Fairport Convention at the Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 1 December 2005

The Dylan Project

This autumn has seen a feast of Bob Dylan interest, reborn through a TV movie and the current tour by the legend himself.

For one night some of Fairport Convention dropped into Norwich to share songs from their latest album – all by Dylan.

Four middle aged guys on stage and lots more in the audience.

A piece of banter between songs went like this: “Back to the 60s…” “YES please” “It’s not easy living in this century”.

But you don’t have to have been raised on the original poetry of his lyrics, haunting vocals, acoustic versus electric and protest songs to appreciate what a giant Bob Dylan is in our culture.

The show was no nostalgia-fest. Well, it was. But the laid-back smoothness of the musicians, the closeness to Dylan’s vocals and the power of the material lifted it into the sublime.

Less tribute, more homage. Twenty one songs from across the decades barely scratched the surface of the Dylan catalogue.

Sweetheart Like You, I Want You, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat stood out as stars among classics.

If you missed the show, the album will be worth catching if you like country rock and Bob Dylan.

RoughCast Theatre Company at The Fisher Theatre, Bungay

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 25 May 2007

What the Butler Saw

A controversial play about incest on a summer’s evening? Just what the doctor ordered.

A middle-aged psychiatrist is interviewing a young secretary. At once confusion, in and out entrances, dropped trousers and increasing madness takes over.

Written in the 1960s this is Joe Orton’s final play, some say his finest.

The plot gets thicker and more bizarre as twist follows improbability. And it gets funnier. Humour starts black and grows murkier and more sinister.

Given a riotous treatment by RoughCast Theatre, director David Green tackles his fisrt insane farce with an expert touch.

Simon Evans as the chief protagonist is a comic model of frantic lunacy. The young secretary is Becky Martin handling the innocent role well, while the wife, Yves Green, commands the stage effortlessly.

It’s a cast with potential in a play that is both slice of social history and a comic gem. Recommended.

The Playhouse, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 23 June 2007

Think Floyd

Forty years ago this month, Pink Floyd gigged our region. Now one of their most respected tribute bands came to show their music has more than stood the test of time.

No talking or explaining till the end. Straight in, back to back classics.

They rocked a first half concert presentation of the legendary Wall concept, with a light show and sounds to match, when back then massive bricks separated band from audience during the show.

This audience may have been surprised that there was no wall, just quality music.

A children and young people chorus from Stagecoach Theatre School at the Theatre Royal acted and sang Another Brick in the Wall and others, adding a delightful local dimension.

Second half saw a selection from other albums, including Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a couple by the late Syd Barrett and their first hit single, Arnold Layne.

Eastern Angles Theatre at Archbishop Sancroft High School, Harleston

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 8 May 2008

Cuckoo Teapot

Finding some previously unknown nugget of old England is always a joy. Eastern Angles applied their unique style and bring the history, the times (1880-1930) and the people truly alive. Indeed, they are part of our local cultural fabric.

Tim Bell is a convincing callow youth in this story that goes beyond our region. He is a “Norkie”, one of many labourers who went to Burtion on Trent to malt at the breweries – hence the expression, “gone for a Burton”.

The clash of accents and life views are both the humor and the grist of this tale. Kate Griffin’s play is somewhat convoluted, but the cast handle it well in Ivan Cutting’s fast-paced direction round an interesting set.

Norkies would take home to their mothers a pottery teapot every Christmas. In the past one of  these characters, a lad, brought home a baby. The repercussions go on.

Folk songs punctuating the narrative are as expected. In this there is the added bonus of a clog dance by the formidable Jacqueline Redgewell.

Helen Grady plays the heavy-hearted woman from Norfolk. Bryony Harding is the love interest and Graham Howes holds two contrasting roles.

There is a twist in the end which makes this touring show a must-see before the tour ends on Saturday.

Sewell Barn Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 12 July 2008

Scapino

Comedy well done on stage seems deceptively easy to pull off. In fact it requires special skills in timing, directing and performing.

A rollicking script helps too. This romp from the pen of Frank Dunlop and Jim Dale from the Sixties, rewrites the old Moliere classic and gives Sewell Barn a winner to close their season.

It’s a piece from the top drawer of commedia dell’Arte, the art form that is the father of circus clowning, British panto and Punch and Judy. It also has a hand in slapstick, farce and stand-up.

Scapino is a scamp, a likeable rogue, adept at clever ideas, inspired cunning, deceits and tricks. He’s a forerunner of Baldrick and John Levantis captures him well, even taking a prompt in character.

Stock characters are a trademark of the genre, set in stereotypical situations like love and marriage with misunderstandings and confusions.

Director Trudy McGilvray exploits the quirks of the theatre itself with a team who work increasingly as an ensemble.

Comic lazzi are freely used – a device when something serious goes on like a romantic situation, while a couple of idiots upstage it with something stupid.

One jarring note is the cod Italian accents but they are gradually lost in the waves of comic invention, amusing stage business, funny lines, witty jokes and laughable, zany nonsense. Priceless.

Wonderful Beast at The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 30 June 2008

The Dead Moon

Smugglers romantically risking lives hauling untaxed tea, tobacco, gin, brandy and silk. Local history on our coast. Great theatre.

Where Suffolk-based Wonderful Beast are different is adding folklore, myths and legends in a powerful tale of tradition and belonging in a community.

There is a couple (Sasha Mitchell and John Neville) anxious about their baby, yet needing to bring in the contraband, faced with Captain of the Preventivemen (Matt Prendergast) billeted in their home, determined to catch smugglers.

Annie Firbank plays an old harridan, or wise chorus, commenting on the action and stiffening the backbones of the locals, with the crunch of feet on shingle in her voice and moon shadows across marshes in her eyes.

Directed by Alys Kihl, it feels like early Eastern Angles’ productions, but mixing professionals with amateurs – the trad-folk singer Vernon Rose and the Suffolk step-dancer Lenny Whiting.

There is singing of sea shanties and folk songs – with word sheets to encourage audience participation.

The highlight is the music/sound effects created by Sylvia Hallett sitting at the side with a range of instruments, from violin to a kalimbe and including her magnificent voice.

She makes sounds weird, chilling, terrifying and atmospheric.

After a mini tour in Suffolk, it could be developed into an extensive work next year, hopefully taking in the entire region. It deserves wider coverage.

Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 21 June 2008

Top Girls

Caryl Churchill’s feminist postmodern classic drama about Eighties Britain is bravely given an airing at the Maddermarket.

It asks if it is possible for women to combine a successful career with family life, among other things.

But don’t let that put you off.

The production by Michelle Montague is intriguing, with many stylistic features enhanced such as overlapping dialogue and multi-layering of times and peoples.

The play is famous for its dreamlike opening scene in which Marlene (Jenny Dewsbury), highflying at the Top Girls employment agency, dines with famous women from history and fiction: Pope Joan, Dull Gret from a Brueghel painting, Lady Nijo, a Japanese mistress of an emperor, and Patient Griselda from The Canterbury Tales!

It explores issues like Marlene getting a job over a man and the tension of a career female and her family in the form of her neice (Fran McInally) and her excellent sister (Ginny Porteous).

These are not novel dilemmas, but this is the Thatcherite era 25 years ago. It’s a political play with some great comic lines and punchy revelations.

The seven multi-roling women of the cast warm to their themes and gradually the whole thing makes sense between the sisters.

It’s actually all clever stuff. Too clever by far, some might say, but worth a go to experience something really different in theatre.

RoughCast Theatre at The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 26 May 2008

Alarms and Excursions

You know that impotent feeling you get when the tyranny of gadgets takes over? When life’s absurdities, embarrassments and unbelievably stupid annoyances engulf you?

Well, gthat’s the observational comedy running through Alarms and Excursions, a series of miniplays/sketches that sent local group RoughCast into new comedic territory.

Old friends round for a meal – the new-fangled bottle opener fails, the smoke alarm has a life of its own and a drawer overflows with instructions of every appliance they’ve owned. Order descends into anarchy with the speed of farce.

Three people listen to a fatuous, pompous speech trying to balance files, diaries and wine glasses, while trying to clap and raise a toast simultaneously.

A pair fail to comunicate through the noise at a party, with mishearings worthy of a Two Ronnies sketch.

A woman makes a speech while the autocue operative takes revenge on her. The madnesses caused by answerphone messages and confusions. The safety messages that precede an air flight.

We’ve all been to some, or all, of  these chaotic, patience-sapping moments in modern life. Michael Frayn’s writing captures them perfectly and a lively, multi-role cast did them justice, embracing the challenges of humour with open arms.

This group is one to watch, as the variety and range of their work continues to develop in our region.

Seagull Theatre Club at the Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 5 September 2008

Two Pinter Plays

It’s good to see the Seagull enjoy a pair of less famous Pinter plays. Good to experience his comedy of menace.

Matthew Elliott makes his directorial debut with a young cast who meet the Pinter awkwardness, repetition and exposure of fractured relationships with maturity.

In Party Time, upper-class people cocktail away while an unspecified revolution strangles the streets around. Subtly pilitical, it flows between the unspoken horror of a thriller and soime hilarious writing.

Richard Boakes is directed to let a sinister edge flow from within. Matthew Thomas is one of their number they have done away with – a ghost with the chill of the grave about him.

It’s an appetiser for the main course with Celebration, using the same cast, a gem of dark humour about ageing, loneliness and the human condition.

Two couples ae celebrating an anniversary. Lee Johnson, Richard Boakes, Sharn McDonald and Sheena Gregory sustain their wary, drunken evening, while another couple (Oli Budgen and Holly Drake) convey mutual loathing wrapped in jokes.

Lawrie Groom as the sad waiter obsessed with his real or imaginary grandfather is priceless. Yasmeen Khalaf is spot-on as the waitress, with Matthew Thomas as the maitre d’, both avuncular yet spooky.