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.

Boris Godunov – November 2012

Nov23

Experience: 6/10

By Pushkin, adapted by Adrian Mitchell

Directed by Michael Boyd

Venue: Swan Theatre

Date: Friday 23rd November 2012

We saw the Declan Donnellan production of this play with the Chekov International Festival Theatre company, in Russian with surtitles (May 2008). Reviewing my notes I realise that I’d grasped the gist and enjoyed the staging, but now I was looking to get more of the details of the story, in English – hooray! As it turns out, I was probably better off in some ways with the Russian version, as Pushkin’s play seems to be a rambling piece with no clear focus, and in English this deficiency became more apparent. However the performances were all very good and made up for some of the gaps in the writing, and I definitely understood the story better this time around. As it’s still in preview, it will undoubtedly get stronger and it will be interesting to see it again next year.

The opening scene with the conversation between the two princes was a good start. They explained the situation, and one of the princes, Shuiskii, had actually been sent to investigate the death of the crown prince Dmitry and report back to the Tsar, so he knew the facts of the case. His prophecy that Boris would keep refusing the crown until the people practically forced him to take it proved true, and these scenes were a nice counterpoint to the equivalent bits in Richard III. I felt I could have done with more of these two throughout the play, as their conversations were both informative and fun, but they were relatively minor characters.

Boris’s suffering did come across, though I wasn’t entirely clear about the causes. Some of the crowd scenes were a bit of a jumble, though we did laugh at the treatment of a baby. First it was told to be quiet and got hit when it wouldn’t stop crying, then they wanted it to cry to show Boris their suffering, and it was hit again and even thrown on the ground to make it cry. Nasty stuff, but it was funny at the time.

Grigory’s wooing of the Polish princess Maryna was good fun. Lucy Briggs-Owen was clearly not interested in declarations of love, and his acting like a wimp didn’t attract her at all. There was enough of a change in Grigory’s behaviour to make sense of her change of heart, and I enjoyed her performance as much as those of the two princes.

The set mainly consisted of an open balcony at the back; there was a forest of coats hanging under this, and these were taken by characters as they came on stage so they gradually disappeared. There were ladders up to the central section of the balcony, and a large map of Russia hung in front of it for one scene. Otherwise, the furniture was brought on and off as needed, and there was only one use of a trapdoor as I recall. That’s it for now – so many plays and so little time.

The Haunting – November 2012

Nov20

8/10

Adapted from the ghost stories of Charles Dickens by Hugh James

Directed by Hugh Wooldridge

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Tuesday 20th November 2012

Another splendid adaptation of Dickens tonight, this time by Hugh James. He’s taken Dickens’ various ghost stories, plus some atmospheric bits from the novels, and blended them into a really creepy evening’s entertainment, complete with special effects. For an audience used to compelling 3D CGI in films nowadays, it may seem a bit tame, but I found it tremendously scary – Steve’s hand is expected to make a full recovery. The performances were very good, and although some of the lighting effects seemed a bit strange, the story was so well told that I was gripped from the start.

I won’t give too much away (I hope). The two-person story concerned a young man, David Filde (James Roache) and an older one, Lord Gray (David Robb). Lord Gray had recently succeeded to the title after the death of his father, and he was back in England to wrap up the estate and sell off the remaining assets – the books, the house, etc. – so that he could clear his father’s debts and return to India, where he had established himself as a businessman. David Filde was the nephew of the book dealer who had sold the late Lord Gray many of the books which lined his study walls, and having been trained in the same business, had been sent by his uncle to catalogue and remove the books for sale. After a short while, David began to hear strange sounds, a voice asking him to “help me” and the like, and with only four days left before Lord Gray returned to India, the pressure soon mounted to unravel the mystery in time.

