Theatre Royal, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 7 March 2007

Dennis Lacorriere

To describe an album or show as “the soundtrack of your life”, is not a bad strap-line for marketing. But this concert was all that and more – for those of a certain age.

Celebrating almost 40 years since Dr Hook and the Medicine Show was formed, Dennis “The Voice” Lacorriere came to Norwich to take us down Memory Lane.

Sylvia’s Mother, When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman, If Not You, Sexy Eyes, More Like the Movies … these were melodies to luxuriate in with lyrics both emotional and comic. All done with a crazy panache as fresh today as they were originally.

The band at first had Ray Sawyer with his eye-patch and some original material that ignited the ground between country and pop. They split in the 1980s but now the honey-over-gravel voice is back with the hits and history tour. Lacorriere is a master performer, even putting down a heckling audience member. He is a storyteller, and as he said, “a good story bears retelling”.

Warm-up was Chris Norman, former lead singer for the 1970’s hit group Smokie. Living Next Door to Alice is perhaps his most famous but the rest of his old catalogue was well worth revisiting. Wall-to-wall nostalgia, but everybody loved it.

Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 18 August 2007

Charley’s Aunt

One of the signs of a good comedy is a pain from laughing. The new offering from the Maddermarket creates that, plus a tide of well-being and enjoyment.

It’s a Victorian comedy of manners which is more than pure farce. All the classic ingredients are woven throughout.

There is mistaken identity, cross-dressing, ludicrous coincidences, doors for endless, improbable timed arrivals of near stereotypical comedy characters.

Born in 1892, the play carries some whiskers and linguistic anachronisms, but has stood the test of time rather well. The quality of the performers is the magic touch that brings it to life.

Two young blades Charley and Jack (Barnaby Matley and David Blood) in need of a chaperone persuade their friend (the priceless hilarious Trevor Burton) to impersonate Charley’s aunt. The consequences and chaos become increasingly bizarre.

The long-suffering manservant (David Newham) sympathetically punctuates the inspired madness. The real aunt (Mary Perry) is suitably regal. The young girls and pompous older men compliment each to perfection.

The secret of this genre is pace, good articulation, audience rapport ands sheer enjoyment of the entire romp.

Director Peter Sowerbutts has achieved all this, a cross between Wilde and Coward via clowning and verbal gymnastics.

It’s a hit. A superb night out.

The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 8 September 2007

Cambridge Footlights

Fun seekers go to a comedy sketch show with certain expectations. Cambridge Footlights raises anticipation even higher.

Think of stars like Peter Cook, Eric Idle, Fry and Laurie and Mitchell and Webb. It’s the perfect testing ground for young comic talent, and it has been around since 1883, in fact.

Today’s version, whimsically called Wham Bam, begins as a two-hour journey down the road of the obvious. Sketches in a bookshop, playing chess, teachers, a Christmas party, a speaking ATM…

Gradually it dawns on the audience that the road has become decidedly more surreal and ends in a land of comic high ground with tragedy and pathos for good measure.

Some poignant moments at the edge of life and death are brilliantly sustained in a running gag about “real life”.

Five talented and versatile Cambridge students (not all reading drama) keep up the pace with intellectual banter and a dazzling range of roles. No two performances are ever the same as they swap and go on developing jokes and bizarre situations.

The staging blocks slide about and the improvisation is always fresh and inventive.

It deserves a massively wider audience, such as television would provide, but then it would have its earthy, racy feel all but destroyed.

RoughCast Theatre at the Fisher Theatre, Bungay

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 1 December 2007

Broken Glass

A relatively modern play from the Arthur Miller catalogue, this challenging piece about love and Jewishness is set in 1930s New York as the persecution of European Jews begins.

The challenge of entering a tight, claustrophobic world is embraced warmly by the continuously maturing RoughCast Theatre.

Director David Green exploits the Miller device of unfolding global affairs punctuating an unravelling relationship.

The central protagonists are a middle aged Jewish couple. Sylvia (an impeccable performance from Yves Green) is suffering a physiological paralysis brought on by fear of Jewish persecution.

Her husband (Paul Baker) is at sea in relationships and uncomfortable about love. He is extremely effective.

The devious doctor who lasts after the wife (Mark Burridge) shows conflict with his professional ethics quite well and Gill Rennie is his long-suffering wife.

Her sister (Anne McClarnon) adds a commentary on the marriage that is comic and perceptive.

His relationship with his boss (Pat Quorn) deteriorates as his whole world crashes.

How an unhappy, unfulfilled woman perceives the world outside and the one in which she is trapped, is a subtle and moving study. RoughCast do it justice, catching the humour while exposing some raw edges.

Sewell Barn Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 23 November 2007

Fallen Angels

“Several drinks never did anyone any harm. It’s only the first one!” An early Noel Coward, this play is clearly a forerunner of his greater work to come.

It is light, spicy, witty and dramatically theatrical.

In the Sewell Barn company hands, ably directed by David Hare, it is a comic gem.

Julie, mistress of the house, is the central character and Ginny Porteous is playing her quite splendidly, covering sickness at very short notice.

Her best friend Jane (Gill Cichbourne) is consistently delightful and her getting tipsy is priceless.

Saunders, the know-all housemaid (Jill Fuller), carries off the doing and knowing everything with panache.

The flimsy but mannered plot works through well-drawn characters firmly anchored in the 1920s. Costumes are perfect. Drawing-room details are spot on and the eating of dinner is divine, with the oysters slipping down a treat.

The line-up is completed by Christopher Whitley and Paul Spencer as the hapless husbands. Colin Devine is the dapper French lover the wives shared before marriage.

As events unfold we see farce, melodrama and some good one-liners.

The whole evening is an absolute delight with the rafters of the old barn rattling to warm laughter. Ideal tonic on a cheerless night.

The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 18 March 2008.

StopGap Dance

“Challenging” is a catch-all descriptor of experimental, edgy or fusion performing arts. StopGap Dance is all that and more.

An internationally-recognised professional group of able-bodied and disabled dancers presents a collection of pieces challenging both dancers and audience.

They confront our notions of what is disability; question how far can social integration go and stretch physical and psychological boundaries to new limits.

These professionals are celebrating the different giftings people have and the ties that bind us, and the opening piece of six, with a verbal motif, ‘your useless body’, really hits hard.

Provocative duets, ensemble segments exploring relationships, behaviour and human limitations, in a spotlight, with a single chair, around a girl in a wheelchair… it’s a stunningly diverse programme.

The lonely hearts finale is hilarious as oddballs try to complete their lives.

Crossing dance, music and drama, it’s a truly integrated show with a full range of emotions throughout.

A cast post-show question-and-answer session reveals how work is commissioned, devised and choreographed and cleverly adds details about the performers as people and their working lives.

Lovers of high quality movement, seekers of thoughtful, quirky humour and devotees of challenging material to make anyone reconsider his or her judgements about people, should catch them next time they visit our region.

Black Ram Theatre at The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 4 February 2008

Wildest Dreams

A somewhat surreal mix of comedy, pathos and menace is this piece by Alan Ayckbourn, often described as one of his darkest comedies.

It begins in a dingy room with a motley collection of friends engaged in a role-play game, not unlike Dungeons and Dragons. It ends in a bewildering concoction of legends and bizarre lunacies.

There is Stanley (Ed Birch), English teacher and host of the fantasy. Melissa Ramadan is his long-suffering wife who finally goes mad. Other players are Tom Hartill who thinks he is an alien and whose mother is a disembodied voice and Rachel Porter who lives in squalor and eats cold tinned beans.

Into their dull routine life comes Marcie (Rebecca Lewis-Smith) on the run from her bullying husband (Alexander Helm). Nothing is ever the same again, starting with their weekly game and changing all their lives.

It is all very clever writing and Black Ram Theatre handles it well. The set has three simultaneous levels, the timing is crucial and there are some fine comic moments that add to the subtlety, enjoyment and fiood-for-thought as we observe the lives of others exposed. For real. Not in a game.

Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society at the Theatre Royal, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 29 January 2008

Titanic

If you think the sinking of the Titanic is a strange subject for a musical, you’re in good company. However, with such quality performing and all the human interest you want, it’s a great show.

It’s full of mini tales about real people, though the relentless inevitability of the ship being pushed ever faster while iceberg warnings keep coming in, is the big story.

It is compelling. The music and songs convey the impending disaster right into your heart.

Jeremy Tustin, the director, captures the sense of tragic destiny against the folly of people believing the largest moving object on earth couldn’t sink.

Geoffrey Davidson conducts a magnificent orchestra that swells into the revamped Theatre Royal just beautifully.

The long first half sets sail with cameo building climaxing in the terrible crunch as the iceberg hits. The second half accelerates as fate sends some into lifeboats and some to die. Suddenly the contrast between first and second class passengers count for nothing. It’s every man for himself.

The captain (John McInnes) plays it world weary until suddenly the enormity of the calamity weighs him down.

It’s a minor masterpiece of musical theatre. It’s a major hit for the Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society.

Sewell Barn Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 21 March 2008

Educating Rita (1)

This compelling drama is all about clashes of ideas, personalities, social classes and emotions. The Sewell Barn have come up with a masterpiece of such emotions.

Rita, (the outstanding Kiera Long) a working class Liverpudlian hairdresser, decides to get an education, enrols on an English literature course and enters the world of Frank (Bob Young), an alcoholic professor/poet.

She yearns to learn about herself and about culture. He’s drained, cynical, a lonely academic taking comfort in the bottle, reluctant to teach her.

There is comedy on the surface as class and culture clash.

Yet beneath, in typical Willy Russell writing, flows a dark tide exposing what is wrong with education and society and what is important about learning.

A full-length play with only two actors can be taxing if beyond the capabilities of the performers. But they are more than up to it.

The girl is cheeky, hungry, vulnerable. He is older, differently vulnerable and ultimately reborn through her. They explore the student-teacher relationship – the verbal sparring is wonderful, the home truths piercing.

Director Mike Dunne is to be congratulated on working character, space and timing to perfection.

The man is sympathetic yet realistic; the girl is hilarious and totally convincing. They are on a complex, touching voyage of discovery.

Join them. You won’t regret it.