SECRETS COCK TAVERN THEATRE

With the enticing title of Secrets and publicity that promised ‘explosive drama,’ I was all set for an exciting night out at the latest play at the Cock Tavern Theatre. However this rather tame and unfocused contribution offers little in the way of startling confessions or dramatic originality.

Created by Flexible Productions, eight actors reveal their own, true-life secrets through devised enactments. Amongst those unravelling their inner-most shames are a traumatised woman revisiting her sadistic relationship with a boyfriend, a closet queen, a supposedly reformed bully and a questionable victim of sexual abuse. Apart from Helen Briscoe’s disturbing revelations it’s all a bit timid, confused and ultimately shallow. In fact there are the secrets which are so vaguely wafted about that’s it hard to actually pin-point what they actually are.

This awkward effort lets down the usual high standard of work that the Cock has consistently produced in the past. The writing is all over the place, contrived and clumsily structured with some scenes adding little to the storyline or development of the characters. Indeed the only revelation this play really offers is the ability of the exceptionally skilled cast to create engaging, truthful performances despite being in a production that under Danielle Coleman’s messy direction, looks like a drama school creation. This further is emphasised by a bricolage of victim headlines glued onto a cheap looking backdrop as the centre piece for the set.
Helen Briscoe is exceptional in all her roles, James Dutton convincing as the bully and a suspected victim, Andrew Cleave very watchable as the put-upon psychologist and Shireen Walton adds some equally comic and moving moments to the play.
The telling of secrets have been the basis for many a successful drama. This is not one of them.
OLIVER VALENTINE
www.cocktaverntheatre.com

A complex scientific subject matter combined with theological debate was never going to be my first choice for a theatre experience. I did want to support this first venture of The Oxford Saturday Matinee Club but 'Collider' proved to be a very wordy piece and I often found it hard to believe in the ‘dialogue’ as much more than the four characters making speeches sometimes at rather than to each other or the audience. However, although it might not have been tremendous theatre and was over long (I was definitely clock watching towards the end), it featured some strong performances, especially from Steve Hay. The venue and staging did the play no favours. It was performed in the round but, with no raked audience seating, when actors sat down the sight lines were unforgiving. The friends who went with me (both of whom had stronger grasps of physics than me and one of whom is a devout Catholic) enjoyed the play far more than I did and it provoked some debate and discussion between them afterwards. They both declared it to be very good. I was unconvinced. The so-called vaudeville interludes did little to lift this from being effectively a difficult radio discourse and I may not know much about burlesque but found those elements some of the weakest. Hopefully The Oxford Saturday Matinee Club will provide greater entertainment with its future pieces. This one failed to move me and most of the information contained was too complex for me to retain on a Saturday afternoon.

Bill Kenwright and Laurie Mansfield in Association with Universal Music

Present

Dreamboats and Petticoats

Book by Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran

Reviewed by Sue Marks at Milton Keynes Theatre on Monday 16^th November 2009.

 

This show is a must for anyone who remembers the 1950s and ‘60s, but many of the songs featured are so well known it will appeal to anyone who loves these songs. Before the show started I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of dialogue to music ratio. However, I was pleased to find that there was a good storyline woven around the songs. The show opens with an attic scene where a man shows his Granddaughter his old Fender guitar and says he will explain how he was once, very briefly, in a band. The attic disappears and the band explodes into the opening track, “Let’s Dance.” 

It is the early 1960s and most of the show is set in a youth club in Essex where some members have formed a band and some are attempting to write songs to enter a contest. There are a number of pretty young girls to distract them from their ambitions. There is romance, some of which is unrequited and teenage angst. Songs from the era are performed to a high standard throughout the show as the characters strive to fulfil their dreams. The dialogue is well written and amusing and the characters are believable and likeable. Everyone gave a good performance both in acting and singing. The musicians were also very accomplished.

The band was a permanent fixture on the stage and curtains were used to hide the band for scenes outside the youth club such as the attic or in people’s homes. A thick red curtain was used as a backdrop for the song contest which also served to obscure the band. When the youth club members went on a trip to Southend a couple of dodgems were used to create a fun fair and with a slight modification served as carriers on the tunnel of love. The furniture in the youth club was typical of that time.

The costumes reflected the era and were excellent. Some of the dresses were very colourful with frothy white petticoats underneath. The hair and makeup was also appropriate for the time.  The Teddy Boys’ outfits were particularly authentic.