The set was detailed and elaborate. It represented the study where the older Lord Gray had spent much of his time, with a bedroom off it in which he had actually died. There was a surprising amount of humour in this production, and the current Lord Gray’s casual reference to the fact that the bed young David would be sleeping in was the one his father had died in was one of the early laughs. From the right: tall double doors to the hall, bookcases with steps up to them, a small dais in front of the central French windows where stood the desk with an armchair on the audience side, a large globe on a stand in the corner, the double doors to the bedroom, and more book shelves surrounding the fireplace. A portrait of the late Lord Gray hung over the fireplace, and there was a very strong resemblance to his son. Another armchair stood beside the fire, and there was the skeleton of a tree outside the windows, which were smeared with age. The room had fallen into such neglect that it had lost part of the roof – a chandelier lay front right on the floor, draped with cobwebs and dust. At the top of the walls were some broken planks, and a thick film of dust with cobweb trim was visible on most of the books. As the play progressed, and David sorted out more of the books, gaps appeared on the shelves and a couple of packing cases materialised near the doors to the hall.

The effects were not too surprising – books falling off shelves and doors opening and closing on their own and suchlike – but they were well used, and the plot unfolded with masterful skill. We had some ideas at the interval, and weren’t completely off the mark as it turned out, but there was plenty still to learn in the second half and the revelations were well done. The final scene put a whole new slant on the events we’d seen, and we were very happy with our evening’s thrills and chills.

Twelfth Night – November 2012

Nov14

9/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Edward Hall

Company: Propeller

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Wednesday 14th November 2012

What a difference five years and an almost complete change of cast can make! When we saw this production in May 2007, it was paired with The Taming Of The Shrew, the latter being part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival. Although we like the actors involved in that ensemble, we just didn’t care for their take on these plays, so it was always going to be interesting to see this revival.

The set and staging were almost identical, but the performances were so different that we enjoyed ourselves enormously. They blended the dark and light aspects of this tricky comedy perfectly, and while we missed Tony Bell’s version of Feste, Liam O’Brien did an excellent job as well; not so much a Lord of Misrule this time, but still a strong character and with a lovely voice too. He played a guitar of some sort instead of a fiddle, but the music was still beautiful.

The start was the same, with Christopher Heyward’s Orsino being wonderfully melodramatic in his love-sickness. I was reminded of The Woman Hater at the Orange Tree (January 2008), with the over-the-top couple the Wilmots giving us plenty of laughs at their absurd over-reactions to events. Orsino’s behaviour seemed more in keeping with the grief theme than any form of love, and it also made me think that both he and Olivia are over-reacting to their situations – playing the drama queens – and that Viola and Sebastian bring them back to earth. I was keen to see how Olivia would be played in this respect, and Ben Allen did indeed play the role in keeping with Orsino’s portrayal, all moody and over-sensitive.

During the storm and shipwreck scene, I noticed a large glass bottle with a sailing ship in it which was held up as part of the choreographed storm movements. I suspect this was present in the previous version but I either didn’t notice it or didn’t note it down. The sea captain had some nicely detailed reactions to Viola’s dialogue, which isn’t normally the case.

Maria was played by Gary Shelford this time, who gave a much more memorable performance than the previous Maria. ‘She’ had a very expressive face, giving knowing winks or being serious when required, and really brought the part to life. This casting also explained her affinity with Sir Toby, as it made her a distant cousin of Bardolph (Gary’s role in Henry V). She moved round the stage during her first conversation with Sir Toby, removing the remaining dust sheets and putting the chairs upright. Vince Leigh was an affable Sir Toby, tetchy at times but too much of a drinker to be a real menace – it’s Maria who tricks Malvolio after all. He didn’t throw up properly on stage this time, just gushed some liquid out of his mouth – unpleasant, but not as gross as the earlier version. Sir Andrew, played by John Dougall, was older than usual and the humour was less obvious, but his pathetic attempts to join in and impress people were still good fun, and the sadness behind his silliness was plain to see. He held a long pause before the line “I was adored once, too”, and Sir Toby snatched off his ridiculous wig in the final scene, leaving him exposed and humiliated.

I didn’t realise at first that it was Viola who came through one of the wardrobes and took a grey jacket off the rail, but I did notice the flower in her hair about the same time she did; she threw it away to complete her disguise, and then Curio, in Valentine’s absence, started the next scene. I was concerned that I might not spot the difference between the twins, as both had bleached blond hair and were very similar in looks, but there was enough variation for me to know who was who. I found that Joseph Chance’s Viola was much more manly in disguise as Cesario, and while that lost some aspects of Orsino and Olivia’s confusion in their attraction to the ‘boy’, it did emphasise for me the general sense of ambiguous sexuality pervading the play. This was heightened by Antonio’s attraction to Sebastian which was shown to be clearly physical, although Antonio tried to hide it by making excuses for his ‘love’. Sebastian was uncomfortable with this affection (not averse to Olivia’s advances, fortunately) and I was conscious that Antonio was probably falling in love with Viola through her brother, as Olivia falls in love with Sebastian through his sister.

