UK Theatre Network

The new season at Bolton opens with a co-production between the Octagon and Out of Joint.  Stella Feehily’s latest play is a variation on a theme she explored in O Go My Man (seen here five years ago) – idealistic westerners (charity workers, journalists, medics) whose well-intentioned involvement with the developing world leads to the disintegration of their own lives back home.

Human rights defender Sadhbh (Orla Fitzgerald) has spent her whole career working abroad on projects for NGOs, but as she approaches thirty perhaps it’s time to listen to her partner Stephen (Dan Fredenburgh) who has burnt out, taken the corporate shilling, and now wants a settled family life. Added to the mix are Sadhbh’s colleague Bibi (Frances Ashman), abandoning life on the front-line for a safe desk job in New York, and naïve young intern Mathilde (Julie Dray) who’s about to go on her first trip to the Congo.

Bang Bang Bang is a play of two halves. The dramatic opening scene (a siege of the aid workers’ compound in the Congo) turns out to be a flash-forward, and Sadhbh’s unsettled domestic situation in London is inter-cut with encounters with a war lord and one of his victims in Africa, but even dislocations of time and place can’t get over the expositional nature of the first part.

Only after the interval does Feehily return to her strongest suits: sharply observed portraits of the metropolitan middle-classes and laugh-out-loud dialogue.  The aid workers blank out the terrible things they see by day with boozy parties at night which are a mirror image of their hedonistic London lifestyles, and we realise that however well-intentioned they are or politically correct their language they‘re little more than disaster tourists embedded in their own cultural bubble.  The scene at the R&R where cynical foreign correspondent Ronan (Paul Hickey) and callow wannabe photo journalist Vin (Jack Farthing) are trying to advance their careers via seduction, whiskey and weed is hilarious, with a real sense that the writer, the play and the actors have found their mojo at last.

The legendary Max Stafford-Clark directs breezily, and Miriam Nabarro’s simple design allows for speedy scene changes, but as a political drama about westerners in Africa Bang Bang Bang doesn’t hold a candle to Out of Joint’s production of The Overwhelming in 2006.

Bang Bang Bang is on at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton  until Saturday 17 September 2011

Tickets: from £9.50

Performances Mon-Sat Eves @ 7.30

Matinees @ 2pm: Wed 7, Wed 14, Sat 17

Box Office: 01204 520661

Renowned touring theatre company Out of Joint are reunited with award-winning Irish writer Sebastian Barry for this new play about that nineteenth-century colossus of fiction Charles Dickens. 

The action takes place during the summer of 1857 when fellow celebrity writer Hans Christian Andersen makes an unexpected and interminable visit to Dickens’ new home in Kent.  The irritation caused in the household by the Dane’s eccentric and childlike behaviour is exacerbated by his poor grasp of English.  Their visitor however is delighted to find himself surrounded by a huge ménage of larger-than-life characters and is oblivious to increasing undercurrents of tension. 

This production is a dream meeting of fine writer, superlative cast and top notch production.  The dialogue has the satisfying style and literariness of a sketch by Boz himself, yet avoids seeming stilted or awkward because of the skilful delivery of great actors like David Rintoul and Niamh Cusack. 

Rintoul’s self-centred and self-dramatising Dickens is alive with passion and vitality, yet has a complete want of empathy for those around him (declaring that a “play is more real than real life”), casually wrecking his loved ones’ lives like a moustache-twirling villain in a melodrama. 

Niamh Cusack gains all our sympathy as his worn-out wife Catherine.  Only just recovering from a career of constant childbirth, she finds her role in the household usurped by her younger sister, her elder children being sent away, and her husband planning a separation.  Cusack matches Rintoul for ardour but is given additional opportunities for pathos, and seizes them.

Danny Sapani plays overgrown schoolboy Andersen as a blundering but well-meaning innocent all unconscious of the emotional atrocities surrounding him.  Although Barry’s intention was presumably to shine a new light on Dickens’ life by refracting it through the prism of Anderson’s eyes, somehow the famous Hans becomes overshadowed by bewitching little Irish housemaid Aggie, charmingly rendered by Lisa Kerr.  An Anglo-Hibernian theme creeps more and more into the narrative, underscored by those sentimental Thomas Moore songs so beloved of the Victorians.

Barry has written a compelling narrative and wonderfully rounded characters, and director Max Stafford-Clark brings them exuberantly to the stage with a variety of techniques ranging from puppetry to singing. 

Lucy Osborne’s set is cluttered with all the impedimenta of a traditional Victorian home, but works brilliantly with Tim Bray’s lighting to evoke scenes as diverse as a hilltop ramble, a moonlit fishing expedition, an impromptu cricket match and the Crystal Palace.

Great literary biographies invoke the spirit of an author’s work as well as creating a living portrait of their subject.  Sebastian Barry illuminates his subject, Dickens, by turning Dickens into a character of Dickensian proportions, and in the process becomes himself a writer of Dickensian dimensions.

Andersen’s English is on at Manchester Library Theatre until Saturday 6 March 2010 and then touring

Prices: £13.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

Eves: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30pm; Fri & Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com

www.outofjoint.co.uk

Mixed Up North, a co-production between Bolton Octagon and Out Of Joint, is set in Burnley and is about attempts to heal the rift between the town’s communities in the wake of the 2001 disturbances. 

Trish (Celia Imrie) is an experienced youth arts worker who has set up a theatre group with the aim of fostering social cohesion among Burnley’s British Asian and white British teenagers.  What we see is a fictional account of a play being staged by the group - we spectators are having a privileged preview of the dress rehearsal.  Of course the real drama lies in the complicated inter-racial relationships between the young actors and the conflicting political agendas of the assorted youth workers: even referring to the 2001 events as “riots” is an incendiary act.

Director Max Stafford-Clark and writer Robin Soans visited Burnley with students from LAMDA, and together they conducted numerous interviews to create this unusual example of verbatim theatre - nearly all the words spoken on stage originate from these interviews, or from the work done with the LAMDA students while the piece was being developed.

One of the most beguiling and involving aspects of the staging is the way the audience and auditorium are weaved into the narrative: Colin the technician (Matthew Wait) does the lighting from the back, tea and cake are handed around by Jen (Mia Soteriou), the fire exit at the rear of the stage is opened so a van (in full view) can be loaded.  In some ways with its site-specific nods and attempts at creating a totally immersive experience it resembles Everybody Loves a Winner at the Royal Exchange last July, but with less audience participation and a far less naturalistic feel.

However the traditional verbatim theatre moments, where characters tells their stories directly to the audience in their own words, are easily the most compelling.  Tamsin (Lorna Stuart) explains how she was deceived by a charming married Asian boy and how her young sister was groomed and prostituted by another; Wendy (Rose Leslie) confesses that she was recently raped but her past experience of sexual abuse has prevented her from seeking help; Uday (Muzz Khan) describes a violent attack that led to a prison sentence. 

A large number of the original LAMDA students who worked on the piece are in the current cast and give very convincing performances as street-wise northern working-class teens with shocking tales to tell.  Max Stafford-Clark directs the 13-strong ensemble with his customary verve and energy, making for an entertaining and thought provoking evening of theatre.

Mixed Up North is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 26 September 2009, then touring

Tickets: from £9.00

Evenings: Mon-Sat at 7.30pm

Matinees: Sat 12 & 19 & Wednesday 23 @ 2pm

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

www.outofjoint.co.uk