This show is colourful and vibrant and certainly has a feel good factor. The audience must have enjoyed it as they were clapping in time with the music. Towards the end some people stood up to dance, I was pleased they had managed to resist doing this earlier in the show, as it obviously obstructs other people’s view of the stage. Fortunately those standing up didn’t block my vision of the last few minutes. If you want your spirits lifted go and see this show.

Dreamboats and Petticoats plays Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday 21^st November 2009. Milton Keynes Theatre Box Office 0844 871 7652 (bkg fee). The tour then continues playing New Theatre Hull from 23^rd to 28^th November 2009 and the Lyceum Theatre Sheffield from 01^st to 05^th December 2009.

www.miltokeynestheatre.com www.kenwright.com

Reviewed by Sue Marks at Milton Keynes Theatre on Monday 16^th November 2009 on behalf of Catherine Brian.

 

 

 

 

The Queen's Theatre returns to its repertory roots with this digging up of Emlyn Williams 1928 warhorse A Murder Has Been Arranged, once a staple of regional theatres and weekly reps but now rarely done outside Amateur Dramatic circles. I was rather looking forward to seeing this play brought back from the dead, my interest in Williams being tweaked by David Cottis' splendid revival of The Druid's Rest at the Finborough this summer. Unfortunately, if there is a case to be made for A Murder Has Been Arranged – and I severe doubts – this production doesn't do much to argue it.

A Murder Has Been Arranged is a thriller which bucks the rational trend of most plays in that genre by including a genuinely supernatural element – a ghost actually appears. The setting is the stage of a West End Theatre, where wealthy old Sir Charles Jasper is celebrating his birthday and hoping he'll live past 11 O'clock, as at that hour he will inherit four million pounds; otherwise, the money will go to a long lost relative, Maurice Mullins. Predictably Mullins appears, yet he's not the only one with a motive for murder, as the handsome young masher hanging round the old man's younger wife also has good reason to want Jasper dead.

The play has a potentially intriguing meta-theatrical element, with most of the characters dressing up in Shakespearean costume and much of the action being those intrigues and lust of the middle classes which were the staple fare of West End audiences between the wars. Sadly, it can't be said that Williams really does anything that interesting with his conceit, and the production never finds a theatrical style to persuade us that the play is anything but a dated and daft dodo. This is compounded by most of the cast seemingly possessed by a palpable contempt for the material. The staging has none of the kinetic verve usually served up with relish by the show's director, Bob Carlton. After the interval, as the acting became ever more arch and coarse whilst the characters rave on about the dead walking the stage and the vitality of the evening becomes equivalently zombified, I idly wondered whether the whole thing wasn't a great big mickey-take of what Peter Brook identified in his seminal The Empty Space as "the deadly theatre" – theatre which exists with no real passion and without any purpose. But it grieves me to say that the production is most likely an example of deadliness rather than a wry comment on it.

A Murder Has Been Arranged is an evening with little wit and still less wonder, except that it does make me wonder why Carlton has chosen to put on a play he appears to have so little interest in making live for his audience. Stephen Daldry's production of An Inspector Calls shows that it is possible to make a creaking old thing breathe for contemporary theatre-goers, although it's admittedly a better play to begin with. Anyone keen on collecting revivals of rarities from the West End's vaults might force themselves down to Hornchurch to watch this corpse stalk the stage, but anyone wanting a living, breathing and truly haunting piece of theatre would be better off steering themselves elsewhere.

The Queen's Theatre, Billet Lane, Hornchurch.

Box Office: 01708 443333

30 October - 21 November 2009

Mon-Sat 8pm, Matinees Thu & Sat 2.30pm

50/50   Daring Pairings The Factory

The Factory together with Hampstead Theatre, for a select number of nights are presenting an interactive and slightly unorthodox theatre experience.

The company has collaborated with writers to develop short plays where dialogue can be played by any actor male or female. The actors need to know all the parts in the play and the audience can select what order they see them. Writers working on this project took their inspiration from any period in the last 50 years and were required to focus on character only, no special effects, props, costumes or stage directions allowed.

It was an exciting and daring prospect, and I felt myself hold my breath in the hope that no-one would forget any of the lines ( which nobody appeared to do).

Featured plays included Underwater Love by Paul Jenkins, Tomatoes  by Peter Rumney,The Poll Tax Riots by John Donnelly, 1975 by Federay Homes and  Assistance by Stephen Bloomer.

Themes varied from a clandestine meeting  in a hotel room in  Underwater Love to a charity workers determination to hear atrocities from the affected in Assistance.

 Underwater Love by Paul Jenkins was the most entertaining of the five and the audience had the opportunity to see the play twice. Both Colin Hurley and Alan Morissey brought interesting revelations in each of their roles as the two hesitant lovers, and then again in the role reversal showed excellent comic timing in their performances.
The Factory has assembled themselves a talented troupe of actors and their residency at the Hampstead theatre is one not to be missed.

Friday 30 October 9.30pm, Friday 6 November at 2.30 and 9.30pm, Saturday 7 November  at 9.30pm
Hampstead Theatre

Peter Hall sets this successful revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s  social comedy “Bedroom Farce” in the 1970s – a distant age without mobile phones, ipods or even the internet. Three bedrooms, side by side, fill the Rose Theatre stage and allow us a peep into the lives of four married couples.

The elderly couple Delia (Jane Asher) and Ernest (Nicholas Le Prevost) are getting ready for their yearly dinner at a fancy restaurant.  Delia tries to discuss their son Trevor’s marital problems but Ernest is more interested in the leaky roof.  Jan (Lucy Briers) is off to a housewarming party whilst her husband Nick (Tony Gardner) is grounded with a bad back.  Malcolm (Daniel Betts) and Kate (Finty Williams) are playing childish pranks on each other whilst waiting for their first guests to arrive. Chaotic Trevor (Orlando Seale) and his unstable wife Susannah embark on a journey of destruction by successfully ruining their party with a savage fight culminating in Trevor kissing Jan. A distraught Susannah disrupts Delia’s and Ernest’s romantic dinner in bed and Trevor rushes to Jan only to fall asleep on Nick’s bed, making Nick’s night pure agony.

Prepare yourself for a highly entertaining evening with an outstanding cast in Ayckbourn’s exploration of marriage and beyond.

The Rose Theatre, Kingston

1 Oct – 28 Nov 2009

See Tickets - 0871 230 1552

www.rosetheatrekingston.org

It probably says a lot about the tone of last night’s show that Halloween was only briefly mentioned once, by Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste. While London Symphony Orchestra’s performance with Antony and the Johnsons (performed in this hall a year ago) was given a bit of levity by their cover of  Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’, there was no such relief this year. Indeed, Antony Heggarty’s triumphant shows with the LSO seem an appropriate benchmark for last night’s, and on balance the feminine crooner’s show surpassed the Grizzly Bear’s.                       

            While Nico Muhly’s arrangements for Antony and the Johnson’s songs was integral to the performance, tonight the orchestra often seemed surplus to requirements as in the inevitable highlight of the set, ‘Two Weeks’. The sense of anticipation as Daniel Rossen moved to the electric organ for the only time all night was tangible, the opening chords got a cheer, Grizzly Bear played a note perfect rendition of the album version all on their own bar some extra piano from Muhly, and the rest of the set was a bit of a come down. Before this, the mellifluous coda of ‘All We Ask’ demonstrated the Bear’s vocal abilities and provided a golden opportunity for memorable orchestration that wasn’t taken at all.  At the premature end of the following song, a slightly flummoxed looking Droste explained ‘…we had an orchestral ending worked out for this song, but you started clapping  too soon… so we stopped.’  I would have doubted him had the audience not done exactly the same thing during the best song of enjoyable/forgettable support act St. Vincent’s set!

            When the orchestra were allowed to open up I thought they frequently sailed a little too close to the wind, taking songs like ‘I Live with You’ into inappropriate ‘James Bond theme’ territory, but these moments of band/orchestra interaction were fleeting. Luke Turner’s embarrassingly gushing Pseuds Corner programme notes identified Muhly’s selfless ‘appreciation’ for Grizzly Bear’s music, but on the grounds of tonight’s performance perhaps he should reconsider any ‘surrender of the ego’ and make his orchestrations more prominent.

The Barbican’s contemporary Music programme continues with Richard Bona Band and Hindi Zahra on Monday 2^nd November, see www.barbican.org.uk for details.

Anyone who nostalgically misses the heyday of 1970s ITV race comedy – epitomised by Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language – should hurry themselves down to the Theatre Royal Stratford East for the new play by Cosh Omar, whose Battle of Green Lanes proved such a critical success at the same venue in 2004. The first act of the play, at least, will satisfy a demand for guffaws at broad comic situations, vulgarity, farcical argy-bargy and a dramatis personae in which racial, sexual and cultural stereotypes abound.

Cosh Omar himself stars as Hassan Hassan, an eccentric bachelor who cohabits with his transgender houseboy/sex servant Sanjay, played by Raj Ghatak as if he's the ethnic love-child of John Inman and Julian Clary. Conveniently for the plot, Hassan suffers from "acute episodic paroxysmal alcoholic amnesia" – in other words, he goes out, gets drunk, does silly things and can't remember doing them. On this occasion, his condition has got him into quite a pickle – he's acquired a wife, in the shape of a pretty young Muslim girl in a snazzy hijab. Various comic twists and turns ensue, as Hassan's house is invaded by a Jewish builder, a reactionary white neighbour, the girl's fundamentalist Muslim family and Hassan's own dysfunctional Turkish parents. The first act and a half has a great deal of very broad fun with this cast of walking talking cultural clichés and the talented company works hard to produce some genuine belly laughs. 

It appears to be Omar's intention to paint a picture of the contradictions, in-fighting and tensions of multi-cultural society as a farcical scrum. The play gets into potentially scathing Ortonesque territory when the Muslim and Jewish characters, previously at each others' throats, conspire to murder the old white neighbour and bury him under the Hassan's in-progress extension. But unfortunately the play, instead of building on and paying off the plot's comic situations, descends into speechifying and, worse, sermonising about the Islamic and the European past and present, a trait exemplified by the appearance of a black policeman whose only dramatic function seems to be teach the characters and the audience a lesson in multi-cultural tolerance. This leads to a strangely abstract anti-climax in which the bulk of the cast leave stage to address a group of policemen waiting to be taught racial tolerance and a denouement which desperately contrives every character a happy ending. This feels severely compromised, as if Omar doesn't have the courage of his convictions in terms of sending up his stock-character, falling back on a desperate need to convince us that the play is really "constructive" and "helpful." Satire doesn't need to conciliate its audience like this.

Sanjay, the transsexual houseboy, is the most intriguing and at the same time the least successful of the play's major characters. There are certainly plays to be written about the curious position of homosexuals in Muslim societies, gay men who provide ostensibly heterosexual men with sex and are allowed a social existence if they change their gender (Iran, for example, has allowed hundreds of sex change operations in the past few years). But Omar misses the opportunity to get beneath the surface of this character, and we are left with a cheap camp variety turn written and performed without heart or soul. In fact, none of Omar's characters becomes any more than a cardboard cut-out, the women especially given a scarce amount to do or say.

Part of the problem is that Omar has been encouraged to work on a luxurious scale, a cast of thirteen filling the stage but many of the minor parts are left thankless and underdeveloped. Despite this, the actors are excellent – Omar himself performs with considerable verve and excellent comic timing (reminding me of a cross between Mike and Bernie Winters), Faraz Ayub portrays a hilariously boorish fundamentalist and the wonderful Jack Chissick fills the stage with a gloriously funny splenetic rage as the nasty neighbour. It is a shame that most of the play's verbal wit is on the level of having Chissick scream "f**king hell!" whenever possible, but the actor makes the most of every one of these obscene yelps. Kerry Michael's production is pacey and energetic when the play is, but his insistence on lining people up on the edge of the stage as if they are addressing the audience during the later speeches only emphasises the play's leap into the pulpit.

It's hard to know why Omar has chosen to resurrect a rather discredited 1970s form of populist TV sitcom to deal with the racial and cultural contradictions of today, and still harder to understand why, having done so, he doesn't stick to his guns and continue to make us roar with laughter at contemporary mores rather than going preachy and maudlin about sentiments which most of the Theatre Royal audience will always already be inclined to agree with him on.

Theatre Royal Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, Stratford, London
E15 1BN
Box Ofice: Mon – Sat, 10am –6pm 020 8534 0310
16 October - 14 November 2009
Tues - Sat 7.30pm, Matinee Sat 3pm

 

The Pitmen Painters
MK Theatre
reviewed by Louise Winter, 20th October 2009



Lee Hall’s play about the Ashington Group, a group of miners who took up painting as a result of art appreciation classes in 1934, is funny and thought provoking.  As the laughs come thick and fast it first appears that we may be stuck in the realm of class-based comedy. Here, as in Billy Elliot, also by Hall, is the comedy of the straight talking Northern voice and this is the basis for much of the laughter. It is more than this though. It is an exploration of class, culture, art and politics wrapped up in a hugely funny and entertaining package.

The Ashington group originally came together as a Workers Education Association class who had tried to find an economics lecturer. This failed so they decided to try something different and invited Robert Lyon, played by Ian Kelly, to give them art appreciation classes. Initially he showed the men slides of Renaissance art.

This approach did not engage the men so a more practical approach was suggested; the men were to start making images themselves. Lyon first encouraged them to try linocuts and then to start painting. This then led to a subject being set each week, for example ‘The Deluge’ or ‘The Hermit’. The men would produce a painting at home and each week display it before the group to be critiqued.
Before long word spread and the group became of interest to the art establishment. Helen Sutherland, the shipping heiress, played by Phillipa Wilson, was integral to the group getting to know artists such as David Jones and Ben Nicholson, and visiting London galleries.
Max Robert’s staging of this play is in itself an education and one of the great joys is the simplicity of the staging and the placement of the paintings centre stage, projected as they are onto three large screens. It is a delight to see so many of the images as the fast and furious group discussions take place beneath them. 
The story of Oliver Kilbourn, (Christopher Connel) perhaps the most talented of the group, is heart rending and deeply moving as we watch his struggle to decide which path to take when he is given a life changing opportunity.

Each member of the exemplary cast must be mentioned Deka Walmsley, David Whitaker, Michael Hodgson, Brian Lonsdale, and Lisa McGrillis. Performances are faultless and this is no doubt due, in part, to the fact that this remains the original cast from the premiere in 2007. 

Hall intimately understands his subjects and the community about which he writes but never resorts to sentimentality. Nor is he patronising to us or to them.
This is storytelling and acting at its best  - a powerful and skilfull exploration of the passionate debates and arguments surrounding art, self-expression, socialism and community. This production is a must see and truly deserving of The Evening Standard’s Best Play Award. 

The Pitemn Painters plays at MK Theatre until 24th October 

 

27th Oct – 31^st Oct, The Lowry, Manchester

2nd Dec 2009 – 18^th Jan, The Lyttleton Theatre, London

 Northern Ballet Theatre

 Presents

 A Christmas Carol

Reviewed by Sue Marks at Milton Keynes Theatre on Tuesday 13^th October 2009.

 

Firstly congratulations to the Northern Ballet Theatre on their 40^th birthday. It is productions such as this that has enabled them to survive to maturity. If you enjoy contemporary ballet then you will love this rendition. If you are not particularly fond of ballet then the subject material makes this performance particularly accessible and I believe you will enjoy it in spite of yourself. Naturally Dickens’ dialogue is missing and it definitely helps if you know the story but for the most part the Company has kept close to the tale Dickens told. You might ask why bother with ballet; why not deliver the performance in prose? The answer is simple; dance is a more emotive medium and can inform this story in ways that cannot be achieved by players alone.

Scrooge is taken by Darren Goldsmith who for three quarters of the performance does not dance which accentuates how well he dances during the remainder. I particularly enjoyed the “reverse strip” where he dresses on Christmas morning. Sharing the limelight is Hironao Takahashi who plays Bob Cratchit. Whilst I believe it is divisive to single out members of a dance ensemble I feel it is only fair to mention the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future played respectively by Julie Charlet, Tobias Batley and Michael Berkin. The whole troupe gave a remarkable performance supported by children from the Myra Tiffin Performing Arts School.

The dancers are supported by a complete orchestra of approximately thirty people, lead by the first violin Geoffrey Allan and conducted by John Price-Jones. The superb quality of the orchestra clearly enhanced this production and effectively compensated for the lack of dialogue. The music portrayed many different moods and emotions ranging from classical to Christmas carols which are sung.

The costumes are lush ranging from Dickensian street clothes rich in velvet and brocades featuring bonnets and top hats to the fantasy outfits worn by the phantoms and ghosts. Particular mention must be made of the outfit worn by the ghost of Christmas future, a representation of the Angel of Death which is superb if somewhat frightening. As someone who doesn’t like feathers I found it particularly uncomfortable. I was more comfortable with the costumes of the ghosts of past and present.

The scenery was fairly simple consisting primarily of a mezzanine below which was a double sided pair of walls giving us the outside and inside of Marley and Scrooge’s office and with some alteration a Victorian street scene and the inside of the Cratchit’s home. Scrooge’s bed figured heavily although not always as Scrooge’s bed, for example when his tombstone rose out of it. Good use was made of lighting and special effects, such as snow in different forms.

This was an excellent production which was clearly well received by the audience as there was extensive applause at the end of the show, I thoroughly enjoyed this performance and would urge others to go and see it.

A Christmas Carol plays Milton Keynes Theatre from Tuesday 13^th October 2009 to Saturday 17^th October 2009.  Milton Keynes Theatre Box Office 0844 871 7652 (bkg fee). The tour then continues playing Sheffield Lyceum Theatre from 10^th to 14^th November 2009.

www.miltonkeynestheatre.com www.northernballettheatre.co.uk

2009 Reviewed by Sue Marks at Milton Keynes Theatre on Tuesday 13^th October on behalf of Catherine Brian.