Olivia warmed up nicely to Feste’s fooling, while Malvolio (Chris Myles) glowered in the background. Chris is shorter than usual for this role, which added another dimension to Malvolio’s arrogance and self-regard. He played the steward’s role pretty straight, until the reveal of the yellow stockings, that is. He also had a badger goatee, with two dark grey strips on either side of a white one, which added to the impression of pomposity.

When Olivia sent the ring after Cesario, she had a devil of a job getting it off her finger, which got a laugh. Sebastian’s description of his sister to Antonio was emphasised by having him look into one of the wardrobe mirrors as he talked, while Viola stood on the other side and the lighting allowed her face to show through.

The late night drinking party went very well to begin with. Feste’s first song was very pleasant, and Sir Andrew and even Sir Toby added some extra vocals. The catch was as rowdy as one could wish, and when Maria turned up I was slightly distracted by the vivid red fluffy mules she was wearing. Mind you, that was nothing compared to the fact that Malvolio had taken the trouble to put his chain of office round his neck over his dressing gown before accosting the reprobates who were having a drunken orgy downstairs. It was a nice touch, and said a lot about Malvolio’s character.

Feste had to leg it pretty quick over to the Duke’s court for the next scene, where he was called on to sing yet another song. Orsino listened to it while sitting on the coffin (oops, forgot to mention that, just wait a bit) with Cesario sitting beside him. During this song, Cesario adopted a more feminine posture, and as Orsino was affected by the song and became emotional, Cesario ended up holding him until Orsino tore himself away at the end of the song.

The coffin: it was brought on when Olivia first arrived and sat centre back, then it was brought forward for the following scenes. Feste lay in it at one point, probably during the drunken revel. As I recall, it was taken off when the stage was cleared for the letter scene, and the triangular box trees were brought on instead. There seemed to be more of them this time, two sets of five, and there were three statues at the back, the same as before. The plinth for Olivia’s statue was front right, and again the statue held the letter out for Malvolio to spot, with two fingers sticking up at him all the while. Sir Andrew’s question about “her c’s, her u’s and her t’s” was answered by Sir Toby whispering in his ear, after which Sir Andrew smothered a laugh and disappeared behind the shrubbery again.

With Fabian not present, Feste took part again in this scene. The other masked actors did plenty of sound effects to cover the noise of the hidden men, mostly in the form of birds cawing and flying off. The statues were more active than the people, and were constantly reforming, often including one of the characters as well. Malvolio was too excited at his discovery to notice much, and rushed through the letter without losing clarity, although his hands were trembling. The “revolve” led to the letter itself being rotated vertically, and his final grimacing ‘smile’ was a sight to behold! The first half ended with Maria’s explanation of the trick and their exit.

No songs during the interval, sadly, but there was plenty of music at the start of the second half on stage. Viola interrupted this with her question to Feste, and the rest of the masked men gradually eased themselves off stage till they were alone for their conversation about cheverel gloves. After Feste left, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew came along, and Sir Andrew was again completely flummoxed by Cesario’s simple French reply to his own greeting.

Olivia seemed to come to terms with Cesario’s refusal to enter into a personal relationship with her, but her feelings got the better of her and she ended up on the floor, clutching Cesario’s hands in a desperate attempt to persuade him to stay – no chance. Sir Andrew entered for the next scene carrying a large suitcase and a smaller bag, and began packing his clothes which were on the rail. Sir Toby and Feste manipulated him into writing a challenge, and then Maria arrived to inform them that Malvolio was about to make a fool of himself.

Sebastian and Antonio’s scene was straightforward, and then Olivia came back for her first encounter with the new Malvolio. He leaned on the side of the door, grinning broadly at her, until stepping forward to strip off his trousers and reveal what lay underneath. Yellow stockings covered in black fishnet tights were complimented by a leather studded codpiece of considerable proportions. We laughed, and kept on laughing as Malvolio chased Olivia round the stage. Then when Sir Toby, Feste and Maria turned up, they had to use a large syringe to sedate him, leaving him fast asleep at the front of the stage as Feste delivered the “improbable fiction” line to much laughter.

