UK Theatre Network

It’s been a long time since I saw a play at Taurus, and in the interim it has either been brilliantly revamped to make the tiny, cramped downstairs bar into a viable performance space with decent viewing lines, or emerging theatre company Organised Chaos have worked wonders to create an almost site-specific production which cleverly evokes the genteel and refined pleasures of an upmarket tearoom. 

We come down the basement stairs to find two couples tête-à-tête at neighbouring tables which are decked out with all the accoutrements of a leisurely and indulgent afternoon tea.  The white linen tablecloths, fine china, teapots and cafetières, not to mention the laden cake stands and mouth-watering array of pastries, made me want to summon a waitress and look at a menu at once - designer Alice Allen’s attention to detail is spot on.

What playwright Lindsay Kernahan and director Emma France then set up is a Siamese-twin of a comedy, with styles of writing and acting almost diametrically opposed, as the couples chat over their refreshments and intriguing stories come to separate but equally dramatic climaxes.

Jean (Celia Carron) and Poppy (Dianne Rimmer) are nicely turned-out ladies who lunch - or in this case, take tea.  Being of a certain age their conversations range across all the problems that can beset a woman in her middle years - ex-husbands, new partners, grown-up children, antisocial cats, transgender internet dating - that kind of thing.  With just a hint of the Cheshire Set about them (though that set is perhaps more Hollyoaks than Wilmslow) their bantering northern humour is reminiscent of Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, and the characterisations are broad without being over-the-top.  I don’t know whether first-night nerves caused these scenes to played at a snail’s pace with Pinteresque pauses, but the snappy comic dialogue seemed to demand something a great deal less languid.

At the next table William (Laurence Pickford) and Abigail (Julie Burrow) are in a more modern and downbeat style of comedy.  William is divorcing his wife to be with his much younger girlfriend, but their long weekend away in the country is not turning out to be as romantic as anticipated, partly due to the age gap, and partly due to Abigail’s jealousy and William’s wandering eye.  The two actors establish a convincing relationship, conveying genuine emotion and even arousing our sympathy.  The humour comes less from the dialogue than the playing - small but true moments, such as when the slightly vain and self-absorbed William includes the whole audience in his lascivious stare, or glimpses his own smile in the wall mirror and stops to admire it.

Tonight’s performance really tweaked the audience’s funnybone.  If you miss the company’s work this time around there’s a further opportunity to catch one of their previous Taurus shows at the Buxton Fringe Festival this summer.

Evenings: 22nd to 24th April @ 7.30pm

Matinee: Sat 24^th @ 5pm

Tickets: £7 (£5 conc) from Quaytickets: 0843 208 0500 or www.quaytickets.com

Taurus Bar

1 Canal Street
Manchester

M1 3HE

www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

www.taurus-bar.co.uk

Lone Twin Theatre play with types of narrative forms and structures, space and spacial relationships. The devising process they use for their work includes music, song and dance; some of the performers are more adept at than others, but all of them have an energy and commitment to this style of working that is palpable.

In THE FESTIVAL the action centres around a chance meeting of a man and a woman at an annual music festival that coincides with the yearly viewing of the humpback whale at this particular costal town in Australia.

The company use a Brechtian style of storytelling, which sets a tone of objectivity around the themes of relationships, friendships and family bonds. The effect, especially as the main female character of the piece appears to have a Danish accent, is a slightly off-the-wall Nordic feel, as if the characters are part of an IKEA ad. This, added to the space they work in, a simple traverse staging, and the use of the functional looking set - simple tables and chairs set at either end of the traverse, add to the sparseness of the storytelling and delivery.

Expressions of inner feelings and other emotions are shown through repetitive movements and dance steps which are both oddly moving and comical to watch. The group sing accapella to popular pop songs such as 'Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart' to express the universal longing of human beings towards seeking relationships. Both the characters feel an attraction when they meet and vow to meet again the same weekend the following year, but when they do, they both want different things; the male character wants the reunion to initiate a potential relationship and the female character doesn't and decides her life, her relationship with her mother, her colleagues and her friends is enough for her. What we don't feel however is any real investment in them as characters as they are not presented to in a way for us to care about them or get to know much about them. We are presented with 'information' and acted out scenes of their lives with their respective circles of contacts, but they are, like the set, purely functional.

