Man is Man
Man is Man
Theatre Paradisum, at the Norwich Playhouse
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 21st January 2010
‘Tonight you are going to see a man reassembled like a car; leaving all his individual components just as they are…’
No surprises with Brecht. The message is always spelled out.
This is the tale of a simple worker bribed with beer and cigars to take another drunkard’s place in a machine-gun troop and is deliberately turned into a happy killer.
It’s also about knowing your identity. Against the backdrop of global conflicts today, it’s relevant and timely.
The young all-female cast (another neatly Brechtian angle) tackle it with gusto and obvious relish, demonstrating the characters as Brecht demanded.
Theatre Paradisum are building a credible Brechtian expertise and this early but substantial piece from the master’s extensive catalogue is a quality work.
Ashley Booth plays the central role of the naive porter who is tricked and bullied into a new identity, and she carries it with a keen sense of humour and self-parody within the central idea. She is well supported by Henri Merriam, Maria Kivinen and Louise Humphrey as the gunners. The pianist is terrific.
Lucy Enskat is powerful as the canteen proprietess, an early version of Mother Courage. Director Peter Beck‘s passion for Brechtian theory is put into excellent practice, in a lengthy, but rewarding, challenging evening.
Filed under: Reviews
I Am Who I Am
Thalia Theatre Company at the Playhouse, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press 28 November 2009
I Am Who I Am (ergo sum qui sum)
Arriving at the Playhouse, Leonard Cohen songs playing, felt like coming home as Thalia presented their annual show.
This is the arts related-learning provider for disabled people in particular who provide innovative theatre to challenge negative perceptions about disability.
Slides of members’ art work set the scene for I Am Who I Am, a perfectly pitched exploration of identity and self; what makes us different, unique. In the audience or on stage, it doesn’t matter what you look like, you have value. You are a personality.
Three sections – from Dereham, Great Yarmouth and Norwich – started from the same stimulus – a residency with visual artist Tanya Raabe. Each then took ideas in different directions through physical theatre.
Makaton signing was the base communication medium, plus the sheer power of differently abled performers in a huge variety of routines, shapes, images, including the final use of descriptive emotion words with paintings and mimes.
Driven by highly original music and sound from Yoghurt Collective, it worked on performers and audience to communicate through the totality of the performing arts.
Founder, artistic director and performer Molly Rose-Hutchinson is a driving force who’s vision to enable everyone to express themselves by the arts is so effectively shared by her staff, performing members, parents and carers.
It was an inspiring and enjoyable experience.
Filed under: Reviews
Private Lives
Open Space Theatre at The Fisher Theatre, Bungay
Review published in Eastern Daily Press 9 November 2009 and East Anglian Daily Times 10 November 2009
Private Lives
Open Space provide an invaluable service touring quality amateur drama around the rural areas, and their latest offering confirms their reputation as entertainers of the highest calibre.
Noel Coward’s vintage period piece sparkles with repartee and one-liners in the Oscar Wilde tradition with all the 1930s’ wit and elegance. Many lines are deliciously acerbic, cruel and downright hilarious. The characters deliver them with panache – ‘I’m glad I’m not normal,” gets the response – “What an odd thing to be glad about!”.
The unlikely premise is a once-married couple meeting accidentally on their respective honeymoons to new partners, while sharing neighbouring hotel rooms. These are people who can’t live with each other, but can’t live without.
The play exposes the strains of relationships, dealing with other people’s pasts and sudden squalls of anger. A couple of songs, a comic dance and a side-splitting fight add to the sheer enjoyment. David Green directs with skilful expertise and really gets the very last drop of comedy from everything.
The four players (Sarah Farrar, Grant Filshill, Jane Cole and Stephen Phipps) work the spaces between the relationships flawlessly, showing exquisite comic timing, real stage presence and beautifully mannered behaviour except when they’re squabbling like alley cats.
It’s still on tour in the region and is thoroughly, unashamedly recommended.
Filed under: Reviews
Shakers (Re-stirred)
Harleston Players at Archbishop Sancroft High School, Harleston
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 30th October 2009
Shakers (Re-stirred)
A night out with a play from the prolific pen of John Godber, is an entertaining, thought-provoking glimpse into aspects of our modern life with lots of social comment wrapped up in some high comedy and seasoned with masses of killing one-liners.
Shakers (the re-stirred version that Godber and Jane Thornton have updated) is now on offer by the Harleston Players, a well established amateur group that relishes challenges.
Four actresses – Dawn Symonds, Emma Owen Jackson, Roz Morgan and Sara Curtis – take on all the parts, from barmaids to waitresses, to male punters, business/yuppie types and supermarket staff. Multi-roling is a tall order, demanding comic precision, a wide variety of credible regional accents and different body language throughout.
Set in a cocktail bar-restaurant, peopled by a cross section from life, ridiculed, sent-up or given a fair hearing as they open their hearts in monologues, it picks up pace on the Archbishop Sancroft School stage in the directorial hands of Emma Mathews.