Sir Andrew’s outfit for the fight scene was almost as funny as Malvolio’s. He still wore his evening jacket but with white satin boxing shorts and boxing gloves, and his hair was pulled up through the holes in his protective helmet giving him a very strange and funny appearance. The challenge was read out, with Maria giving Fabian’s responses. The mock duel was well done, with lots of struggling to avoid the fight on the part of both duellers, and never a blow struck in earnest with the boxing gloves. Antonio soon parted them and was arrested, and Cesario reacted noticeably to the mention of Sebastian’s name.

The real Sebastian threw Antonio’s purse at Feste to get rid of him – very generous – and after his fight with Sir Toby he was quite happy to accept Olivia’s offer of entertainment, while she was absolutely thrilled at his acceptance. With two such similar ‘twins’, there was no difficulty believing that one could be mistaken for the other, quite a change from recent productions.

The stage was darkened for the next scene, with Maria, Sir Toby and Feste up on top of the wardrobes looking down on Malvolio beneath them. Malvolio was down to only the codpiece this time, and chained up. Sir Topas stayed up on the wardrobe for his initial conversation with Malvolio, while Feste came down afterwards to talk to the man directly. Sir Toby’s parting instruction to Maria – “Come by and by to my chamber” – suggested a close personal encounter was in the offing.

Sebastian was again in bed for the start of the next scene, and again the sheet which he’d wrapped around himself fell off when Olivia arrived with the priest – nice. Fabian’s request to see the letter was dropped, so the next scene began with Orsino’s entrance and rattled along very nicely, with all the fun of the revelations and a few sniffles as well. The reunion between the twins was moving; it was understandable that they would both be reluctant to believe the evidence of their eyes, given what they’d been through.

Maria was on stage for this scene, although she did try to sneak off when the letter was handed to Olivia. No such luck; she was called back, and gave Fabian’s speech, suitably altered, in which she announced her marriage to Sir Toby and flashed her ring, a large gaudy one, at the assembled throng. Malvolio mustered some dignity as he limped off, and the performance ended with Feste’s final song. Despite this seeming a rather downbeat ending, we were all very happy as we applauded, and even carried on singing the song as we left. A huge improvement on last time, and a reminder that it’s well worth seeing this sort of production more than once, as even with the same cast there can be lots of changes.

Duet For One – November 2012

Nov8

8/10

By Tom Kempinski

Directed by Robin Herford

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 8th November 2012

What a shame this had such a small audience tonight. I know it’s not the most cheerful of subjects, but it’s a good play and with Hadyn Gwynne and William Gaunt as the cast I would have expected a better turnout. Still, they gave us excellent performances and we enjoyed this production even more than the Almeida’s 2009 revival.

The set was as required for the piece: music stacked on shelves on the left – CD format – with the player, bookcase beside that, windows centre back with a plant on a table in front of them, desk and chair to the right with more bookcases behind, stacked with books. There was a picture on the wall, a rug in the middle of the floor, an armchair which the doctor moved before his patient arrived and that was about it.

This play definitely isn’t about the set, though, it’s about the performances. Hadyn Gwynne was very believable as the virtuoso violinist whose MS has left her without a reason for living and who isn’t yet ready to deal with the emotional issues this is bringing up for her. Despite her sarcasm and attempts to plead ‘normality’ we could see the vulnerability and despair lurking under the surface, and her gradual discovery of her inner workings was judged to perfection.

Her performance was well matched by William Gaunt as the doctor. He didn’t go in for the tremendously long pauses and distinctly odd behaviour we’ve seen before; his behaviour was measured and kind, and completely believable for a doctor who had seen a lot of human suffering and done his best to help each patient come to terms with it in their own way. His strong outburst when he saw the danger his patient was in was very moving, and certainly affected her as well. Her final realisation of her situation, not yet ‘cured’ but at least willing to do the work, was a fitting end to the play.

We applauded as loudly as we could to make up for the small numbers; I do hope they get the full houses they deserve on the rest of the tour.