The use of group singing is also both comical and poignant because of their commitment to it and to the message of the song more so than being 'note perfect', even though they can almost all hold a tune well. It is the intensity they feel for the songs they sing together that touches us and how they unselfconciously physicalise each nuance of the song. We laugh as we recognise ourselves dancing alone in our bedrooms to our favourite tunes or playing air-guitar to a favourite rock song.

Whether the subject of this episode of the Trilogy can really be defined a 'catastrophe' is questionable, but the approach and style of work which is compelling. The actors Antoine Fraval, Guy Dartnell, Molly Haslund, Nina Tecklenburg and Paul Gazzola are totally committed to the work and style of perfomance and it shows, and once we adapt to the style, we quickly accept the theatrical conventions they use for their storytelling. The lightness of touch and playfulness of the piece leave you feeling uplifted and intrigued.

2010

The Catastrophe Trilogy:
Alice Bell, Daniel Hit By A Train, The Festival

Three pieces shown either on consecutive
nights or back-to-back.
Please check websites for details.


1st - 13th March
Barbican, London
www.barbican.org.uk

16th, 17th, 18th March
Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
www.thelbt.org

20th March
The Point, Eastleigh
www.thepointeastleigh.co.uk

22nd, 23rd, 24th April
The Studio, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
www.royalexchange.co.uk

26th April
Aberystwyth Arts Centre / Canolfan Y Celfyddydau
www.aber.ac.uk/artscentre

1st May
Studio 1, Dartington
www.dartington.org/arts

8th May
Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster
www.nuffieldtheatre.com

18th - 22nd May
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels
www.kfda.be

27th - 29th May
Festival Ad Werf, Utrecht
www.huisaandewerf.nl

The Festival

27th March
ICIA, University of Bath
www.bath.ac.uk/icia

28th April
Theatre 1, Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth
www.peninsula-arts.co.uk

3rd May
Colcester Arts Centre
www.colchesterartscentre.com

6th May
The Civic, Barnsley
www.barnsleycivic.co.uk

11th May
Corn Exchange, Brighton
www.brightonfestival.org

The air of reverential expectation was almost palpable amongst the audience at the Barbican on Wednesday night for the opening of Peter Brook's latest offering 11 AND 12. In keeping with his tradition of simple staging, the vast canvas was spread out before us - colourful cloths and a few African objects effectively placing us within the setting for the story based on the novel by Malian writer Amandou Hampate Ba, adapted by Marie-Helene. Set in Mali during the French occupation it tells the true tale of the feud that developed over whether an Islamic prayer should be repeated 11 or 12 times and how the reprecussions of this tiny incident develop into bloodshed and controversy.

However, 90 minutes later, the audience are not even aware of it having ended and there is a prolonged delay before one brave soul breaks the silence and applauds and the rest of us as if woken from a trance, join in. There is a reason - the energy of the piece is sermon-like and deadening, the action is almost non-existent and the exploration of the central theme being largely narrated adds a further distancing. The performances are competent but somewhat stiff, the accents of the multicultural cast are heavy and there is no shape or change of pace to the storytelling.

It has a meditative feel, which in some respects is comforting and safe, like the folds of the cloths around the distinguished sages, but watching it as a piece of theatre ultimately makes you feel you are slowly being drugged into a state of catatonic amnesia.

Brook, it seems, is a great admirer of the writer Amandou Hampate Ba and has been wanting to create this piece for 50 years and this feels like his personal homage to him. At its centre is the absurdity of religion and religioius fundamentalism but the piece is full of truisms that take us nowhere new. What we are longing for is a learning or a realising of something new and profound and this offers us neither.

There are moments however, such as the final meeting between the two main spiritual leaders Tierno Bokar and Cherif Hamallal, where the two walk slowly together at the back of the stage in the way of deeply spiritual and actualised beings who are not of this world, that you really do feel you are in the presence of two such leaders. The tempo and feeling is one you would find on a spiritual retreat.

Whether or not this works as a piece of theatre is another matter; or maybe that is the 'experience' that Brook wants us to undergo with this production. It doesn't take us anywhere new or offers new insights, but is a slice of storytelling that does capture at times a true feeling of the essence of spirituality. It is both disappointing yet curious. Sometimes compelling in the beauty of its simplicity of staging and interestingly punctuated by the emotional music of Toshi Tsuchitori and yet at the end you are left wondering if you have missed something or if you have just been expecting too much.

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.

Together We’re Heavy at the Cock Tavern Theatre

The female-led company CANUK was founded in 2008 and is committed to devise, develop and inspire strong new work in collaboration with playwrights and actors. CANUK recently took the critically acclaimed show The Strong Breast Revolution to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now it presents the world premiere of Chris Purnell’s new play Together We’re Heavy at the Cock Tavern Theatre.

Rob, who is a bit on the chubby side, is suffering from a mid-life crisis at 25! He finds himself trapped in a dead-end job, spending his spare time with his mom and her friends instead of beautiful neighbour Lorraine whom he adores but who is in a relationship with he-man Walter. Walter indulges in humiliating Rob, preferably in front of Lorraine. After unsuccessfully trying to meet girls in a step dancing course Rob resigns himself to his fate and refuses to leave the flat that he is sharing with his mom. Encouraged by the arrival of fitness instructor Gary, Rob evolves into a new man and finally dares accost the pretty girl-next-door with unforeseen consequences

This is a play about obsession and Jai Lynch gives an outstanding performance as the child-like, shy Rob who is defenceless against Walter’s attacks and the overwhelming love of his well-meaning but somewhat overbearing mother (Jean Apps). Some of the dialogue seems a bit uneven at times but this is a fast-paced play with believable characters competently directed by Tanith Lindon.

The cast includes Jean Apps, Miranda Keeling, Jai Lynch, Alex Papdakis, and Austin Spangler.

The show is at the Cock Tavern in Kilburn from 29 September to 24 October 2009. Tickets are available online via Ticket Web or by phone at 08444 771 000.

With sales far beyond expectation and wedges of moolah now in the company’s bank account, Helensburgh’s innovative business, AnElephantCant, scored a major success at the recent Homes & Interiors show at Glasgow’s SECC.

The product this time is, as we’ve reported on before - Waje - and the strapline is ‘Shuffle your Waje’. It’s a hip phrase and it’s a neat concept - WAll JEwellery. The notion is dressing your walls without breaking the bank - and creating different relationships between the artworks as you do with your clothes.

The neat trick has been the creation of a special fabric on which the artwork is printed - one taking a specific adhesive device that allows the prints to be easily moved around. What you get is art on your walls with all the unpretentious serendipity of the poster - but with more substance and durability and a system that makes swopping around and creating new combinations of the objects quick and fun.

They describe it as ‘fine art at consumable prices’ and the art in question is original material by Greenock’s Phil Burns who, with Brian Cairnduff, is a partner in An Elephant Can’t.

Cairnduff says that, with their partners Richard Fildes and Bill Laughlin of 2Canvas, he and Phil had targeted this prestigious show as a market trial for waje - wall jewellery: ‘to test whether the great Scottish public was ready for this radical challenge to how art is packaged, sold and viewed’.

It was.

Reeling from the success of their bold investment, Cairnduff admits: ‘There are now dozens of folk out there with waje on their walls. They looked, they questioned and they bought. Most people took it on board very quickly, loved the idea that you don’t need frames, glass or nails, and were intrigued by the fact that is is moveable. The waje shuffle just took off!’

He pays tribute to the 2canvas team, saying: ‘The work done by Ricky and Bill was critical to this success. The high quality and resilience of the silk-like paper coupled with the ‘magic’ no-residue adhesive was a major factor in allowing Phil’s art-work to be presented in the best possible way’.

Naturally there a few sniffs from the oxygen-thin altitudes of the Scottish art establishment. While one art expert said: ‘You guys have created a new way of selling art’, Brian Cairnduff noted that: ‘Some dealers, of course, were less enthusiastic. But I guess even an elephant can’t please all of the people all of the time’.

They almost bottled it. ‘We were sitting in a cafe outside Partick station, wondering if this was a really dumb idea even by our standards. We had done some market research, of course, but mainly through people who knew us. Taking Waje to an audience of thousands of complete strangers was suddenly an intimidating prospect.

Then the teenage waitress bounced up to our table with that special vitality that characterises so much of what Glasgow is about. I looked at Phil, he was grinning back at me.

“Joie-de-vivre”, he said, “That’s what we sell and people will buy it”.

And we’re taking no bets on what’s coming down the track next. ‘Wait till you hear our next scheme’, we heard, chortling in the ether. ‘We are going on a Great Highland Tour’. Will it be Loch Ness?

It was not explained exactly why Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet reunited to perform ‘songs from the last century’ alongside new pieces at the Barbican last night, but I’m awfully glad they did.

The chamber-pop quintet started with a new arrangement of Costello’s hit ‘Accidents Will Happen’, much to the audience’s delight, and it served to set the high standard and musical tone for the rest of the set. The performance was neither trashy G4/El Divo crossover nor highbrow classical concert, just good eclectic music with well judged humour throughout. Costello quoted from Tom Jones and Bobby Darin songs between numbers and joked that having been born in the same hospital where Penicillin was discovered he regrets he ‘hasn’t been as great a boon to mankind.’ I’m sure some of the more fanatical members of the audience would have contested that statement as he performed vocal gymnastics for the length of the set and sounded note-perfect throughout.

Highlight’s of the first half included ‘Rocking Horse Road’, where the Brodsky Quartet tapped their bows against their fingerboards for a nice flighty feel and Costello broke into ‘Wild Thing’ momentarily. ‘Almost Had a Weakness’ featured manic Hitchcock style ‘Psycho’ strings representing the madness of a virgin spinster while Costello very deliberately delivered a dry lyric despite some challenging phrasing and undulating lively rhythms.

Tellingly, despite such highlights, it was ‘Accidents Will Happen’ that I heard people whistling while they widdled during the interval. Tonight’s set was comprised mostly of pieces from the kind-of-concept album inspired by the real-life letters people have sent to Shakespeare’s eponymous heroine, ‘Letters for Juliet’. That album is over 15 years old now and sadly, whenever new arrangements by either Costello or Cassidy were played the quality of the show took a dip. ‘Raglan Road’, ‘My Three Sons’ and a hastily arranged ‘Sulphur to Sugarcane’ from Costello’s forthcoming album all fell a bit flat. A couple more pints and I’m sad to say maybe I would’ve been shouting for ‘Oliver's Army’. When an audience member did shout for ‘one we know’, Costello coolly replied ‘...I’d like to play you a new song now…’ and went into a self accompanied performance of new song ‘One Bell Ringing’.

This perhaps betrayed the fact that the collaboration is an unequal partnership; Costello sometimes seemed like a conductor and was clearly the main draw for the majority of the audience, the world renowned Brodsky Quartet just a side Attraction. The Quartet seemed more restrained than I know they can be from their collaborations with Bjork et al. Given a little freedom they opened up old hits like ‘Pills and Soap’ and provided counter-melodies, variations on vocal themes and freewheeling expansive crescendos that showed just why they are world renowned. The highlight of the second half of the set for me was the unstable, woozy waltz they constructed for ‘Romeo’s Séance’ that was given an extra sense of instability in performance that a recording cannot match. 
            A change in mood was felt towards the end of the set with the demanding combination of ‘I Thought I’d Write to Juliet’, ‘Bedlam’, and ‘Shipbuilding’, dealing as they do with the themes of the first Gulf war and the Falklands conflict respectively. Perhaps this was why the material has been revisited, the sentiments and in some cases details behind these songs all too relevant today as Costello lamented. Grouped together like this made the atmosphere a bit too sombre I thought, but for the Post Script the less austere ‘P.S. I Love You’ (not the Beatles’) and ‘Jacksons, Monk and Rowe’ lifted the mood. The show left me looking forward to looking both collaborators’ back catalogues up, but less enthused about their new input perhaps. Quite a show though.

The Barbican’s contemporary music continues at LSO St Luke’s with ‘Beijing Now!’ See www.barbican.org.uk or call 0844 848 8436 for more details.

Picture: Douglas McFarlane in the Sky News Green Room prior to going on live.


In This Update
- This Month's Sky News Blog
- This Week's Nevis Radio Blog
- This Week's UKTheatre Blogs
  - Gates of Gold at Library Theatre, Manchester
  - Chorus of Disapproval at the Watford Palace Theatre
  - King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal, Glasgow - 2009 Season
  - Boeing Boeing – Theatre Royal, Glasgow – 23rd – 28th March 2009
  - All The Fun Of The Fair

Welcome

Thanks for reading. It's been a challenging but satisfying week. Making It In Hollywood is now out there. I submitted it to Cannes on Monday and they confirmed receipt. I'll find out before the press conference in 2 weeks. I've also sent it to BBC, Sky, Pathe, Momentum and Edinburgh Film Festival, though I may be too late for that. I also noticed that Film London have something called LUFF which if your film is selected, it gets screened in front of sales people and distributors. I'll keep you posted, whatever the outcome.

Have a great week and check out the Radio, TV and online blogs. Feel free to share around online if you see something a friend may like.

Douglas 
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This Month’s Sky News Blog
Produced by Tim North and Emily Upton, Sky News

Ebay dirty car ad. Don’t drink hot tea. Alcohol worse than marijuana. Microsoft tackles Mac. No more black cars in LA.

http://tinyurl.com/ctk4xd - Recorded 7pm Friday 27th March 2009.

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This Week’s Nevis Radio Blog

Coldplay, Green Day, New Radicals, The Feeling and for my American friends online Sweet Home Alabama. I also managed to sneak in another Les Miserables song for my UKTheatre pals 
Today (Saturday) 12pm-2pm Streaming online and on FM in West Of Scotland.

http://www.nevisradio.co.uk 

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Gates of Gold at Library Theatre, Manchester
Published by: Caroline May on Thursday 26th March 2009

The story is inspired by Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, fabled actors turned writer-producer-directors who founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Despite their apparently impeccable Celtic credentials, both were Londoners by birth – a fact they went to some lengths to deny. Yet strangely, considering the moral tenor of the times, they made no secret of their homosexual relationship, remaining linked personally and professionally until MacLiammóir’s death in 1978.

Read more >>>
http://www.uktheatre.tv/magazine/read/gates-of-gold-at-library-theatre-manchester_76.html

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Chorus of Disapproval at the Watford Palace Theatre
Published by: Elspeth Rae on Thursday 26th March 2009

What especially delighted me was the perfect display of, through, at times completey stereotyped characters, the idiosyncrasies and bitchy claustrophobia of performance within an amateur dramatic society.

Read more >>>
http://www.uktheatre.tv/magazine/read/chorus-of-disapproval-at-the-watford-palace-theatre_77.html

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King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal, Glasgow - 2009 Season
Published by: Cameron Lowe on Wednesday 25th March 2009

This spring looks set to be an amazing time for all Scottish theatre goers as the King’s and Theatre Royal will be playing host to some phenomenal productions!

Read more >>>
http://www.uktheatre.tv/magazine/read/king�s-theatre-and-theatre-royal-glasgow---2009-season_75.html

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Boeing Boeing – Theatre Royal, Glasgow – 23rd – 28th March 2009
Published by: Cameron Lowe on Wednesday 25th March 2009 

When flight changes on a visit to London meant that I missed this play on it’s West End run (little realising the irony), I was more than delighted to see it touring to Glasgow this year, and went along with high expectations. 

Read more >>>
http://www.uktheatre.tv/magazine/read/boeing-boeing-�-theatre-royal-glasgow-�-23rd-�-28th-march-2009_74.html

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All The Fun Of The Fair
Published by: Steve Burbridge on Monday 23rd March 2009

All The Fun Of The Fair, as the title suggests, is set against the backdrop of a travelling funfair that is struggling to survive in the late seventies. Starring David Essex as funfair owner Levi Lee and featuring almost all of his hits, it was always going to be something rather special.

Read more >>>
http://www.uktheatre.tv/magazine/read/all-the-fun-of-the-fair_73.html