David Porter » Archive
A Dulditch Angel
Eastern Angles Theatre Company at The Cut, Halesworth Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 29 September 2005 A Dulditch Angel The latest show by Eastern Angles has been launched on its tour of venues across our region. And a gripping tour-de-force it is. Five talented and versatile cast weave the fabric of a rural community struggling, loving, marrying and dying. Told from the stories of Mary Mann, it is set as the 19th century gives way to the 20th. However, the performance style gives it a timeless, haunting resonance with all English life. Few may have heard of Mary Mann – but one of her stories of love between a gamekeeper and an educated woman was pilfered by DH Lawrence and became Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Eastern Angles are doing a service bringing these darkly humorous tales … Read entire article »
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Black Shuck
Oskar Foxtrot Theatre at The Cut, Halesworth Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 21 July 2005 Black Shuck The premiere of an East Anglian musical is both a rare and agreeable delight. This is a fascinating piece, part ghost story, part mix of local folklore and history, cunningly wrapped in a variety of new ideas. Giving a new lease of life to the old shaggy dog story of Black Shuck, writer Andy Durham, lyricist Phil Corbett and composer Sarah Corbett have devised both entertainment and food for thought. Was it just a demon dog, a devil hound who terrorised people 400 years ago? Or a cover for smugglers to keep away the over-curious? Or even a modern parable of fear, retribution and punishment? It’s all that and more. The deepening of the evil in the … Read entire article »
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The Improvisers
Theatre Royal, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 12 July 2005 The Improvisers Most actors act. Some improvise. Some tell jokes. A few are stand-up comics. Some comics perform a good yarn. But to do and be all at once takes a special performer – one of The Improvisers, in fact. Stephen Frost brought his crack team of improvisers to town, his theatre without a safety net, and almost the only time we stopped laughing was to draw breath. It’s one thing to go on stage with barely a notion of the way a sketch could go, but to be at the mercy of what the audience calls out – that’s another league. Some audience suggestions teetered on the obscene, but were skilfully paried. Others strayed into the obscure (yetis in the shed), the bizarre … Read entire article »
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Funny Money
Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich Review Published in the Eastern Daily Press, 15 February 2008 Funny Money One of the many strengths of the Maddermarket is the variety of its plays. Ray Cooney’s madcap romp is a highlight of the season. If farce is the comedy of extraordinary things that happen to ordinary people, this is a masterclass in the genre. We have a full measure of almost believable characters caught in an increasingly ludicrous web of implausible white lies, inventions, distractions and downright absurdities. Trevor Burton is a wonderfully slightly mad man who finds £735,000 in a suitcase and tries to hang on to it. His wife (Dawn Brindle) drinks herself into a stupor to cope while their friends (Angela Goymer and Matthew Pinkerton) are in turn helpful and otherwise as they cover up the deceits. In the … Read entire article »
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Strangers on a Train
Theatre Royal, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 15 August 2006 Strangers on a Train There’s something about trains. Something about a good murder. Something about surprises. This play has the lot. That old master of suspense Alfted Hitchcock always recognised a good yarn with complex twists and turns and that’s why he made it into a film. Patricia Highsmith’s 1950’s psychological tale of murder translates well to the stage and has stood the test of time. A cast including familiar faces – 60’s singer Anita Harris, former Dr Who Colin Baker, Emmerdale’s Leah Bracknell and Alex Fearns, formerly of EastEnders – all gel well and keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Two strangers meet on a train. One dreams of the perfect murder in which each kills the other’s obstacle to … Read entire article »
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Animal Farm
Newfangled Theatre Company at the Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 8 June 2006 Animal Farm Shocking brutality, culling the unwanted and dissenting, betrayal, deceit and fear should come as no surprise in the modern world. George Orwell offered us his novelised fable of the destruction of a heaven on earth from within. Sir Peter Hall dramatised it. Adrian Mitchell added satirical lyrics and this still new company have turned it into a successful display of how humankind focuses on its own wellbeing, regardless of cost. Chris Whiting as Napoleon was superbly sinister with a bent frame that chilled. He was ably supported by Tom Bailey as the alleged traitor Snowball, and the slimy sidekick Squealer (Joel Curtis) and they led a strong cast that strutted, hopped, slid, clucked and pawed … Read entire article »
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Low Life
Blind Summit Theatre at the Norwich Puppet Theatre Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 8 May 2006 Low Life Four actor-puppeteers and puppets in a sleazy downtown bar hold sway, drawing us in to their bar stories with elegant choreography and the comedy of fringe-of-life-depression. The alcoholic businessman, mistaking his wife for a dog, cannot bear to go home. The tiny Action Man mission-impossible plumber drowns. A wrinkled Chinese cleaner, so drawn into the book he is reading, murders it. They mix the boundaries between the manipulator and the manipulated. And it’s all touchingly beautiful. A bar of identical ordinary little guys who parody paperback detective fiction, flow in and out of their reality. Theses characters are puppets, yet they’re also the puppeteer/satirists, ever in sight, as one voice with their puppets. Equally, these puppets … Read entire article »
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La Cuchina dell’Arte
Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 4 May 2006 La Cuchina dell’Arte If you love circus in all its forms, ancient and modern, this one is for your collection. It’s unique. Comedy without a safety net. The food-service industry without the hygiene. Set in a kitchen-cum-restaurant, a straight-man chef and his hapless sidekick in big shoes invite two members of the audience on stage and make them pizza. Inevitably it turns out to be a burnt offering. Directly inspired by vaudeville coming out of commedia dell’Arte, film makers and mimers, they cavort in magical physical nonsense. It takes real skill to clown, drop plates and spin plates while taking audience orders and spin dough till it flies through the air. But it takes a special skill to make it look easy. From the … Read entire article »
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The Mona Lisas
Theatre Melange at the Playhouse, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 7 October 2006 The Mona Lisas Mona Lisa – the smile that launched a thousand spin-offs. Forgive me mixing my metaphors, but in a surreal performance artpiece, eclecticism comes as normal. It was a tour round the history of art from Da Vinci to Impressionism, then Cubism and Dada to Andy Warhol. Loosely hung round this frame, six performers in search of something mixed unmatcheable images and sounds to create not a sense of wonder at the fusion of art and theatre, but bewilderment. The Anglo-Romanian company is an international collaboration of cultures and history using the Italian painting stolen from France in 1911. Surrealism is a perfectly acceptable stage form. This had giant props, distorted dances, strangely sexual costumes and enough … Read entire article »
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Marcus Brigstocke
The Playhouse, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 2 October 2006 Marcus Brigstocke Tall, lanky, the liberal in corduroy, Marcus Brigstocke treated us to a comic style that was a cross between a chat in your own front room and a loopy, clowning schoolboy winding up the teacher but impressing his mates. His targets were mainly predictable – Labour and Blair, George Bush, terrorism, air travel, transport, the French, Jamie Oliver, Daily Mail readers, the Scots and the EU. Material on the Olympic Games, children and TV adverts was more unexpected, but some of the religious and/or racial gags fell flat. While parts were hilariously funny, others were puzzling – why not sing the song that was threatened throughout? The audience question and answer session that passed for an encore added little. People posed … Read entire article »
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