Good Grief – November 2012

Nov1

7/10

By Keith Waterhouse

Directed by Tom Littler

Theatre Royal Bath Productions

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 1st November 2012

I think this sort of thing is called a ‘gentle’ comedy, as there aren’t quite as many laughs as you get with a robust comedy. Based on a Keith Waterhouse novel, this play covers a few months in the life of a recently widowed woman whose husband had been an editor in Fleet Street. She tried to follow his deathbed instruction to her that she write a diary of her feelings after he died, but she ended up talking to him instead which effectively meant we heard her inner thoughts about the people she was dealing with, plus the occasional discourse on things in general. The comments were often very funny, and the situation provided some humour as well, though it wasn’t the strongest I’ve seen for this kind of story.

The set was fairly elaborate and provided two main locations – the living room of the widow’s house and an area of the local pub. There were one or two other places which were usually just spotlit areas of the main stage, but mostly we were in one or other of those two settings. The living room went from the front bay window on our left across the sofa, table and chairs to the folding dining table and kitchen door on the right. The front door was just off back left with a door to the garage beside it. The stairs started next to the main entrance and went up to the landing which had one cupboard door on the left and a couple of bedroom doors. For the pub, these stairs slid to the right and the pub seating slid forward – an L-shaped nook with a table. The bar was round by the garage, and the stairs became the stairs of the pub, leading to the loos. Occasionally the characters came forward and used the sofa area as part of the pub, and though I found this a little confusing, overall it worked pretty well, and it did make the scene changes a bit quicker.

The main problem for me was the casting. Penelope Keith is very good at certain things, but she can’t do Northern grit for love nor money. Her accent toured round the British Isles, touching base most often in the Home Counties, but with a fair amount of reference to her character’s point of origin. Her comic timing was still fine, but without the biting delivery that gives that kind of humour a real kick. She did her best and it wasn’t bad, just adequate, which was a shame for the others in the cast who were, I felt, capable of more if they’d had a more suitable leading lady. Maybe we’ll see another production of this in years to come and be able to judge it better.

Christopher Ravenscroft was fine as the potential love interest, a downsized office worker whose attempts to set himself up as a handyman were doomed to failure, judging by the refitting of the widow’s fridge door. Flora Montgomery played the step-daughter, whose relationship with her step-mother changed after some revelations, while Jonathan Firth was wonderfully smarmy as the recently deceased journalist’s ex-boss – you knew he was a wrong ‘un the minute he walked in the room. The understudies also saw some action as the other people in the pub – waitresses and customers – which must have been more fun than doing crosswords in their dressing rooms, and gave us the momentary pleasure of checking out who would have understudied whom.

Not the greatest production we’ll see this year by any means, but with Ms Keith in the lead role they should do good business.

The Orphan Of Zhao – October 2012

Oct31

8/10

Adapted from a traditional Chinese story by James Fenton

Directed by Gregory Doran

Venue: Swan Theatre

Date: Wednesday 31st October 2012

This was amazing, and only their second performance! The house wasn’t full but we did our best to be appreciative at the end, calling them back on for a second set of bows. And they deserved it. This is another dynastic difficulties piece, similar to A Soldier In Every Son, but thankfully the names were easier to pronounce. A corrupt emperor, an ambitious captain of the guard who arranges to become the emperor’s chief minister, a loyal minister forced to commit suicide leaving his pregnant wife defenceless (although she’s the emperor’s daughter so killing her is out of the question) and an orphan boy who grows up not knowing who his real father is nor the destiny he has to fulfil. That’s the short version; now read on.

The set was wonderfully simple and evocative. Chinese style fretwork delineated the circular arches – one large one at the back and smaller ones round the side balcony openings. Four large Chinese lanterns hung above the stage, and apart from the severed heads being lowered down and a few items of furniture being brought on and off, that was it. The costumes were also in the Chinese style, including some of the elaborate headdresses, but thankfully the music had been seriously westernised – I have no desire to attune my ears to the sound of traditional Chinese music. And although there were several in the cast of Asian descent, there were no problems with heavy foreign accents, which gave the play the best possible chance for a British audience.

