Theatre

HMS Pinafore

HMS Pinafore, UK Tour 2016_17 -® Roy Tan

14/07/16

I had better come clean here and admit that my knowledge of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan is scant to say the very least, extending to viewings of Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy (1999) and The Pirate Movie (1982), both of which I enjoyed. So the opportunity to review this visiting production at the Lowry theatre left me feeling slightly apprehensive, aware as I was that fans of the Victorian composers are a devoted crew who would instantly sense if I don’t really know what I’m talking about. To add to the potential pitfalls, Sasha Regan’s adaptation of the musical is not exactly a straightforward one. No petticoats and bonnets here. The gimmick – and I think it’s fair to call it that – is that every role is portrayed by a male performer. Yes, even Buttercup!

The setting is that of a World War II battleship and the action takes place almost entirely below decks, with rows of metal bunk beds as a backdrop. The intimation here is of the crewmen putting on an impromptu performance to keep themselves amused on a long voyage. Costume changes are achieved merely by ‘tweaking’ the sailor’s uniforms, by the actor’s body language and by the pitch of the voices. Ben Irish (Josephine) affects a startling soprano, while David McKechnie is totally convincing in the pivotal role of Buttercup. By contrast, Neil Moors as Captain Corcoran is blusteringly macho (the physical exercise routine he leads as he croons I Am The Captain of the Pinafore is a particular highlight while in the second half, a mostly acapella rendition of A Many Years Ago is actually breathtakingly lovely.

There’s no orchestra here, just a highly skilled piano player, who must qualify as the hardest working member of the cast. If not every word of every song is audible that’s more a problem of the venue’s acoustics and the fact that as far as I can see, nobody is wearing a microphone. The elderly lady sitting next to me, who introduces herself as a G & S fanatic, tells me it helps to know all the songs by heart, but she thinks the idea of an all-male cast is ‘a delightful concept.’ I tend to agree with her. Clearly, the audience loves what they hear and applauds heartily at the conclusion. Admirers of Mr Gilbert and Mr Sullivan will need to get themselves along to the Lowry pretty smartly if they wish to enjoy this as HMS Pinafore is only there until the 16th of July after which it sets sail in the direction of Salisbury.

All aboard!

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Mighty Walzer

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05/06/16

Royal Exchange Manchester

It’s entirely unplanned but bumping into Howard Jacobson minutes before the press show of The Mighty Walzer, proves fortuitous. I can’t resist asking him how he feels right now. Excited? Elated? Nervous? He confesses that he doesn’t really know how he feels. Apart from an early read-through by the cast, this is the first time he will be seeing this adaptation of his 1999 novel, a World Premiere at the Royal Exchange. But he tells me, this isn’t really his baby, all credit must go to his collaborator Simon Bent. When I tell him I’m there to review the show, he says he hopes I’ll ‘go easy on it.’

He needn’t have worried. This is a sprightly, occasionally very funny play, set against the austere backdrop of Manchester in the 1950s and as the posters proudly proclaim, it’s ‘a riotous tale of growing up, sex and ping-pong.’ Semi-autobiographical in tone (Jacobson really was a table-tennis aficionado in his youth) it relates how the teenage Oliver Walzer (Elliot Levy) escapes the clutches of his over protective mother, Sadie (Tracey-Ann Oberman) and his market-trader father, Joel (Jonathan Tafler), by joining a local ping-pong team. It turns out that he has a natural flair for the game, one that brings him success in the local leagues and into the orbit of the widely-admired Lorna Peachly (Lily Sacofsky) with whom he embarks on a doomed romance.

If the story is whimsical, it nevertheless delivers an evening of assured entertainment. There are some very funny moments here and the device of having the adult Walzer looking back on events and commenting on them, works an absolute treat (I particularly liked a recurring motif which has him arguing with Sheeny Waxman (Joe Coen) as to whether he was actually present for some of the events in which he repeatedly appears). If there’s a slight criticism of the story, it’s that there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of progression in there – the second half relates pretty much the same events as the first – but luckily, it’s all done with such sure-footedness, it hardly matters.

Fans of ping pong should make sure they arrive early for the show, because there’s a table set up around the back of the theatre where interested parties can actually play a few games while they’re waiting. There’s even a couple of resident experts on hand to offer tips and advice. I managed to get in a few shots myself and was summarily slaughtered.

The Mighty Walzer is at the Royal Exchange until the 30th of July. It’s well worth a visit.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps 2016 tour - Olivia Greene as Pamela & Richard Ede as Hannay (c) Dan Tsantilis

21/06/16

Lyric Theatre, The Lowry

Poor Richard Hannay – framed for the murder of a mysterious young woman  he’s only recently met, he’s had to go on the run to a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands in order to prove his innocence. But danger lies in wait for him at every step…

Hannay is of course the great British hero of The 39 Steps. John Buchan’s classic novel was first published in 1915 and famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. This touring production, originally adapted by Patrick Barlow in 2006 comes direct from the West End and it’s easy to see the qualities that have pulled in packed audiences ever since. With a cast of just four actors, this is played primarily for laughs and conducted at breakneck pace with plenty of lightning-fast costume changes and a repeated motif of effects that go slightly wrong. It’s clear too that this is much more Hitchcock’s version of the story than Buchan’s – film fans will spot plenty of references to Hitch’s best known movies thrown into the mix. (In a shadow puppet sequence depicting a chase across the hills, keep an eye out for one particularly recognisable silhouette.)

Richard Ede makes an appealing pipe-smoking, Harris tweed-wearing  hero, while his three fellow actors virtually run themselves into the ground providing a whole wealth of supporting characters for him to interact with. In the cavernous setting of the Lyric theatre, it was sometimes a struggle to make out every line of dialogue (I would have loved to see this in the more intimate setting of the studio theatre, but you can’t fault the producers for wanting to pitch this to the biggest possible audiences) and there’s no doubting the consummate professionalism on show here, nor the wit of Barlow’s script. It’s probably also true to say that when this production first aired many of the staging techniques on show would have seemed ground-breaking – now, they are part of the everyday language of contemporary theatre.

That said, this offers a fun and entertaining night out for lovers of adventure and comedy alike. It’s on untilSaturday 25th June.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Bird

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10/06/16

Studio Theatre, Royal Exchange

While The Night Watch continues to enthral audiences in the Royal Exchange’s main theatre, down in the more intimate setting of The Studio, you’ll find Bird by Katherine Chandler, the winner of a judge’s award in the 2013 Bruntwood Prize Competition. Chandler is playwright in residence at Sherman Cymru Theatre and her play is a bleak examination of families and friendship.

Ava (Georgia Henshaw) has grown up in care, after being thrown out by her mother, Claire (Siwan Morris), mostly because she’s accused Claire’s partner of abuse. Now Ava lives in a children’s home somewhere in the backside of South Wales. Soon, she will be sixteen and sent out to fend for herself – but where is she supposed to go?

Essentially this is a series of short, punchy duologues – Ava confronting her mother, who has moved on and now has a two-year-old daughter to lavish all her attention on – Ava confiding in her best friend, the mysterious Tash (Rosie Sheehy); and there are some telling exchanges with two very different men – naïve teenager, Dan (Connor Allen), who confides that he might just be looking for something more than casual sex; and the older Lee (Guy Rhys), who is quite clearly grooming Ava, plying her with alcohol at every opportunity, in order to get her to bend to his will. Lee is always seen from Ava’s point of view – a scene where he cuts himself in order to get her to go along with him is particularly disturbing – which means that his manipulation is all the more sinister: he offers the care and attention so lacking elsewhere in her life, and his ulterior motives are opaque and shadowy.

The performances by the five strong cast are uniformly good and Henshaw is particularly adept at conveying her character’s inner conflict through her coiled, unresponsive body language. The edgy duologues are interspersed with more exuberant moments, such as the scene where Ava and Tash throw themselves around the stage, dancing in Northern Soul style. Parallels with birds constantly emerge though the writing – a caged bird occasionally let out to fly around a tiny room, the peregrine falcons nesting in the abandoned tenements nearby. They seem to represent the freedom that Ava yearns for but repeatedly fails to attain.

If there’s a criticism of this play, it’s that the signposting of issues is occasionally rather heavy-handed; it all feels a bit like we’re being hit over the head with them – and it’s clear early in the proceedings that anyone who was hoping for a happy ending is going to be disappointed. Still, it’s a hard-hitting piece that deserves your attention.  Bird is at the Studio Theatre until June 25th.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

Thon Man Molière

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01/06/16

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Thon Man Molière is Liz Lochhead’s witty, irreverent imagining of a particularly awkward period in the infamous French playwright’s life. Fêted by the King, and finally achieving recognition for his work, Molière seems determined to self-sabotage, persisting with his play, Tartuffe, despite warnings that its depiction of a corrupt clergyman might not sit well with the highly religious monarch on whose patronage he depends. And that’s not all: he compounds the precariousness of his position by falling in love with and marrying a young woman who, it appears, may very well be his daughter.

It’s a subject ripe for comedy, and Lochhead’s script fizzes with quips and drollery. It’s laugh-out-loud funny at times, not least when contemporary Scottish dialect is employed in response to seventeenth century mores. The performances are uniformly strong, with Jimmy Chisholm managing to tread the fine line between vulnerable and repulsive in his depiction of the egotistical Molière, so that we do actually care what happens to him, even when his misfortunes are richly deserved. Siobhan Redmond is fantastic too, imbuing Madeleine Béjart, Molière’s sometime lover, with a dignity and credibility beyond the ‘tart with a heart’ archetype.

The set, mostly backstage at a theatre, is all muted monochrome, with the unpainted backs of flats on view. The costumes, glorious peacock-confections in the main, stand out in contrast to this, conveying perfectly the tawdry glamour of the theatre, and how it shines against the pall of ordinary life.

If there’a a quibble, it’s with the dialogue. Most of the time, it’s superb: funny and acerbic and nicely paced. But, now and again, we are fed great lumps of exposition, clumsily forced into a conversation, most of which we just don’t need. There’s no real benefit, for example, in giving the audience a detailed plot summary of one of Molière’s plays; it’s unnecessary and just slows things down.

But all in all, this is a lovely play: a uniquely Scottish take on a slice of French comedy.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

The Night Watch

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24/05/16

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Based on Sarah Waters Booker-nominated novel, Hattie Naylor’s intriguing adaptation of The Night Watch relates a series of interwoven stories, pitched against the setting of the Second World War and its aftermath. The play’s ingenious set comprises two large turning circles, the outer rim moving anti clockwise, the inner in the opposite direction. The two circles are constantly in motion and they effectively mirror the unfolding story, which, as in the novel, is told in reverse chronological order – the play’s first half is set in 1947; in the second, events skip back to 1944, to London’s ‘little blitz’, before finally arriving in the carnage of 1941. It’s a brilliant piece of staging and of course, this being the Royal Exchange, it has one final trick up its sleeve – happily, not the water feature that has been rather overused in recent productions, but a simple and effective device that it would be a crime to reveal.

The central protagonist, Kay  (Jodie McNee) is gay at a time when lesbianism is still considered an aberration. During the war years she works as an ambulance woman and afterwards finds it hard to recover her sense of purpose. Her former partner, Helen (Kelly Hotten) is now living with Julia (Lucy Briggs-Owen) herself once a girlfriend of Kay’s. Meanwhile, Duncan (Joe Jameson), who was jailed as a conscientious objector during the war, reconnects with Robert (Ben Addis), now a journalist, who is shocked to discover that his old friend is lodging with their former gaoler, retired prison officer, Mr Mundy (Christopher Ettridge). This first half throws out a lot of questions about the various characters and how their stories relate to each other, and many of those questions remain unanswered until the second half, when the pace accelerates, until we finally hurtle  into the single momentous event that kicked everything into motion.

The performances here are exemplary and there’s something quite mesmerising in the way the actors seem to float constantly around the stage on the rotating circles, allowing us to see them from every possible angle as they reveal more and more about what makes them tick. The evocations of different settings with the use of a few simple props are masterfully done, while sound designer, Dan Jones has done a great job of bringing the soundscape of the Blitz to vivid life.

This is an assured and satisfying production that succeeds on many levels. Enjoy.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Home’s First Birthday

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20th-22nd June 2016

Hard to believe, but Home – Manchester’s hub for all things creative, has already been here for one year and recently celebrated it’s millionth customer. So this weekend, they’re having a bit of a party, with all kinds of free events, live music and (I shouldn’t be at all surprised) a lot of people in the bar.

But what theatrical events have they lined up, you might ask. And I’m glad you did, because surely only Home would offer the offbeat double bill that’s currently showing in theatre 2.

The evening kicks off with Late Night Love by Eggs Collective, a weird sort of cabaret that focuses on late-night radio romance. Three black suited actors slink around the theatre offering free chocolates, glasses of prosecco, a bit of ice sculpture and a collection of mawkish power ballads. It’s weird, engaging and a lot of fun. If you want to get involved, make sure you grab a seat at one of the tables up front.

4 stars.

After a short interval, head back into the theatre for Gutted – a one woman show in which Liz Richardson performs a piece about ulcerative colitis. (And before you react by saying, ‘that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun,’ don’t be fooled. Richardson (who cowrote the work with Tara Robinson) offers a fearless performance, where all aspects of the condition are unflinchingly explored and where she takes on something like fifteen roles. There’s also a lot of audience participation here but there are rewards – I myself was given a bottle of ale just for reading out a greetings card! This is a moving autobiographical performance, don’t miss it.

4.2 stars.

Even if you can’t get a seat in the theatre, the thing is to be here. Home’s  first floor restaurant is well-worth a visit too. In fact, we can’t really believe we’ve waited a whole year to try it out. The dining room is sprawling and open-plan, merging seamlessly with a   bar and a performance area where a band strikes up part way through our meal. It’s a lively, convivial place, ideal for meeting up with friends. So that’s what we do. The table is ours for the evening, and we never feel rushed and the service is very good, particularly considering how busy the place is. There’s a range of pizzas and burgers, and a few house specialities; if the food is comforting rather than exciting, it doesn’t really matter very much. Portions are generous, and we’re all happy with what we have, particularly the starters, where highlights include the baked king prawns (firm, tasty and plentiful) and the smoked haddock pate (complete with a layer of clarified butter, a pleasing touch, we think). And as tonight’s a party, we imbibe more than a few drinks to mark the occasion.

3.9 stars.

So head into Manchester and bring along some like-minded pals. Home is a brilliant venue and deserves to be celebrated. Maybe we’ll see you there.

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

Twelfth Night

Dan Poole (Toby Belch) and Amy Marchant (Viola) in Filter Theatre's Twelfth Night - photo Mark GarvinFerdy Roberts (Malvolio) in Filter Theatre's Twelfth Night - photo by Robert Day

11/05/16

Home, Manchester

If you’re planning to do Shakespeare, you pretty much have two choices: you can play it straight, like the admirable King Lear currently coming to the end of its run at the Royal Exchange, Manchester – or you can ‘do something completely different with it.’ Filter’s production of Twelfth Night certainly fits into the latter category. I mean, when else have you seen a production of the play that includes an audience-participatory game of Butt Head half way through… a production where a lively conga line of dancing audience members is interrupted by the delivery of hot pizza? This is Shakespeare taken to the very edge, reshaped, remodelled and radically stripped back. Mostly it works well.

As you take your seats it’s clear that this isn’t going to be the usual relaxed evening at the theatre. The stage is pretty much filled by musicians and as the play begins, the house lights are left on, the better to involve the audience. Orsino (Harry Jardine) strolls on and puts the band through its musical paces, before launching into ‘If music be the food of love,’ and then we’re off at a sprint, because this is ninety minutes of energetic action with barely a pause for breath. (It helps if you have at least a working knowledge of the original play, because there’s not much here in the way of set-up.) Much of the text is delivered in the form of punky songs, actors conflate characters (Jardine plays both Orsino and Aguecheek) and some of the sub plots are simply thrown out with the bathwater.

Mind you, it’s not all gimmicks. Dan Poole gives a roistering interpretation of Sir Toby Belch, as a hapless drunkard clutching a carrier bag full of lager cans and Ferdy Roberts is a splendid Malvolio, whose transformation from a stiff-backed martinet into a yellow-stocking clad degenerate is one of the evening’s highlights. I loved the fact that Viola (Amy Marchant) borrowed her male disguise from a bloke in the audience and her interplay with a radio weather forecaster was great fun.

As you might expect with something as freeform as this, not everything in the performance is perfect. The regular recourse to the use of a tiny speaker to distort some of the actors voices occasionally makes it hard to understand what’s actually being said and one of the extended comic routines between Belch and Aguecheek goes on rather too long for comfort, even though it comes good in the end. While I don’t fully agree with Philomena Cunk’s assertion – ‘If you go to watch a Shakespeare comedy today, you’ll hear the audience laughing as though there are jokes in there, even though there definitely aren’t.’ – I understand exactly what she’s driving at. Happily, this isn’t the case here. Indeed, I can’t remember the last time I laughed quite so much at the Bard of Stratford (apart from a Macbeth I saw back in the day where the titular hero accidentally chinned himself with the handle of his broadsword).

My only regret? I should have gone on stage for one of those free shots of tequila. Now that’s something you don’t usually get to say in these circumstances! Twelfth Night is on at Home, Manchester until the 14th May, then moves on to the Theatre Royal Plymouth from the 16th to the 21st May.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Stowaway

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Home, Manchester

06/05/16

Hidden in the wheel arch of a plane from Dubai, a stowaway falls to his death in the car park of a DIY superstore. The fall is witnessed by Andy (Steven Rae), an event that makes his own recently disrupted life begin to unravel – and when a passenger on the plane, Lisa (Hannah Donaldson), a crime writer returning from a prestigious literary festival, reads about the incident, she feels compelled to try and find out about the dead man – who was he and what brought him to such a horrible end? But even when she returns to Dubai to investigate, she finds that nobody wants to give her any answers.

The four actors that comprise Analogue Theatre’s production present a whole series of intertwined stories which serve to flesh out the tale, but also demonstrate how close proximity to a tragedy intensifies the situation. In a series of cleverly constructed flashbacks we find out more about the dead man, seeing him as a child in India with his sister and how his attempts to better his own life lead him into the construction industry in Dubai, working on glittering high rises for the super-rich, whilst being paid slave wages and made to work around the clock. Eventually his only hope of a better future is to try and escape from the awful  world into which he has unwittingly blundered.

This is a sharp and sinewy story, one that delivers more questions that it offers answers for. It’s a prescient tale and one that I would highly recommend. An after-show discussion with two of the actors and some lecturers from Manchester University also benefited from a guest spot by Gulwali Passarlay whose book The Lightless Sky is based around his own experiences as a 12 year old refugee fleeing from from Afghanistan.

Stowaway concludes tonight (7th May) at Home, Manchester, before moving on for a single performance at The Civic, Barnsely on the 12th. If you’re able to catch a performance, please do: you’ll be moved, informed and riveted by what you see onstage.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney 

King Lear

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

29/04/16

Michael Buffong’s King Lear is a tour de force: gimmick-free yet undeniably modern, a fast-paced production that manages, like all the best Shakespeare, to be at once timeless and of its time.

Don Warrington is the eponymous old man, a case-study in futile bluster, self-destructing in his anger at the ravages of old age. I like the way his impotence is emphasised here: he’s never a magnificent, raging tyrant, just an old man who commands deference only as long as he wears his crown. Pepter Lunkuse’s Cordelia is also a revelation: for the first time, I see why she is Lear’s favourite. She’s as stubborn and destructive as he is, as incapable of compromise. She’s neither sweet nor resolute in this production: she’s a headstrong teenager, with the moral certitude only youth or extreme religion can provide. I love the way her lip curls at her sisters; she’s self-righteous and scathing, a Cordelia for the modern age (maybe this is how she was always meant to be?).

It’s a grim play, one of the Bard’s bleakest, and the comic relief from the Fool (Miltos Yerolemou) and Oswald (Thomas Coombes) is most welcome. They’re witty and engaging, pushing just far enough to undercut the tension and provide those all-important shades of light and dark. While we’re on the subject of grim, the notorious blinding scene is played for horror here; there’s nothing subtle in an eye gouging that results in “vile jelly” flying out across the stage into the audience. It’s so shocking there are gasps and groans – and that’s exactly as it should be, I think.

The storm scene is perhaps a little undermined by the fact that the Exchange’s new water-feature has been enthusiastically showcased in almost all recent productions, so what should be astonishing is more, “Oh, this again.” Still, it’s effective – the lightning strikes, the thunder claps and everyone is drenched.

Lear is a dense and complex play; there’s too much of it to cover in one shortish review. Suffice to say, I loved this production: a pacy, confident interpretation that trusts Shakespeare’s words to do their magic.

4.8 stars

Susan Singfield