Category Archives: Comedy

Trelawney Of The Wells – March 2013

Experience: 8/10

By Arthur Wing Pinero, with ornamentation by Patrick Marber

Directed by Joe Wright

Venue: Donmar Warehouse

Date: Thursday 28th March 2013

This was a real eye-opener. A previous touring production we’d seen had been rather bland and we remembered very little of it. Today’s performance was anything but bland, and the memories will keep us chuckling a good while yet. It’s not clear from the play text how much Patrick Marber has added, nor which bits are his, and since I don’t know the play that well I can’t be sure how much his work affected our experience. It would be interesting to see another version sometime to compare them, but that may not happen anytime soon. This version is definitely affectionate towards the original, and well worth seeing.

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The Man Who Pays The Piper – March 2013

Experience: 9/10

By G B Stern

Directed by Helen Leblique

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Saturday 23rd March 2013

It would be hard not to notice the theme to this year’s Orange Tree program. First there was The Stepmother, a play by Githa Sowerby about women’s need for financial independence, and now, in this play, G B Stern also exposes the social changes that led to a generation of young women developing careers first and families second. As the next play is called The Breadwinner, the theme is clearly continuing for a while yet. And fortunately, with Sam Walters’ gift for unearthing and scheduling both neglected plays and new work, this is proving to be a season well worth catching, yet again.

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Quartermaine’s Terms – March 2013

Experience: 8/10

By Simon Gray

Directed by Richard Eyre

Venue: Wyndham’s Theatre

Date: Saturday 16th March 2013

Henry David Thoreau wrote that the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, a quote which I have always remembered but never understood until today. Simon Gray’s work exemplifies this concept, particularly in this play where the characters present bright and cheerful facades to cover the truth of their inner despair. We get to see both the inner and outer aspects of their lives during a performance, and thankfully there’s enough humour to lighten the load.

The set was as usual for this play, with an old leather armchair front left for Quartermaine himself, other seats across the front, a table and chairs behind, lockers on the right and a small kitchen area back right. Other staff room paraphernalia – books, filing cabinet, etc. – were dotted around, with entrances at the back and on the right. The style and costumes were all appropriate for the early 1960s.

The performances were all excellent, and there was plenty of laughter from the audience. Rowan Atkinson played the central character really well, and a lot of the humour was down to his performance. His character came across as more cartoonish than the others, and this portrayal brought out less of the sadness in Quartermaine’s life that I experienced in Nathaniel Parker’s previous interpretation (June 2008), but it still worked very well, and with such a strong cast the production as a whole was excellent. Conleth Hill was marvellous as the erudite older teacher who eventually takes over the school, while Will Keen wrung every last drop of social embarrassment out of the accident prone but hard-working Derek Meadle. Malcolm Sinclair was suitably stroppy and forgetful as the headmaster, and the rest of the cast were equally as good. Well worth the visit, although I wouldn’t care to spend much time with any of these people in real life.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

A Cricket Match – March 2013

Experience: 6/10

By Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Patric Kearns

Company: Talking Scarlet

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Wednesday 13th March 2013

This is a version of Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges; we’ve seen four others before, so we were keen to see how this one played out. The weather problems may have contributed to the small attendance, but even so the cast gave us a good performance, and it was an enjoyable enough evening. I found myself wishing for a full-on production sometime, with all the parts played by different actors, but that’s just a pipe dream for the moment. It would also be nice to have an Intimate Exchanges marathon sometime, but again I’ll have to wait.

This version took us down the route of an affair between Celia and Miles. Miles was married to Rowena, a free spirit type, while Celia was married to Toby, Miles’ best friend, who owed his job as headmaster of a local school to Miles’ role as chairman of the board of governors. Miles contrived to see Celia alone for dinner – she thought it would be a foursome – and made his play, ending up in the shed with his trousers round his ankles. Their affair was common gossip, and while Miles eventually returned to Rowena, Celia was stuck with an unsympathetic Toby.

The third act gave us the cricket match. It’s difficult with only two actors to show us all the necessary characters, but these two did very well. I did find myself distracted by the lack of accurate scoring at times – always a drawback when putting cricket on stage – but the development of the relationships was pretty clear and by this time the audience had warmed up a bit so there was more laughter as well. Stephen Beckett was particularly good when it came to Miles’ hesitant and bumbling way of talking; his ‘blah, blah, blah’ noises when fast forwarding through the speech he was rehearsing were very funny.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Takin’ Over The Asylum – February 2013

Experience: 8/10

By Donna Franceschild

Directed by Mark Thomson

Co-production by Citizens Theatre and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

Venue: Citizens Theatre

Date: Tuesday 26th February 2013

The original TV series, broadcast in 1994, was so marvellous that I had to be careful not to expect too much from this stage version. I didn’t have to worry: within minutes the cast had created their own world and drawn us in, and with the action all taking place within the hospital itself, the sense of confinement was probably stronger than with the TV version which showed us a wider range of locations.

This stage version covered the same overall story with only a few changes as far as I could remember, and focused the scenes in the day room beside the old radio station, with a small outside space (for the smokers). The set had the radio booth on the left, windows across the back and the entrance on the right, with a small entrance lobby on the other side. The rest of the space was the day room, with a few chairs and a flatscreen TV on a table front right, facing into the room. In front of the stage on the right was a small section of metal stairway. I couldn’t see much more detail than this from our angle on the far left of the front row.