The performance began with a character called the ballad-singer. His opening number was a long song which conveyed the idea of grief and suffering without being specific about the story we were going to see. During the song the other characters processed onto the stage, taking up their positions round the outside and facing inwards for the end of the song. The cast then left the stage to Tu’An Gu, the villain of the piece, superbly played by Joe Dixon. He had us laughing within a very few minutes as he described the frustration he felt at not being the clear top dog amongst the Emperor’s advisors. Speaking of dogs, he had one to show us, a huge mastiff which he had trained to attack anyone wearing a purple robe. The dog was a puppet and looked really vicious, although it was quite sweet when it cuddled up to Tu’An Gu, even if he had to shove its muzzle out of his crotch a couple of times.

Having explained his dastardly plans to us, we were then introduced to the three honourable ministers, one of whom, Zhao Dun, wore a purple robe. Oh dear. They were following an old yearly tradition of going out to the peasants to encourage them in their farming, but had to do without the Emperor’s help as this incumbent was only interested in pleasure of every kind. His Peach Gardens had been built by Tu’An Gu as the location for all this fun, and within it the new Crimson Cloud Tower rose high above the ground. From here, the Emperor informed us, the people looked like ants, so he decided to use them for target practice. The first arrow stuck in the middle of the stage but the rest of the shots missed the audience completely, although from the descriptions, the people in the Peach Gardens were being killed unmercifully by the lunatic ruler. Zhao Dun rushed back on, exclaiming against the slaughter, and Tu’An Gu tried to use his rash statements against him. He didn’t quite manage it, but the senseless killing so upset the three good ministers that one of them retired, one sent himself into exile, guarding the country’s borders, while Zhao Dun stayed in the court – bad move.

After a failed assassination attempt – the assassin killed himself rather than execute such a noble man as Zhao Dun – Zhao Dun tried to accuse Tu’An Gu of the attempt but was brought down by the mastiff which naturally ran straight for the purple robe which Zhao Dun was wearing. Zhao Dun’s servant tried to help him, stabbing the mastiff in the process, but his master was eventually found in his own garden and given a choice of three suicide methods – poison, dagger and bowstring. He chose the dagger and showed his courage by killing himself. His wife, the princess, was kept prisoner in her palace to wait for the baby to be born, and the rest of the Zhao clan were executed. And if you’re worried about the mastiff, it was put out of its misery by Tu’An Gu, poor thing.

With a baby on the way, a country doctor, Cheng Ying, was sent for – none of the regular doctors would take the risk – and he came along next and introduced himself to us. In his discussion with the palace guard he learned of the severed heads, and the guard was already picking out the spot where he would hang Cheng Ying’s head if he was given the task of executing him. Cheng Ying was eventually shown in to see the princess and discovered that she was no longer pregnant as she’d had the baby during the night. She entrusted it to Cheng Ying and made him promise to take care of him, bring him up and teach him of his heritage so that he could avenge the wrong done to the Zhao clan.

The next section was a bit complicated, but it boiled down to this: to save the orphan of Zhao, Cheng Ying substituted his own baby boy for the orphan and placed his son with one of the exiled ministers, Gongsun Chujiu. Cheng Ying then ‘betrayed’ this minister, with his connivance, to Tu’An Gu so that Tu’An Gu would kill the baby believing it to be the orphan. Cheng Ying would then be free to raise the orphan as his own boy, but fate had another twist in store for the lad.

Tu’An Gu was so pleased with Cheng Ying for leading him to the orphan of Zhao, as he thought, that he offered to adopt Cheng Ying’s son (the real orphan of Zhao) as his heir. He would bring the boy up to learn the martial arts, while Cheng Ying would teach him medicine. The self-sacrifice of both Gongsun Chujiu and Cheng Ying himself was remarkable, although his wife’s point of view was different. She wanted to save her son and have the real orphan returned to the court no matter what happened to him. Eventually she realised that all the children were in danger, as a decree had been issued that all young boys would be killed if the orphan wasn’t found – sound familiar? Even so, she was damaged by the actual exchange of one baby for the other, and we learned later that she died of sorrow.