There is direct address, good miming and at 45 minutes either side of the interval, it is just the right length to amuse, engage and make you think. “What do you do when a dream comes true? What do you dream about then?”
Worth a shot.
Filed under: Reviews
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Harleston Players at Archbishop Sancroft High School, Harleston
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 2 February 2009
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
On one level, it’s a children’s story of myths and legends.
In fact, it’s the story of Jesus dying for another, and in the script by Adrian Mitchell from the original novel by CS Lewis, it’s an ambitious epic.
Harleston Players combine skills of a large cast of children and adults, a large thrust area into three sides of audience for acting space and journeys, with the skills of director Cathy Gill to create an experience of Christian writing into performance.
Starting in wartime England before the four children(not easy roles and handled well by Jordan Smith, Hannah Richards, Jake Williams and Nellie Unsworth) go through the wardrobe into a frozen Narnia, the pace, the sense of period and stage logistics are all sustained strongly.
The White Witch (Sappho Clissit) is wonderfully evil and Mike Davison as Aslan, the Lion King, captures the authority of the animal with the mercy of God.
Other roles are supportive through good acting or physical movement. The music is their own home-grown and animal costumes are very effective. The fight and Aslan’s sacrifice are both dramatic and moving.
‘Once a King in Narnia, always a King …’ and a little of the magic of that parallel world is inside most of us.
Filed under: Reviews
Kitchen
Gob Squad at the Playhouse, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 6 May 2009
Kitchen
If you can remember the Sixties or weren’t there and want a taste of what a Happening was like, this is the show to watch. The quirky, aptly named Gob Squad hold forth in Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It so Good), a reconstruction of the 1965 Andy Warhol film.
This Anglo-German group are well versed in public and open-space performances and offer comedy with traces of surrealism and a streak of anarchy. The randomness of events, such as throwing cornflakes or smoking coffee granules, is typical of much of the thearical and artistic experimentation of that era. They use three screens behind which most action occurs, and we see the filmed projections from out front.
Gradually, several individuals from the audience are drawn in to replace the actors, and are fed instructions and lines through headphones. It is a clever device that actually works.
Re-creating the past also means travelling forward but making some sense of today … if ‘sense’ is the right word. It’s almost better not to try to fathom it – just enjoy it. The four performers are strong; the weird sensation of watching them on film soon becomes normal.
It also reminds us of the continuing appeal of the drug-fuelled, free love and abandon of that time. Recommended.
Filed under: Reviews
Exit Napoleon, Pursued by Rabbits
Nola Rae at the Playhouse, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 14 February 2005
Exit Napoleon, Pursued by Rabbits
It takes some doing – 75 minutes on stage by a one-woman inventive comic mime artiste with a powerful message.
The international physical theatre specialist enlivened the strange tale of Napoleon Bonaparte and, by extension, other dictators, on a desolate field in a tattered tent with the detritus of life – pots, spoons and a cheese grater providing endless comic opportunities.
She toured a humorous repertoire, punctuated by an inspired soundtrack and effects, like an historic Mr Bean, from pathos to tape stuck to a finger.
From the entrance through the audience, reminiscent of the nightmare crone in David Bowie’s Labrynth, to the end as Hitler orchestrating air raids, she took us on a journey that was an existential as Vladimir’s and Estragon’s, yet as absurdly lunatic as the best clown in a circus.
The audience participation sections were handled beautifully, with that edge of necessary humiliation and the use of real people as a complement to the animation she brought to a great-coat on a hanger with an old satchel for a head – a terrifyingly wordless Napoleon.
The endless succession of dead rabbits found in nooks and crannies of the clever little set were one of many strands in the comic rope with which she wove her spell.
Filed under: Reviews
Dancing at Lughnasa
Theatre Royal Youth Theatre Company at The Garage, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 18 March 2005
Dancing at Lughnasa
A timely St Patrick’s Day reminder – Irish dramatists have enriched the English stage for centuries. This contribution to the wealth of our language is in that tradition.
And the Theatre Royal Youth Theatre Company did it in the round! Many experienced actors fight shy of such audience proximity but this talented group handled Irish accents, the second world war and a Tennessee Williams-like rural claustrophobia with flair.
Told through the memories of Michael, played by Sam Claflin with warmth and an ease with Brechtian direct address, it’s a tale of family ties in the winds of change from outside.
The sisters (Monica Mason, Connie Wall, Sophie Utting, Katie Broadbent and Daisy Wood) kept the pace varied and as the intensity built, their maturity in creating characters far older than their years shone, as the cauldron of the family hearth became the spotlight for truth.
Sensitively directed by Jo Reil the humour was subtly caught, the brilliant set served them well and the whole piece was tightly produced.
Harvest dance for the festival of Lughnasa with its heady mix of abandonment and pagan practices was an escape metaphor made poignant by different steps in the cramped kitchen.
Dancing and incantations, life blood and excitement, church and community, the ceremony of life and love – it was all there, all moving. Well worth supporting.
Filed under: Reviews