The play began with Aileen dictating the viewing preferences of the other inmates. When Eddie arrived, he began setting up the St Jude hospital radio, and came into conflict with that evening’s viewing schedule. Apparently between Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Eastenders, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for a 7-9pm radio show, even one playing excellent 60s soul music. But with the help of Campbell (manic depressive), Rosalie (compulsive cleaner), Fergus (schizophrenic technical wizard and serial escapee) and Francine (self-harmer), the radio station established itself, changing the lives of some of the inmates and giving us a chance to see them as people; with difficulties, true, but people all the same.

Apart from Aileen, the scariest ‘inmate’ was Stuart, the male nurse who frequently exerted his authority in an unpleasant manner until an attempt to take Aileen’s mobile phone from her resulted in a culinary threat which made him back off (“your balls are pancakes”). The deputy administrator Evelyn was something of a martinet, in a friendly, cardigan-wearing kind of way, and there were strong hints that but for the attitudes of their nearest and dearest outside the hospital, these people would be living happy, productive lives.

The story had been updated to include references to more recent music, TV etc., and Fergus even brought a laptop into the studio. When the radio station was threatened with closure, a switch to online broadcasting provided an alternative outlet, and there were references to Simon Sharma as a suitable role model for an interview persona. The updating worked really well; I don’t know how much, if anything, had to be changed in relation to the mental health laws, but I suspect things have probably got worse rather than better – a program note would have been helpful.

Our view was pretty good. I couldn’t see Francine crying in a corner in the first scene nor in one of the later ones, but apart from that we saw most of the action in both halves. I noticed a lot of water running down the windows during several scenes – I’d forgotten just how much it rains in Glasgow. Steve was more affected than I was and would have rated the experience higher; I still found the performance moving and I’m glad to say my sniffles were entirely due to the emotional effect and not to any incipient cold. That reminds me: I did like Rosalie’s comment about the radiothon podcast going ‘viral’ – as soon as she said the word we could see she wasn’t keen on the idea, and her next line confirmed that.

The performances were all very good, and after a slowish start we were hooked into the characters and their situations, just as we had been with the TV series. I felt that Fergus’s death was less emotive, as they simply reported it instead of us seeing him on the roof, but the hang-gliding was still in there – we caught a glimpse of someone flying past the windows, with much cheering from the inmates – and the sense of waste was still strong. Knowing the truth about Harriet the bag lady made Eddie’s references to her very funny at times, and there was plenty of humour all through the evening, especially in Campbell’s manic DJing, to offset the sadness and suffering. Brian Vernel, who played Campbell, has still to finish his training at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, though what they have left to teach him is anybody’s guess.

The whole ensemble was good though, the 60s music was brilliant, and the packed house gave them an excellent reception. As we left we were handed a flyer for Doctor Faustus, due here in April – I think they were a bit surprised when we said we’d already seen it!

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Privates On Parade – February 2013

Experience: 9/10

By Peter Nichols, music by Denis King

Directed by Michael Grandage

Venue: Noel Coward Theatre

Date: Monday 11th February 2013

Fabulous! We missed an earlier performance due to train troubles, so we were really pleased to see it tonight. I thought the production was excellent, very reminiscent of the Donmar musicals this director has put on in the past, and if there was anything lacking at all I’d put it down to a somewhat patchy audience response. From comments I heard in the interval, I suspect that some of the attendees were expecting It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum – The Musical, whereas this was a much more nuanced piece, mixing satire with sexual innuendo, drama with cheesy puns. I was moved to pre-sniffles at least once, when Sylvia was being consoled by Acting Captain Terri Dennis after discovering that Steven was leaving her behind – not the done thing to bring a heavily pregnant half-caste woman back to Swindon as his bride. Dennis did the decent thing instead, so hopefully the little one will have more tolerant parents than most.

The treatment of and attitudes to the local population were all too accurate, an embarrassing reminder of Britain’s colonial past, and I felt the play had a lot in common with Oh What A Lovely War and The Entertainer. The play began with the two Malay servants hitting gongs, starting with single bongs and moving into the continuous ringing sound. This sound was used a few times during the play, but I don’t know exactly what it was meant to represent. After the concert party left the country, the final image on the screen at the back was of modern-day Singapore at night, while the two servants, now in suits, shook hands centre stage. It was quite a jump from then to now, but it worked, showing us the growth in prosperity since the British left, and leaving us to ponder how much the colonial power contributed and how much it held the local population back.

The set was basically a very run down theatre building with the pros arch towards the back of the stage, doors showing above it, and side entrances – the usual. With lighting changes and the swift arrival of furniture, the other locations were deftly set up and the screen at the back, when not covered by a backdrop, showed appropriate pictures. The costumes were excellent, especially Dennis’s outfits as he gave us his Marlene, Carmen Miranda and one other woman we didn’t recognise. His Noel Coward was good fun too (and very apt for this theatre).

The performances are the key to this show, and this production was strong in that department. I found John Marquez’s accent too strong for me and I couldn’t tune into his dialogue very well, but the rest of the cast were generally clear. Angus Wright was very good as the upright and uptight Major, producing some very John Cleese-like leg movements for one number. Mark Lewis Jones was a fine villain, Harry Hepple was very good as Lance Corporal Charles Bishop, while Davina Perera had taken over the role Sylvia, and didn’t look out of place at all. The big draw was Simon Russell Beale, though, and his performance as Acting Captain Terri Dennis was wonderful, both in the glamorous frocks and out of them, bringing out the character’s humour and showing us his caring side. We enjoyed ourselves very much, and were glad we’d made the extra effort to catch this one.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

People – February 2013

Experience: 7/10

By Alan Bennett

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Saturday 2nd February 2013

A very enjoyable new play by Alan Bennett, poking fun at various establishment targets such as the National Trust, the Church of England (de rigeur these days), eccentric aristocrats and modern technology. The porn industry even took a few hits, but mostly this was a slightly nostalgic look at modern times from the perspective of those who were young adults in the 60s, ripping through some of our modern illusions and preoccupations and giving us plenty of laughs along the way.

The set was fairly elaborate. All the action took place in a large drawing room which at the start looked very dilapidated. A swathe of grey plastic sheeting covered the large central rose in the ceiling, the enormous picture on the back wall was likewise draped with plastic sheeting, and there were dust sheets over a lot of the furniture. I spotted two obvious gaps on the walls where pictures used to hang, and there were various items of furniture and bric-a-brac dotted here and there. I assume the tin bath was a ‘leakage solution’. Two armchairs were positioned near the front of the stage facing a small electric heater, and there were lights, tables, etc. around them. On the far right stood a bureau.

The film crew for the porn shoot didn’t change much of this, but they did bring on a four-poster bed along with all their equipment, having moved the central chairs over to one side. They took their equipment with them when they left, and not long afterwards the restoration work transformed the room to a magnificent version of itself. The sheeting covering the central part of the ceiling was removed (downwards, I think) and a properly restored rose replaced it. The tatty bits of decoration were either removed or covered up, as with the pictures placed over the obvious gaps on the right wall. The ensemble worked their way round the room from left to right, making various scrubbing and polishing actions to indicate the work that was going on, and once they’d finished the room looked splendid, if a lot more formal. One thing puzzled me. The large canvas on the back wall had been removed at the start of this process; all well and good, presumably off for restoration. During and following the changeover there was some dialogue going on, and the area behind that wall suddenly transformed into another room, or so it looked to me at first. Then I thought it might have been a large mirror, and we were seeing a reflection of the room, but the image didn’t quite tie up. Finally the picture was dropped back into position, and I’m still none the wiser as to what was going on with that ‘other room’. [Just checked the play text – the author suggests that during the transformation there may be “a vision of the Adam saloon at the rear of the stage”. But why?]

Apart from that minor point, the story was pretty straightforward. Dorothy Stacpoole (Frances de la Tour) was the elder of two sisters, and living in the family mansion which was now crumbling to bits, located somewhere in the North of England. Her companion Iris (Linda Bassett) was the only other resident, and they spent most of their time huddled in a small part of the large room, trying to keep warm. Dorothy’s sister June (Selina Cadell) was in the Church of England in a middle management position (I have no memory for the ranks of that organisation) and but for the recent vote against giving women too much power, would no doubt have her sights set on the top-job-but-one.

June’s intention was that the house be given to the National Trust, but Dorothy, who actually owned the place, wanted to check out other options. When Bevan, a valuer from one of the big auction houses, suggested selling to a private consortium of the very wealthy who would pay handsomely to keep the house for their exclusive use, she found the idea tempting, but in the meantime there were bills to pay. A ‘quickie’ with the makers of a porn film at least provided hot water and hot meals, as well as a trip down memory lane for Dorothy. The producer/director was someone from her past, when she was a top fashion model, and the chance to wear her 60s haute couture again was irresistible.

At last the decision had to be made, and the Trust won the day. The final scene showed us the visitors wandering around the room while a screen (facing us so we could see the film) showed Dorothy in her bag lady clothes talking about the room and its history. The visitors gradually left and Dorothy had a final encounter with Louise, the makeup lady from the porn film, giving her a farewell gift. As she left the now empty room, Dorothy triggered the recorded announcement “The House is now closed”, and that was that.

The cast were all good, but again we had a triumvirate (or should that be trifeminate?) of excellent performances at the centre of the piece. Frances de la Tour, Linda Bassett and Selina Cadell were magnificent, and although there were good supporting performances, particularly by Peter Egan and Miles Jupp, the women carried the day. It underlines the complaints about the lack of roles for women over thirty, when we have so many talented female actors who can dominate the stage at that age and beyond.

While I enjoyed this play well enough and there were plenty of laughs to be had, I did feel it was a bit thin at times. The targets were easy, even lazy ones, and the slick bon mots occasionally felt recycled. The short opening scene, which set up the idea of the porn film, was entertaining but didn’t flow into the following scene, and this got the play off to an uneven start. I did like the scenes with Bevan though, especially his suggestion that the house might be moved somewhere warmer and more accessible, like Dorset. And I liked the way June changed her attitude towards him once she realised he was involved in the purchase of Winchester Cathedral. They occasionally sang hits from the 60s, such as Downtown, which gave us a very strong sense of time and meant we left the theatre singing to ourselves. Good fun.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Merry Wives Of Windsor – January 2013

Experience: 9/10
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Philip Breen
Venue: RST
Date: Tuesday 8th January 2013

As predicted, this has come on a lot with experience. The dialogue was much sharper, and apart from Nym I could make out almost all the dialogue pretty well. This allowed the detail of the plotting to shine through; I’m sure other productions have cut a lot, and even when bits such as the fake German booking at the Garter have been included they weren’t as clear as tonight. This Windsor is a hot bed of intrigue, practical jokes and sneering at your neighbours; the only thing missing is unfaithful wives!

I’ll include revisions from my earlier notes as I go along; these are usually either mistakes on my part first time round or minor changes to the staging, with some additional features added due to our different viewing angle. Slender had his arm in a sling again for the opening scene and his next entrance, so definitely a staging choice. His delivery and timing were much improved on the earlier performance, and Calum Finlay is shaping up nicely in this role. I could see Mistress Ford’s arrival this time, and Falstaff practically made a meal of her on the spot, holding her hand and eyeing her with wanton lasciviousness. Slender still hugged Simple when the latter arrived, but from the way he then shrugged his servant off I suspect he was simply in need of a bit of support.

I spotted Bardolph with the dartboard tonight at the Garter. He handed it to someone in the front row to hold for him, and as he drew his hand back to aim the dart he slipped it behind his ear, so the audience member was never in danger – not sure he was aware of that at the time, though. “No quips now, Pistol” was in tonight – don’t know if that was a change from last time or just my bad memory – and although Pistol and Nym did go on a bit, I was much more aware of their intention to get revenge on Falstaff by revealing his seduction plans to the respective husbands.

Dr Caius was clearer in the next scene: that is, I could tell he was talking a mangled version of English with some French thrown in. We could see poor Peter Simple being hurled against the closet door after the doctor discovered him in there, and he didn’t fare any better when they burst out onto the stage. Simple held up the magazine he’d been reading at one point to protect himself from the angry doctor’s sword, but with a slash of the rapier it was in two pieces. When the doctor ‘gave’ Simple the letter containing the challenge to the parson, he didn’t actually let go of it – still in a temper, perhaps – so Simple ran off without it and had to come back on, rather cautiously, a short while later to take it from the doctor’s outstretched hand.

Anne and William brought the coolbox and chair onto the rugby pitch as before, and left immediately. Mistress Page came up through the trapdoor and was handed Falstaff’s letter by the pageboy at the start of the scene. There was more of a reaction from Mistress Page as she read the letter – it was so nice to be admired and flattered in this way – so when she turned over the page to read the last line of verse and saw the name, her shock and horror were all the funnier. Her husband still couldn’t get the lid off the coolbox – his “how now, Meg” was an indication to his wife that something was wrong in his universe (and it was her job to fix it). She duly obliged by flipping the handle over, opening the box and taking out two bottles of beer, one for her husband and one for Ford, all with the resigned expression of the dutiful wife/dogsbody.

I forgot to mention last time about Mistress Quickly’s first visit to Falstaff’s room, which happened before Brook’s visit, of course. She was wonderfully talkative, and Falstaff had several goes at getting her to stick to the point, which was amusing. I was more aware tonight that she is as much part of the scheming as the two wives, and enjoys ensnaring Falstaff as much as they do – after a later scene she used a fist pump to celebrate a ‘result’. Following her departure this time around, Falstaff took out a mirror and used it to check out the gorgeous physique which had so enamoured Mistress Ford – his overweening vanity was very funny.

Ford’s visit as Brook seemed to work even better than before, judging by how much we laughed. When Ford had his head in his hands and the wig was waving about in mid-air, Falstaff put his hand towards it as if to push it back into place, but thought better of it. As he did last time, Ford took out a photo of his wife, which Brook obviously kept close to his heart, to show to the knight. The complexities of the plotting in this scene, with Ford actually using a lot of the truth to spin his web of deceit, came across very clearly, and I felt that John Ramm’s portrayal gave Ford more depth than is usual.

I can be clearer about the duelling sequences this time. The doctor, in his fencing gear, was prancing about the stage to warm up while Jack Rugby lounged in the car (a Citroen 2CV in fact) while the background music morphed into the theme tune from The Archers. In the distance stood a telephone box which I noticed this time – presumably the same telephone box used by the doctor and the parson to play their trick on the host of the Garter. Their conversation about the parson’s non-appearance was increased with a bit of business. To demonstrate his superiority (these men as so insecure) the doctor ordered Jack Rugby to place the apple he was holding on his head – ‘la pomme, la tête’, an inserted line. Jack demurred, the doctor insisted, so Jack placed the apple very carefully on top of his head, and with one swish from the rapier the two halves fell to the ground. (From our angle it was clear the blade never got within two feet of the apple, but we enjoyed the effect all the same.)

With the arrival of the host and several townsfolk, the dialogue became less comprehensible, but the ‘V’ sign was used to illustrate ‘clapper-claw’, so we got the gist. Once the stage had been cleared of this lot, the parson arrived with his bike (was he riding it at the time?) and leaned it up against a signpost which emerged through the floor and swung round to indicate that Windsor was 3 miles in the direction of backstage. The parson was much more nervous about the fight and so it was appropriate that he had Slender’s servant Peter Simple helping him, Slender being such a coward himself. The discovery of the host’s trick and the resolution of the quarrel between the two ‘foreigners’ was brisk enough and again we got the gist.

Mistress Page came out of her house with the pageboy Robin next, and encountered Ford who was carrying a racquet bag and another sports bag. She was soon off to see his wife, while Ford enlisted the help of several of the others who were returning from the non-duel. Then the stage was set up for Falstaff’s first encounter with the buck basket. All was as before, although I noticed that Mistress Page actually held the vase on top of the buck basket before deciding it was out of place and then returned it to the side table where it behaved as a vase should this time.

I assume I mistook the order of events at the previous performance; it was this first visit to Mistress Ford when the cushions went on the floor, the lights went down and the music played etc. Falstaff got hold of the remote control at one point and managed to turn the lights out completely (total blackout), while Alice (Mistress Ford) was being extremely provocative, taking every opportunity to present her attractive features to the elderly knight. Due to Falstaff’s lack of alacrity in hiding, Meg (Mistress Page) had to make her entrance four times to warn of the danger, and by the time she was able to speak, she wasn’t able to speak – she was out of breath. A restorative glass or two of champagne later, she informed Alice that her husband was on his way, and everyone (apart from Falstaff) enjoyed the way the curtain shook. The women carried on drinking the champagne and playing their parts, overacting them brilliantly, and Falstaff eventually erupted out of hiding when the possibility of hiding in the buck basket was suggested.

Ford’s arrival with his posse was even more fun than before. I’d forgotten that he ran around the house repeating the word ‘buck’ a lot during this scene – obvious rhyming connotations – and the reactions of the other men just added to the fun. The fart was still there and still being blamed on Meg, who wasn’t any happier about it this time round. While the men helped Ford search his own house, the women discussed the situation, and I was more aware this time that they realised something was up because of Ford’s sudden arrival. His later comment about Falstaff boasting “of that he could not compass” added to their suspicions. When Ford said “Come, wife”, Alice walked off stage with haughty dignity, ignoring his outstretched hand, making it clear her husband had better take several hot water bottles to bed with him to avoid a severe chill.

The interval was after this scene, and they restarted with Anne Page sneaking out of her parents’ house to have a crafty fag. Fenton found her there and went straight into wooing mode, but she wasn’t about to fall into his arms for the sake of some fancy talk. Allowing this scene to be done properly (i.e. according to the first Folio) gave us more insight into Anne’s character than usual, and I got the impression that she’s fully aware of her situation and chooses Fenton mainly because he’s the best option available to her. He’s certainly more attractive in every department than her other suitors, and while they may be happy enough in the future, this isn’t the soppy love match which is usually presented to us. I also appreciated seeing her father show some temper towards Fenton; he’s another character who becomes very bland if this scene is prettified up, but tonight we could see the controlling father underneath the apparently laid-back demeanour. It’s good to have some grit in this play for once.

Falstaff’s arrival back at the Garter was another very funny scene, along with the conversations with Mistress Quickly and Brook. They got the most out of the dialogue, and after Falstaff left to prepare for his next assignation with Ford’s wife, the husband himself didn’t just rant about things; he broke a snooker cue in half and used each half to make horns for himself – very funny.

The schoolboys were next, and again it was the boys’ reactions to what William was saying that indicated a lot of the humour, although this William’s delivery was also very good. Mistress Quickly had her back to me throughout this scene, so I couldn’t see her expressions, but the group of boys standing towards the back of the stage could, and they were really enjoying themselves. At long last Mistress Page sent her son home and went to visit her friend, who by now was getting a little desperate. Alice had been fending Sir John off for some time, and frequent glances at her watch made it clear that she’d expected Meg to arrive much sooner.

The scene played out as before, with Falstaff rolling himself in the carpet, Alice taking the melons upstairs, and Ford going berserk over the buck basket when he arrived. He leapt on it, made others lean on it when he moved away for a few moments, and again crawled inside to try and locate an enormous knight who would have been visible with only a cursory glance inside. It was very funny, and although I found the chase sequence a bit clumsy this time, it was still good fun, especially when one of the melons fell on the floor. The other men agreed to assist Ford in one more search, and there was a strong sense of the community in action here, with neighbours helping one another but also having a say in one another’s behaviour; Ford was clearly on the brink of accepting that he had to stop suspecting his wife, or at least stop such extreme behaviour based on his suspicions.

During the search, the doctor and the parson must have snuck out to the telephone box, as this was when the hoax call was made to the Garter to book the host’s horses. Although the box was right by us, the host and Bardolph were obscured by the balcony, so I didn’t find this as clear as last time. In any case, it sounded like the garbled German part of the call was a recording.

Back at the Ford’s house the women had told the men everything, and Ford made a very fulsome apology to his wife, even if he did go a bit over the top. I noticed that when it came to the final revenge, the women not only had to arrange for Falstaff to go to Herne’s oak, they also have to plan the punishment as well. Do these men actually contribute anything useful? Mistress Page delivered almost all the lines for this bit, with Alice keen to chip in but only just managing a couple of lines. The plans for wedding Anne to Slender and then the doctor were explained to us as various characters went off individually to prepare for the finale.

The scene at the Garter was as before, and the parson and the doctor each turned up to inform the host that he had been tricked – how they laughed. The pub had been decorated with all sorts of German trimmings – flags, a “Welkommen” sign, plates of frankfurters, etc., and there were two blond barmaids in German country-style frocks while the host was in full liederhosen. It was a bit overwhelming, but it did show that the host had gone to a lot of expense for his supposed guests, and made his concern easier to understand. The rest of the action was as before, with the necessary information about Anne’s various disguises coming across clearly. When the wives came on stage before the final scene, I noticed that Mistress Page was towing a shopping trolley and I realised it held her costume – Mistress Ford was already prepared under her coat.

The oak didn’t look as good from this angle as it had last time, but the performance of the ‘fairies’ was clearer and I spotted not only the white and green trimmings but also the moments when each ‘Anne’ was removed, the real Anne having red ribbons on her skull headdress. Mistress Quickly as the fairy queen spoke much more like our current monarch than I recall from the previous performance, and there were quite a few laughs during the fairy scene but on the whole I felt it went on a bit too long. With Sir John in the pit, being attacked by the children, the Pages and Fords finally returned to call a halt to the punishment. Ford was in a Hulk costume, very appropriate for a man who suffered from jealousy, while Page needed a good deal of padding to fill his Superman suit. After the final line, Mistress Ford squealed and ran off stage pursued by her husband, and at the very end, with Falstaff left alone in the pit, he lit up a cigar and had a ‘Hamlet’ moment. For those of us old enough to remember the cigar adverts, it was an even more fitting end to the performance.

Most of the cast came out again a short while later for the post-show chat, and the director was also there. He explained some of his initial ideas and inspirations for the production, and there were interesting comments by the cast too. Desmond Barrit remarked that he preferred doing modern dress productions of Shakespeare; the audience seem to engage better with the performance and often think that the language has been updated! The strength of the women’s parts was commented on, along with the importance of playing characters ‘seriously’ even though it’s a comedy; after all, the characters don’t know they’re in a funny play. The director had focused on the two buck basket scenes as being the most important in terms of the humour, so they spent some time working on them. The cast seemed to be having a good time, and I suspect we were a decent audience, so a good night was had by all.

Now that it’s settled into its run, I felt the standard of performances varied a bit tonight, but overall the production worked extremely well. Alexandra Gilbreath and Sylvestra Le Touzel nailed the middle class wives to perfection, with Alexandra vamping it up brilliantly and Sylvestra giving us a glimpse into a life spent looking after others without much time for personal fun. The husbands were also good, with Page being more rounded a character than usual, and Ford being more sympathetic; his unreasonableness seemed more reasonable, if I can put it that way, and the man was clearly suffering from his obsessive jealousy. Desmond Barrit’s Falstaff was truly monumental, and he wrung every last drop of humour out of both the dialogue and the comic business – his attempt to dance seductively was wonderfully funny. The success of the production lies in the collective effort though, and this combination of performances on this set has created an excellent and novel experience. It’s a shame when productions this good don’t transfer to London or anywhere else, and I hope the RSC will look at ways to make these successes more widely available in the future.

Some ideas which occurred to me when I was watching this performance: there’s a great deal of arguing going on in this play, lots of people playing tricks, changing allegiances and the like. Windsor is not a happy place, and the men seem to define themselves by their quarrels. Even Slender, trying to be a man, talks a lot about fighting but is easily alarmed by a dog’s bark. Against this, the women come across as much more cooperative, with the three Mistresses – Page, Ford and Quickly – combining to give Sir John some serious punishment for his impudence.

I was also aware of the ‘threes’ in this play. Slender sequentially accuses Sir John’s three followers, who, like the three-card trick, each escape detection. Anne has three suitors, and each suitor has an ‘Anne’. There are three assignations arranged with Falstaff as well, and I’ve already mentioned the three Mistresses; even if they aren’t three wives, they still represent middle-aged womanhood – spinster, wife, mother. Even if the dialogue doesn’t use the poetical and rhetorical techniques of the other plays, the structure seems to be grounded on similar principles.

Steve also spotted that the daughter’s name is Anne, she was being married off at a young age (for the Elizabethans) and had a younger brother, William. Was this in any way a mirror image of the marriage of another, teenage, William marrying a much older Anne? And now I think about it, were the choices this Anne faced any reflection of another Anne’s situation? We shall probably never know, but it is fun to speculate.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Sauce For The Goose – January 2013

Experience: 8/10
By Georges Feydeau, translated by Peter Meyer

Directed by Sam Walters

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 3rd January 2013

This was an entertaining start to the year’s theatre-going. I wasn’t sure how well a farce like this would work in the round, and although the constant doorway miming got a little tedious at times, it did the job reasonably well and even allowed for some extra humour, mostly between the acts. The cast did a good job, as usual, and despite the slightly excessive number of characters and the complicated plot, they told the story well and got a good deal of humour out of the play.

The set was fairly complicated as well, transforming itself twice into three different locations. For the first act, the Vatelin’s flat was decorated in gaudy colours, with a crudely painted ‘carpet’ in the middle of the floor, a fake fireplace on the left wall, the effects desk by the left entranceway, and a long pouf along the far left side with a regular pouf close by. A table with two chairs stood against the far right wall; from the veneer pattern painted on it, it was a folding table. On the right side stood a sofa, coffee table and armchair. The furniture was as crudely painted as the carpet, and the whole effect was both garish and modern, or at least modern for its time.

The second act was located in a hotel room; this was soon produced by rearranging the furniture and providing some extra dressing. The sofa, poufs and coffee table became a bed against the far right wall, the fireplace was moved round to the far left wall, the table was realigned (it did fold after all) and moved across to the left side, while a bedside table and some bedclothes completed the scene. There were also some nick-knacks and a trunk belonging to the current occupant of the room, but she soon moved out to make way for all the fun and games. Farce being what it is -there were lots of clothes and bags distributed around the room by the end of the act – it took a fair chunk of the interval to change everything round to Redillon’s flat for the final act. The furniture was much the same as for the first act, but with a different layout.

The plot revolved around Pontagnac (David Antrobus) and his obsession with chasing other men’s wives. This time he’s followed home Lucienne, who happens to be the wife of one of Pontagnac’s friends, Vatelin. When Lucienne complains to her husband that a man has been following her, Vatelin is shocked and denounces such behaviour as disgraceful; it’s a different matter when he learns that the man in question is Pontagnac, his friend, and Vatelin soon loses his outrage which doesn’t please Lucienne.

We soon discover that Lucienne has every intention of staying faithful to her husband, provided he doesn’t stray himself; if he does, she’ll be in another’s arms in a trice, and she knows just the man to help her out – Redillon. He hangs around their house all the time, desperate for an affair with Lucienne, but she holds him off resolutely. Things change when a German lady, Heidi, pays a visit to Vatelin and we find out that what happened in Germany was meant to stay in Germany, but hasn’t! Various twists and turns later, there’s quite a party going on at the hotel Ultimo, with all the characters we’ve already met plus a few new ones waltzing in and out of room 13, much to our amusement.

The final act provides Redillon with his long-wished-for opportunity to enjoy Lucienne’s delights, and there’s even another wife keen to get revenge on her unfaithful husband – Madame de Pontagnac. But sadly, a night spent with a beautiful prostitute, Armandine, has left Redillon with a temporary shortfall in the loving department. With Lucienne overhearing (by Redillon’s design) her husband’s tortured confession of his one and only lapse while away in Germany on business, the couple are reunited and, for the most part, everything ends happily.

At the time I felt the play could do with some serious pruning to give us more of the main characters and fewer distractions, but thinking about it afterwards I’m not sure what could be cut apart from Armandine. The servants had some nice little scenes, especially at the hotel, and between the acts they also opened the ‘doors’ so that the stage crew could get into the rooms and move the furniture around – a nice touch.

From the post-show we learned that the actors figure out where to move as they work on the play; apart from some set positions, such as taking tea at the table in the hotel room, they’re free to do whatever feels right. The original play had Vatelin travelling to England for business and used the Channel as the barrier between him and France. In translating the play, Peter Meyer had changed the location to Germany, using the Rhine as the water barrier, and giving Heidi some time spent in England to account for her love of tea. I forget the rest of the points, but it was one of the more interesting discussions.

© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Old Money – December 2012

8/10

By Sarah Wooley

Directed by Terry Johnson

Venue: Hampstead Theatre

Date: Saturday 22nd December 2012

We had some fun and games getting to the theatre today (weather issues), but after seeing this we were very glad we’d made the effort. It’s a very good new play which appears on the surface to be about widowhood, but which actually addresses the theme of the financial generation gap, with well-off parents finding their children still need support long after they’ve left home. In this case there was also a toxic granny (Pearl) to contend with, though we were fortunately spared the full awfulness of the fourth generation.

The set was a simple design which allowed for a wide range of locations. Above the empty stage hung an assortment of ceiling lights covering a range of styles and periods, with an appropriate light being lowered for each indoor scene. The back wall had a huge square screen showing a marble effect pattern at the start and a variety of different pictures during the performance to support each location. The left wall had one doorway with a tall panelled window above, while the right wall echoed this but with two doors and windows. For the scene outside the White Horse pub a sign swung out from the left wall, and there was a lot of sliding furniture as well as stuff being brought on and off by the cast. They slid the sofa from Fiona’s maisonette onto stage during the interval, and I thought the toy panda which was sitting on it looked particularly evil, which may explain the hesitant way the small table laden with tea things crept onto the stage on the other side. Or maybe they just didn’t want the cakes to fall off.

The play started with a brief glimpse of the funeral, with the daughter, Fiona, having to nudge her husband Graham to get him to join in the hymn – an early laugh. The grandmother’s seriously unpleasant personality was given plenty of scope in the next scene, with Joyce (Maureen Lipman) remaining silent throughout. Graham was more interested in the sherry than anything else, while Fiona spent a lot of time fending off her gran’s rabid insistence that she and Graham needed to move to a bigger house, especially with a third child on the way. Gran’s caustic observation that one child was enough came after we had learned that Joyce was her second, but the implied criticism passed Joyce by completely – she eventually left the room looking dazed with shock.

The scenes were swift and short, with the growth of Fiona’s bump giving an indication of time passing. Graham left his job and Fiona had to ask her mother for another loan (£2000 this time), while Joyce took to going out and enjoying herself and spent less time with her mother as a result, despite Pearl doing her best to turn Joyce back into the spineless puppet she’d obviously been for most of her adult life. Pearl’s eventual demise (another funeral) coupled with the imminent eviction of Fiona and Graham by the bank led to a tense situation which was finally resolved to Joyce’s (and our) satisfaction.

It was through Joyce’s excursions and her resulting relationship with a stripper called Candy (real name Jane) that we came to appreciate her background and got a hint of the darker aspects of her childhood. This came to fruition during her one and only visit to her mother, after Pearl’s stroke had left her in hospital. She said goodbye to Pearl and suggested that Fiona would put her gran in a very nice home, nicer than the place she’d been threatened with as a young woman. Her relationship with a married man had been too much of a threat to Pearl’s veneer of respectability, so Joyce had been sacrificed for her mother’s peace of mind. Fortunately, Joyce now had her life back – her ‘forced’ marriage to an older man had at least left her with plenty of money – and she didn’t intend to waste any more of her time or money on her nearest and ‘dearest’. She was off to Argentina – she looked very fetching at the end in a poncho – and the family home, which Fiona had set her sights on, was disposed of in a very suitable way. After all, there was still Granny’s little flat for Fiona and Graham to live in.

The generational differences were stark and clear: today’s young parents were shown as little more than children themselves, playing at being grown up and independent but actually still running back to Mummy and Daddy at every setback, wheedling and manipulating to get the ‘help’ they ‘needed’ so they could avoid facing reality for another month or two. Perfectly good jobs were discarded like dirty clothes, shopping sprees considered an ‘essential’ part of life. The next generation were likely to be just as bad, but without the benefit of prudent parents who would have money to spare to help them out their futures looked very bleak. Joyce’s decision to cut the apron strings from her end was probably the wise one given the circumstances, although it would be a tough choice for most people who love their kids. Fortunately, Joyce wasn’t burdened with much affection to or from her family, so it wasn’t as hard for her.

The humour was spread throughout the piece, with the darker aspects woven in very skilfully to create some contrast which made for a stronger play. The performances were all excellent. Tracy-Ann Oberman played Fiona, the brat-mother (mother of brats as well as a brat who had become a mother) very well. Her character had obviously been her father’s little darling and got everything she wanted from him, and she expected her mother to keep it up after he died. She was clearly planning to take over her mother’s house as her own – it’s what her father would have wanted – and if Mummy got too old to do the unpaid childcare she could always move out into granny’s old place. It was a pleasure to see her frustrated in her ambitions.

Her musician husband Graham, played by Timothy Watson, didn’t seem to have much in the way of ambition. Even his band seemed to be a way of escaping real life, and although he came round to recognising that he had to knuckle down and help support their growing family, I wasn’t confident how well that would go. He was at least more laid back about the changes Joyce was making in her life, even commenting that Thailand was better than Argentina (in case Joyce has to economise and move to a cheaper country).

Men didn’t fare too well in this play; most came across as selfish and demanding, from the deceased husband and feckless son-in-law to a couple of men Joyce met on her excursions. One chap seemed quite nice, a lonely man with an invalid wife, but we didn’t see him again so presumably Joyce didn’t want to get involved with him. The other man who accosted her outside the pub saw her more as a quick shag than a human being, which was definitely not what she wanted. Both of these men were nice little cameos by Geoffrey Freshwater who also appeared in other, non-speaking, manifestations.

Pearl, the toxic granny, was portrayed with detailed accuracy by Helen Ryan. While she was of necessity the villain of the piece, we could also see that there was another story lurking behind her nastiness, some reason why she was so terrified of her own daughter destroying the respectable façade which she and her husband had created for themselves. Not for this play to explain of course, but there was plenty of hinterland to be explored another time.

Nadia Clifford played Candy/Jane with such a strong, coarse London accent that I was amazed I could make out her dialogue at all, but at least her character wasn’t kidding herself about life. With a young child to care for, she was making ends meet as a stripper and prostitute, and while she enjoyed the treats Joyce gave her – tea at the Ritz was a highlight – she refused to accept her money, determined to make her own way in life. She was also the only other character who saw Joyce as a person in her own right, and it was no surprise that she was the one who moved into Joyce’s old house at the end. I notice that they changed the ending slightly from the text – Jane was originally meant to be unpacking books from the box, but in performance she tipped out her child’s toys on the floor, entirely appropriate for a happy single mum.

All of these performances were really good, but it needed a strong central performance to bring them all together, and Maureen Lipman was totally believable as the gradually re-awakening widow, showing us how repressed she’d been and the way her confidence was growing. Dowdy at the start – I didn’t recognise her at first – she transformed very quickly into a good-looking older woman, and the red coat she wore from the fourth scene onwards was a welcome splash of colour in an otherwise drab set of costumes. I particularly liked her sudden outburst when the screams of her grandchildren (offstage) got too much for her – “why can’t they just shut the fuck up”? After the laughter subsided I could hear a woman along from me say “it worked”, and it had.

One minor inaccuracy which we both spotted – Pearl was worried about possible vandalism to the headstone only two months after the funeral. From our experience, headstones aren’t put up for at least a year to allow the ground to settle, but we’ll forgive this lapse as dramatic licence.

There was one unintentional bit of comedy at the end. When the cast came on to take their bows, Helen Ryan was struggling to remove what looked like black panties which were down round her ankles – what was going on backstage? She was able to get them out of the way eventually, but it meant we were applauding through our laughter – the actors couldn’t keep their faces straight either. The house was packed, rightly so, and I’m sure this play will resurface again in the future, as it’s themes are likely to be current for quite some time.

© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me