The final scene of the first half showed us General Wei Jiang, the other exiled minister, who brought us up-to-date. Eighteen years had passed since he left the court and he was now on the furthest edge of the Emperor’s lands, constantly fighting against the enemy. A young man was brought to him, a student of medicine who was collecting rare plants and who had a message for the general: the Emperor was dying, and the general was needed back at court. Although the young man wasn’t introduced to us or the general, we realised he was the orphan of Zhao, and fortunately the general liked his attitude so took good care of him. The first half ended with the general considering his next moves and the risk he took if he went back to the court too soon.

The second half opened with another song, this time about the orphan Cheng Bo’s coming of age. He was given his bow and arrows and set off to do some hunting while his supposed biological father, Cheng Ying, decided to give him one more day as a carefree child without knowing his true identity. However in the next scene Cheng Ying was spotted by the returning general Wei Jiang, who considered him a traitor for giving away the hiding place of the orphan of Zhao and getting his friend Gongsun Chujiu killed as well. His soldiers gave Cheng Ying a good beating, but he managed to tell the general that he knew a secret which must not die with him, and so the general listened to him for a while. Cheng Ying told him the situation, that the orphan was alive and only he knew his identity. The general finally believed him, and was amazed to find he had already met the orphan himself (I think the sniffles started about now).

Cheng Bo himself came forward next to tell us his story. The journey to give General Wei Jiang the message (and to gather the plants) had changed the young man completely. From a relative innocent who loved both of his fathers equally, he had come to realise that there was much suffering in the country, and a lot of it was either caused by Tu’An Gu and the Emperor or allowed to flourish due to their indifference to good government. An interesting paragraph in the text has been cut for performance, but it explains how the tax system had been corrupted so that the ordinary people were suffering exorbitant penalties while the Emperor still only got his regular income. I don’t know why they cut it – maybe taxation isn’t a popular enough subject – but it helped me understand the situation better afterwards.

Tu’An Gu had a short speech next before joining his son on a hunting expedition. The horses were two actors who held the bridle end of the reins in their hands while father and son rode on. After Cheng Bo shot two geese with one arrow, they dismounted and held on to the reins of their horses. The bridle ends were held higher this time, to reflect their position relative to their horses, and every so often one or other ‘horse’ would snort and shake its head – not quite War Horse but still pretty good.

In retrieving the geese, Cheng Bo entered the garden of his mother’s palace where she was still being kept prisoner. He spoke with the guard and with her, briefly, but it was enough to give him some troubling thoughts. On his return to the horses, he lied to his second father for the first time, which Tu’An Gu immediately spotted.

Back in the capital, the Emperor gave Wei Jiang his imperial seal, effectively putting him in charge. The Emperor spoke to the general from behind a wispy curtain, which was held up on poles by two servants. Every so often the Emperor would walk through the curtain to speak to Wei Jiang directly, and it was interesting to see the choices here. Then came the difficult scene where Cheng Ying told Cheng Bo of his true identity. Prompted by the ghost of Gongsun Chujiu, Cheng Ying started to paint a scroll telling of the events which happened in the Peach Gardens all those years ago. Cheng Bo joined him, and while the full details weren’t exposed on the scroll yet, Cheng Bo was able to reveal that he suspected he wasn’t Cheng Ying’s son, and this led to the exposure of his true identity.

Wei Jiang accosted the captain of the guard and ensured his cooperation. Cheng Bo paid another visit to his mother and it seemed he received her blessing, and then came the climax of the play – the revenge of the many Zhao clan ghosts against the man who had had them killed – Tu’An Gu. He was standing in the audience room, doing up his shirt, while guards and others rushed about, ignoring him. He tried to get hold of the captain of the guard, but not only did the other guards ignore him, one of them went up to him and slapped him in the face, followed by another. He realised that power was slipping from his grasp, but he didn’t yet know that it was already safely tucked up in another’s bed.

Cheng Bo came on and stood still, just looking at him. Tu’An Gu naturally assumed that Cheng Bo was still on his side and gave him instructions about organising the guards etc. However Cheng Bo stayed where he was to begin with, and when he did move it was to set out the three suicide options for Tu’An Gu. It was clearly difficult for Tu’An Gu to realise what was going on, and even when he did he couldn’t bring himself to kill Cheng Bo, despite having the opportunity. He also couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide, so Cheng Bo had to help him. The general and the Princess arrived, and the revenge scene ended with the Princess holding Cheng Bo as the ballad-singer sang of the dead calling to him while the ghosts walked along the outer edge of the auditorium and on to the stage.

The final scene was the saddest of the lot, but a very fitting ending all the same. Cheng Ying stumbled through a graveyard to find the resting place of his true son’s body. The ghost of that son, now grown up, talked with him, and accused him of hating his son. He denied it; he had always loved his son. But the ghost said he had always loved the orphan of Zhao. Cheng Ying was only there to kill himself, and did so with the ghost’s help. The final image was of the ghost cuddling his dead father’s body, realising at last that he had been loved all along. It was a very moving moment, and a good way to end the story.

There were excellent performances all round from the cast, and some lovely touches in the staging which added to the atmosphere of the story. When someone died, red petals were dropped down onto the stage, which was a beautiful and simple effect. When the two babies were together on the stage, waiting for the decision to be made about swapping them, the relevant actors sat cross-legged diagonally opposite each other on the same side as their baby and made the crying noises – very effective. The story was complicated but told so well that we followed it quite easily, and if this is the standard when they’ve only just started, what will it be like when we see it next?

The Merry Wives Of Windsor – October 2012

Oct30

7/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Philip Breen

Venue: RST

Date: Tuesday 30th October 2012

They’ve had some technical difficulties with this production and cancelled the first previews, so this was only the second performance. The cast need a bit longer to get into their full stride, but already this is shaping up to be a classic production of this play, on a par with the famed Bill Alexander version. I even detected a nod to that earlier staging in the pumpkin lantern placed in the corner of an upstairs window of Master Page’s house, the opening backdrop to the performance. The pumpkin lantern also helped to identify the very specific time of this version – late autumn 2012 – and the rest of the design supported that setting beautifully.

In fact, the set design was the first thing that made us hopeful of a good evening’s entertainment. Finally, we saw a design which used the thrust stage as a performance space rather than as the venue for an art installation which would do its best to trip up the actors, obscure them from view or generally get in the way of the actor/audience relationship. Mind you, there were plenty of technical ‘challenges’ to this design as well, and I suspect there are already a few aspects which the actors would like to ditch altogether, but on the whole this was a ‘proper’ set which supported the performance instead of competing with it.

The flooring across the whole of the stage (as far as I could tell) was a diamond pattern of wooden boards with occasional insets of patterned wood. Behind the thrust at the start was the front of the Page’s mock-Tudor manor house, complete with embossed wooden door, lots of windows and a rampant ivy which spread its gnarled limbs across the full width of the stage. It had dropped a lot of its leaves, this being the autumn, but the remaining clumps were vivid red, a lovely sight to see.

This façade was lifted up when not in use, and a number of different settings became available behind it, from the relatively open rugby pitch, through the back wall of the Garter pub to the simple and elegant glass and metal décor of the Ford’s luxury home. I did like the emphasis on Ford and Page being middle class nouveau riche people. It explained Falstaff’s interest in them, or rather their wives, much better, and although they kept to the original text for the various sums of money, I found it easier to grasp that Anne Page’s seven hundred pounds was a huge amount when the design made it clear that her parents were rolling in it.

For the Garter, they brought on a pool table which sat centrally near the front of the stage, while the bar itself was a U-shaped projection which came forward once the house front was lifted. It was a traditional country pub bar with glasses above and wooden bar below with old fashioned real ale pump handles. Steve spotted Bardolph with a dartboard first time round; he gave it to a member of the audience to hold then made as if to throw a dart at it, but of course health and safety wouldn’t let him actually do it.

For the Ford household, a white carpet was brought on and rolled out to cover the middle of the stage, the back of the stage had glass panels and glass double doors and there were metal stairs rising to either side with a metal balcony across the back. The sofa came up via a trapdoor about two thirds of the way back; it was complete with a side table which held a table lamp and a recalcitrant vase and flower, but the latter were only there the first time around.

The rugby pitch was done very well; two rugby posts were lowered down towards the back of the thrust and these were roughly to scale, while a second set, in miniature, were placed further back to give a false perspective. A folding chair and coolbox had been brought on by Anne Page and young William at the start of the scene and stayed there till the end. