night nerves, but the famous arias that send shivers down the spine in other productions, seemed disappointingly lifeless. Her lover Don Jose (Sean Pannikar) and the bullfighter Escamillo (Ashley Riches) were very strong as the jealous lovers, but like real lovers they needed more from Carmen herself. Don Jose’s fiancée Micaëla (Nardus Williams) lacked definition. Was she the wronged ‘wife’, or was she there simply as the agent of Don Jose’s mother? There was no real outrage that he was carrying on with Carmen, and not her.
The show was stolen by the performance of the young girl (either Selma Benjelloun or Sofia Pang) with her short dance at the beginning of Act Two. Subsequently she flitted among the drunken adults like a restraining fairy, bringing a welcome innocent contrast to their behaviour, despite constantly being chivvied away by Carmen’s friend Mercédès (Samantha Price).
The interplay and performances of Mercédès and Frasquita (Ellie Laugharne) worked very well, providing a good basis for the wild gypsy atmosphere, which did come across well.
The primal sexual tensions of a culture centred around bull-fighting always make for a fun performance. This is why Carmen has remained popular over the years, despite societal disapproval of such things. This exists now as much as at its debut in 1870, albeit from a different perspective.
Nick Swyft
January 2020
Photography by Richard Hubert Smith
Mozart, Music and the Almighty
Amadeus
by Peter Shaffer
Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre until 31st January
Review by Claire Alexander
In the years between 1781 and 1791 Vienna is at its zenith of European musical influence. Not only has the young prodigy Mozart recently come to town but there are references to Bach and Beethoven and other composers of the time. Antonio Salieri has been honoured with the position of Court composer but he is finding the role rigid and stultifying and not helpful to his own secret ambitions of becoming a celebrated composer. His aristocratic audiences are not genuinely appreciative of music – they have banned ‘encores’ and frequently refer to Mozart’s music as having ‘too many notes’.
Into this rigid and rarefied atmosphere the young Mozart bounds into town, fresh from a European tour, ready to make his name. But despite his music which is already turning ears, Mozart is also a spoilt toddler and his behaviour turns heads equally. The already respected Salieri (he taught the young Schubert, Beethoven and Liszt) is suspicious of this young upstart, initially looking on in horror and incredulity, but when he first hears Mozart’s music he quickly realises he is in the presence of unparalleled genius which only serves to highlight his own inadequacies.
Amadeus is essentially the story of Salieri’s growing jealousy of Mozart and his attempts to block his path to success in the court hierarchy, but the play is so much more than that. The story is told from Salieri’s perspective, largely recounted in recall thirty years later as he lives in care suffering from dementia. He is wracked with guilt from his part in the early death of Mozart (who had died in poverty in 1791 at only 35). Salieri struggles not only with his dawning realisation of his own mediocre talent, but his relationship with God, his own personal sense of injustice alongside his inspirational peer. Mozart, in contrast, never wavers from the unshakeable belief that his more respected peer has his interests at heart – to get his music recognised, and out of poverty.
A note on Peter Shaffer’s writing here – there are shades of Dysart’s existential struggles – the psychiatrist in Equus (his play of a few years’ earlier) – who tries to make sense of his own behaviours alongside those of the boy that he has been asked to help, obsessed with blinding horses. Peter Shaffer excels in this type of writing, trying to understand the deeper motivations and influences that shape individuals when presented with a dilemma that shakes their own belief. But not only is Amadeus the story of Salieri’s struggle it is also a portrait of Mozart, his music and the Viennese court of the time. It is a brilliantly conceived play.
Its success relies hugely on the two central characters and the part of Salieri must be among the most challenging; and Mozart needs to be played with care and control without overplaying the excesses of his childlike behaviour so they do not become annoying and irritating to the audience. It is an ambitious play for a non-professional group to undertake.
This was not an ostentatious and elaborate production (a simple, effective set design by Jenna Powell and Lizzie Lattimore) that the Viennese court of the time might expect, but instead the story, and Salieri’s struggles, are clearly and empathically told. In the character of Salieri, Steve Taylor is outstanding, particularly effective as the old man, close to death. Although modern thinking suggests that Salieri is indeed 
a provocateur in Mozart’s downfall, Steve gives us a sympathetic, thought provoking and intelligent performance. There are powerful moments as he is overcome by Mozart’s genius when he hears the Serenade for Wind, and The Mass in C minor for the first time. Ian Kinane equally gives us a measured and touching performance of Mozart avoiding overacting the child too much, and draws us slowly and compellingly into his journey into poverty with increasing desperation.
I would also like to mention Helen Geldert’s performance as Katherina Cavalieri (one of the leading sopranos of the time), who boldly steps up to the challenge of singing the fiendishly difficult Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute; and from the Mass in C minor. This was exhilarating singing and added to the production when all of the other music was recorded.
Trine Taraldsvik as Constanze Weber, Mozart’s wife, was touching at the end as she grieved over her dead husband and tried to keep his name alive by selling his manuscripts priced by the number of notes! I wanted the Venticelli (Salieri’s eyes and ears into the real Vienna) to have a little more variety and speed in their quick fire observations but they were well matched. The other roles are small compared to the central characters and in this production largely formed tableaux to the rear of the stage. For me this seemed in keeping with the production which never lost sight of Salieri’s story.
There might have been some inconsistencies in some of the detail, especially the dress wigs which would have been de rigeur at the time. Some of the cast had wigs, some didn’t, and I could not work out any pattern to this. But Mags Wrightson and Lesley Alexander and her team have clearly worked tirelessly to give us an accurate a picture of 18th century Vienna. And I enjoyed the atmospheric lighting by Patrick Troughton. Music is of course central to the story and many of Mozart’s most well-known compositions featured. I know this is specified in the script but I would have liked a little more Mozart especially in the first Act – it is as if Salieri is obsessed with his genius – almost as though he couldn’t get it out of his head.
But these are small points. This production really excelled in the way it captured Salieri’s and Mozart’s contrasting fortunes and accompanying struggles. It never lost sight of the heart of the narrative, and Peter Shaffer’s brilliantly conceived script, in a way that other more lavish productions could. Although it is long, at almost three hours, the audience was rapt throughout, and the pause prior to Salieri’s death at the end, mesmerising. I applaud Dane Hardie’s sensitive, revealing direction and TTC for taking on another ambitious production so successfully.
Claire Alexander
January 2020
Photography by Sarah J Carter
Bean and Gone
Jack and the Beanstalk
by Jackie Howting
Edmundian Players at Cheray Hall, Whitton until 25th January
Review by Mary Stoakes
Edmundian Players belong to a diminishing group of Richmond upon Thames amateur dramatic societies who perform in what is designated by Arts Richmond as a ‘non-dedicated theatrical environment’, i.e. a church hall or similar. These venues usually present with a small stage area, often with little or no wing space, seating which has to be erected nightly, limited changing facilities and little storage room for props and scenery, elaborate costumes appear miraculously, often revamped from charity shops. Edmundians’ pantomimes are a prime example of the excellent and entertaining work which is produced on a very small budget under these difficult conditions year on year.
For 2020 it was the turn of Jack and the Beanstalk. One of the joys of reviewing pantomimes is that there is no need to relate the familiar story. However this adaptation, written specially by Jackie Howting to reflect the energy and enthusiasm of the cast, 18 out of 24 of whom were aged fourteen or under, did contain one or two novel twists and characters which delighted the audience.
The young cast was energetically directed by Jessica Young who was also joint producer with Ellen Walker-DiBella and responsible for the choreography. Jessica was also the scenic artist for the show, producing striking, modern and colourful back cloths for the many scenes. She was ably supported in set building and beanstalk realisation by Dave and Paula Young, together with the versatile Alan Smith. Musical director Paul Wiz Baker not only arranged the music but created many new compositions and, whom one suspects, was responsible for the effective and fearsome Giant’s footsteps and snores. The sound and lighting management for the beanstalk and the demise of the Giant were very evocative and resulted in gasps from the younger members of the enthusiastic audience.
Somewhat surprisingly, the opening scene, A place to unwind and relax, was revealed as a colourful beach on a Greek island where Jack (14 year old Charlie McMaster) and his Mother Dame Trot (Dave Young) were on holiday with a group of mainly young children who formed a strong and well drilled chorus of family and friends. Dave’s pastiche of the song Price Tag demonstrated once again his locally-famed skill as a pantomime dame.
On our return to ‘Wickenham’ we were introduced to some new characters, Dash (Gary Evans) and Joe (Becky Halden) as the as the Debt Collectors working for the Giant. We also met Bertha Blunder (the Giant’s sister – Ellen Walker-DiBella) with a penchant for pizzas and a comically terrifying laugh. All three actors played an entertaining part in the action, with Becky’s expert com
ic timing and reactions being particularly notable as they struggled with various mishaps and difficulties.
It was good to see Jack played by a teenage boy instead of the usual female ‘Principal boy’. Although we missed some of the swashbuckle and thigh- slapping of females in this rôle, Charlie personified the gullibility and hesitation of the character perceptively and his performance grew in stature as the panto progressed, especially when encouraged by the young chorus in The Only Way Is Up! Clare Blake was suitably demure as Jack’s girlfriend, Cathy.
As ever, one of the stars of this panto was Daisy the cow, expertly steered around the small stage by Kayleigh Spencer and Isabel Espi and involved in an amusing milking, or lack of milking, scene with Dame Trot and Jack.
After an interval with free ice creams for the lucky starred programme holders, Act Two took Jack and the audience to the Giant’s Castle. Here we met the Housekeeper (Theresa McCulloch) who was joined by a chorus of rats in a charming version of The Lion (Giant) Sleeps Tonight. The rats, Imogen Goddard, Aoife Kingsland, Saoirse Kingston and Evie Nunn, featured large in this act, deftly demonstrating their prowess in Irish dance and their ubiquity in the panto routine of He’s behind you. Mention should also be made of the excellent way they stayed in character throughout, even when not directly involved in the action, as indeed did young Evelyn Schaapveld as the Hen who had extreme difficulty in laying the requisite number of golden eggs.
After a cloud fight and an old-style cinema chase around the stage, led by Becky Halden, the Giant was slain with the help of some audience participation, unusually in the form of syncopated clapping. All ended happily and once again we were back on the colourful beach, A place to unwind and relax for the wedding of Jack and Cathy and a couple of rousing final choruses.
Author Jackie Howting incorporated many jokes into the script – some of which deserve to be immortalised in any definitive History of the Pantomime, if not there already. One sample:
Housekeeper – I’m going to make Jack some gold soup.
Dash – How to you make gold soup?
Housekeeper: Just put in 18 carats!
This was an entertaining pantomime, much appreciated by the large audience. Without being in the least patronising, one could say that this is good, slightly old–fashioned ‘am dram’ at its best and the Edmundian Players are to be congratulated in carrying on this great British tradition.
Mary Stoakes
January 2020
Mark Aspen 