The Rosemary Branch Theatre in Islington - winner of „Best Theatre“ in the 2010 Fringe Report Awards - presents a solo performance by Judith Paris about the life of Madame Tussaud. Although her name graces one of the main tourist attractions in London little is known about the life of Marie Tussaud.

Aptly directed by Ninon Jerome, Judith Paris recounts the story of this remarkable woman who was arrested as a royalist during the horrors of the French revolution and barely escaped the guillotine. Marie Tussaud tells her younger son the story of her life before the opening of her new show. Now aged 72 she has been working hard since she was a child to become a gifted artist as well as a successful business woman. She describes how she was taught the art of waxwork by her uncle Philippe Curtius against the explicit wishes of her mother who saw her daughter in a more traditional role. Marie eventually married but left her husband and her younger son to tour the towns of Britain with her wax cabinet, fighting off competition against a background of fire, riot, shipwreck, and betrayal. Madame Tussaud became one of the greatest showpeople along with P.T. Barnum - which makes one wonder: How much of her story is really true? 

Judith Paris, who has also written the play, gives a beautiful performance as the admirable Marie Tussaud.

9 – 14 February 2010, Tue – Sat 7.30 pm, Sun 3 pm

Tickets: £ 12 / £ 10 (concessions)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7704 6665 

The Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road, London N1 3DT

 



THE QUEEN'S THEATRE.  HORNCHURCH

Travels with my Aunt

By Giles Havergal

Adapted from the novel by
Graham Greene

Directed by Liz Marsh
Designer: Rodney Ford
Lighting Designer: Chris Howcroft

This production of Havergal's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel was fast moving, fast speaking, action packed, but simply staged. All elements that I found made it a success.

As an audience member taking your seats, you were mildly aware of a character, sweeping and setting up a minimalistic stage, lined with high cupboards and drawers. Once the audience were seated, this stage manager, played by Simon Jessop, introduced us to Henry Pulling.  Three characters identically dressed in plain grey suits entered the stage, all introducing themselves as Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager with hardly any interests apart from growing dahlias who, at his mother's funeral, was reunited after many years with his mother's sister, Aunt Augusta. Each Henry (Elliott Harper, Sam Pay and Marcus Webb) took turns addressing the audience.  Full attention was needed in order not to miss anything from this story, narrated by the character of Henry. Each character and scenario was played out by him, with the help of the stage hand who ran around the stage opening draws to reveal beds, graves, hotels suites, taxis and trains. Henry relays the story of his dreary life until meeting his aunt after many years at his mother's funeral.  He forges a new friendship with this relative and follows her in her desire to revisit her younger, more colourful years of travelling the world surrounded by smugglers, war criminals and con men. Each actor plays numerous characters on a journey that takes us from Brighton to Paris, the Orient Express to Istanbul and a final trip to Panama.   Each time a new character was introduced, one of the three Henries would simply put on a hat or different coloured shirt or hold a prop.  The mannerisms were enough to be able to visualise each character and was powerful and effective.  I could actually empathise with each character.  One member of the audience let out a gasp when the gruesome fate of one of the characters was revealed, we'd become that close to them, there were almost tears at the end.  

The pure wordiness of the play and the faultless performances of the cast, switching characters with ease while keeping the pace constant, made this a thoroughly engaging production.  Witty, fast, timed to perfection, especially Simon Jessop's background antics as the stage manager messing up his sound effects and costume preparations,  this was something I'd see again.

Showing 5 -27 February

Shakespeare’s magical comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the latest play in the Octagon season to be directed by the Artistic Director, David Thacker, who won a brace of Olivier Awards for his RSC production ofPericles twenty years ago.

The Sergeant Pepper-influenced publicity flags up a Swinging Sixties theme, so it’s surprising to find the auditorium initially awash with sombre army uniforms and Che Guevara-style propaganda posters - a nod to the very un-swinging military dictatorship which seized power in Athens in 1967.

Rob Edwards (eponymous hero of that 1990 Pericles) doubles the roles of Theseus, head of Athens’ repressive jackbooted regime, and Oberon, the equally cruel despot of fairyland.  Paula Jennings is Theseus’ black-veiled spoil-of-war Hippolyta who becomes translated into a white mini-dressed, sexually liberated Titania. 

Designer Ashley Shairp’s acid-coloured playground of a forest, teeming with bouncing balls and magic lanterns, seems to unleash the potential in every character, including a quartet of mismatched lovers fleeing from the city, and a weaver with a thespian bent and an ass’s head.

Vanessa Kirby’s heart-broken Helena sets the stage alight with her passion, energy and comic timing - no wonder Rob Edwards’ magisterial Oberon is so visibly taken by her.  Compassion for the young mortal melts his hard heart and leads to a sequence of reconciliations, including his own with Paula Jennings’ luscious and uninhibited Titania.

Kieran Hill makes an unusually good-looking Bottom and is beautifully rigged out for his Act V turn as Pyramus, but Russell Dixon’s Peter Quince runs off with the comedy honours for a spot on portrait of a fruity old-school actor in a classic piece of character acting.

The handling of the verse is uniformly excellent, and David Thacker’s inspired use of the entire auditorium really brings the show alive, ably assisted by music director Carol Sloman’s trippy score and Wayne Dowdeswell’s hallucinogenic lighting.

The production could benefit from being played at a much faster pace as its current running time is more akin to Hamlet than a comedy which I once saw performed in ninety minutes flat.  Nevertheless this is a colourful, energetic and lucid production of the original rom-com.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 6 March 2010 

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Friday 5, Saturday 6, Monday 8, Wednesday 17 and Sat 27 Feb @ 2pm

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

The Machine Gunners

The Customs House, South Shields

The themes of love, loss, loyalty, friendship, childhood and warfare are skilfully interwoven into a musical that tells the tale of a group of teenagers growing up on Tyneside during the Blitz.

Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners was published in 1975 and won the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature, became a set text in schools, a million seller and a classic BBC TV series. This musical adaptation, written by Ken Reay and Tom Kelly with music by John Miles, was first staged at The Customs House in 1998 and then spent a month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it received rave reviews. It returns to The Customs House, with a stellar cast, as part of the venue’s fifteenth anniversary season.

Fourteen-year-old Chaz McGill (played by James Baxter) is an avid collector of shrapnel and other forms of wartime memorabilia, which he finds amongst the debris of the bombsites in his home town, Garmouth. One day, he stumbles across the tail-end of a German fighter, its machine gun and its pilot.

Together with his gang of mates, Chaz decides to keep the German airman as a prisoner of war and he is secreted in a disused garden shed. Soon, though, the teenagers grow fond of Rudi and a set of unlikely friendships are formed.

The Machine Gunners is a piece of theatre that succeeds on every level. As dramatic as it is comedic, you cannot help but get caught up in the adventures of the youngsters, whilst also empathising with the fears and concerns of the adults.

Director Gareth Hunter has gathered together a cast comprising much of the best of North East talent. James Baxter’s portrayal of Chaz is carefully crafted and utterly believable. The relationship between Chaz and the other members of his gang, played by Tom Booth (Cem), Steven Stobbs (Clogger), Jamie Hannon (Nicky) and Rachel Teate (Audrey) is extremely convincing. Wayne Miller and Charlie Richmond also deliver great performances as Bodser the bully and John, respectively.

Neil Armstrong and Tracy Gillman strike up a great rapport as Chaz’s parents, whilst Annie Orwin maximises the comedy in her role as nosey-parker Mrs Spalding. Jamie Brown as Rudi, the German air-gunner, puts in a fine performance, as does Louis Roberts in the slightly limited role of Sergeant Green. Donald McBride and Tony Neilson complete the line-up as members of the Garmouth Home Guard.

Some of the songs stand up better than others, with ‘Gossip’, ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’ and ‘He Will Need You’ being the showstoppers. However, it is the story that completely sweeps you up and makes The Machine Gunners memorable for all the right reasons.

Steve Burbridge.

The Machine Gunners runs until Saturday 13^th February 2010.

Fiona Peek’s new play Salt was co-winner of the Royal Exchange’s Bruntwood Playwriting Competition in November 2008, and the premiere of this sophisticated social comedy has been eagerly anticipated.  

The action takes place between July 2007 and March 2008 during the course of five dinner parties in Simon and Amy’s beautiful basement kitchen.  Simon’s stable law firm salary and Amy’s chic little gallery job provide them and their children with a lifestyle straight out of a weekend colour supplement.  However their two child-free friends Rachel and Nick (Amy’s old flame from college days) are struggling with debt now that his freelance journalism commissions are drying up and RSI has ended her orchestral career.

Fiona Peek’s debut play, with its skilfully interwoven themes of debt, fertility, work/life balance and food porn, thoroughly nails the late-noughties zeitgeist.  The other unacknowledged but ever-present problem plaguing the middle-classes is excessive recreational drinking - a vice which does more than its fair share to inflame the situation here.

Even if external circumstances didn’t play a part, the chemistry between Amy and Nick and their uninhibited flirting has “slow-motion car crash” written all over it.  Beth Cordingly’s smug Amy is still proprietorial of her ex, constantly reminding Rachel (and Simon) of how long they’ve known each other and therefore how much better she understands him than his wife does.

Simon Chadwick plays her husband as an uptight conformist pretending to be a laid back peacemaker.  He tries to remain aloof from the emotional maelstrom but this diplomacy only masks his diffidence towards the other couple.  You form the impression that if he and Amy were to divorce, she would get Rachel and Nick in the settlement.

Kevin Harvey’s slightly-scouse and immature Nick, one of those nightmare guests who can’t distinguish between a dinner party debate and a stand-up row, is stuck in the laddish culture of the 1990s, and Esther Hall’s brittle Rachel is as highly strung as her own violin when confronted with the dilemma of treating her immature husband as a child or making him face up to his responsibilities.

Ben Stones’ sleek set is like watching the window display in a designer furniture shop coming alive, and Jo Coombs’ fluid and fast-paced production captures the authentic tone of entitlement of the (apparently) affluent professional classes.

My only quibble is that the bombshell dropped in the dying moments is treated with such brevity and underplaying as to be almost subliminal - if this was on DVD you’d frantically rewind it trying to work out exactly what happened.  But even without a freeze-frame facility the first-night audience was highly appreciative of this witty and clever new play.

Salt is on until Saturday 20 February 2010 

Prices: £4 (conc)-£9.50

Evenings: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Wed & Sat @ 2.30

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

Never Forget

The Tyne Theatre & Opera House

IT seems that the future of musical theatre is heading in the direction of the ‘juke-box’ musical. With a plethora of productions based on the back catalogue of groups such as ABBA, Queen and Boney M, it was a sure bet that one featuring the music of Take That would pop up.

‘Never Forget’ tells the story of five young men who enter a talent competition to form a Take That tribute band. Along the way, they discover that fame comes at a price but friendships last forever.

The ladies were out in full force, no doubt attracted as much by the physique of former Brookside and Hollyoaks star, Philip Olivier, as the hits penned by Gary Barlow. There was a huge scream upon his first appearance, followed by wolf-whistles and calls of ‘Get your kit off!’

The show isn’t exactly Ibsen or Chekhov – nor does it claim to be. It’s as camp as a row of pink tents and as cheesy as a Quatro Formaggi pizza, but the songs are fabulous and the choreography is breathtaking and the special effects are impressive, too.

‘Never Forget’ is an uplifting show that positively exudes the feel-good factor and makes for a great evening’s entertainment. Well worth a visit.

Steve Burbridge.

Runs until Saturday 6^th February 2010.

Have you heard the story of the Johnstone twins? If not, you have missed what has become a classic of British musical theatre and now is your chance to hear the tale! Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers is on tour - follow a trail of tears and snotty handkerchiefs all the way to the King’s Theatre, Glasgow until 13 February 2010.

Glasgow-born songstress, Vivienne Carlyle, stars as Mrs. Johnstone, a 1960s Liverpudlian mother of seven who is just about making ends meet, until her husband leaves and the twins arrive. Reluctantly she makes a deal with Mrs. Lyons (Tracy Spencer), her well-to-do employer, to give one of her twins away. And so, irresistible and tragic wheels are set in motion as the twins are destined to be born and then to die on the self same day.

The story is largely light hearted and entertaining despite the tear-streaked faces that have famously been leaving performances of this musical all over the world. It follows the growth of the boys from childhood to adulthood and the script is bursting with the gritty Liverpool humour that made the writer famous. The humour is also observational and sucks the audience into a real bond with the characters as we sympathise with their poverty and remember schoolboy fun that helped to lighten the mood in difficult times. The tragedy, when it falls, feels very personal. The musical score, in isolation, seems almost unremarkable but together with the on-stage drama it adds great depth to the contrasts of mood that are the bedrock of this musical’s success. The audience can even take a few tunes home with them “My Child”, “Easy Terms” and “Tell Me It’s Not True” being eminently hummable.

The production has changed very little over the years, but the talented cast add their personal nuances to the timeless story.  Vivienne Carlyle took the role of Mrs. Johnstone (previously played by such well known actresses as Stephanie Lawrence, Kiki Dee, Lyn Paul and four of the Nolan sisters) in her stride, never over dramatising, never over cooking the accent.  She took a nightmare narrative and made it real.  The combination of Sean Jones and Paul Davies as the twins, Mickey and Eddie, was the perfect mix.  I’ve had the pleasure of being entertained by Sean Jones in a previous tour and he is definitely my favourite Mickey.  His transformation from carefree seven-year-old to drug-dependant adult is heartbreaking in itself.  Chemistry with his on-stage sibling as well as his childhood sweetheart (Linda, played by Kelly-Anne Gower) was wonderful. Finally, Robbie Scotcher’s menacing portrayal of the Narrator was the ideal balance of singing talent and threatening demeanour.

No other musical can take you through the entire spectrum of human emotion like this. Book your ticket today.

Listings Info: 

Blood Brothers 
King’s Theatre, Glasgow 
Tue 2 – Sat 13 Feb 
Mon – Sat eves 7.30pm 
Wed & Sat mats 2.30pm 
Thu 4 Feb mat 2.30pm 

Audio described performance 11 Feb 7.30pm 
Signed performance 12 Mar 7.30pm 

Tickets: £11.50 - £30 
Box Office 0844 8717 648 (Bkg fee) 
www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee) 

WHAT IF...is a stunning new piece of work by artist, theatre maker and SHUNT director Layla Rosa & company. There is a simplicity of imagery from the opening that is compelling and is enhanced by a hypnotic soundscape, setting the atmosphere of the journey to come.

A lone rope hangs down at one end of the stage and on the other, a pair of glittery, silver high-heel shoes are bathed in light. TV screens on either side display looped images of women in veils and images of hands veiling and unveiling different women's heads.

The figure swathed in black and veiled who sits and on a high stool and sings to us is enigmatic and mysterious. Because of the veiling and complete covering of the body our focus goes to the expressive movements of her hands and feet in order to try to understand the feeling and meaning of the song. In fact, there is a strong emphasis throughout the show on hands and feet, as if the extremities are the only 'free' parts available to really express themselves until the final 'reveal' at the end, where it appears a transformation has taken place for the main protagonist of the piece.

The semi-autobiographical journey is never over-stated or explained, but instead we are left to make up our own minds about what the piece of work is saying and what we each take from it.

The aerial work in itself is simply outstanding. The fact that the performer is blindfolded makes the routines even more impressive how she literally 'feels' her way up the rope with her feet and lets herself drop back down from held positions to within inches of the floor.

Beautiful images remain long afterwards in your mind; the swing sequence is both exhilarating and poetic, and the mirroring dance with the 'Western' counterpart is inspired.

Imaginative, haunting and expertly constructed, it is a unique combination of disciplines that results in an independent and innovative voice, WHAT IF is one of a number or performances at Jacksons Lane coming up this season to celebrate these art forms.

For further information on future tour dates of WHAT IF : 

www.cryingoutloud.com

Jacksons Lane theatre in Highgate has also just launched a brand new website www.jacksonslane.org.uk which is now live and means that Jacksons Lane’s audience can now book tickets online directly through the box office system at a reduced booking fee of only £2.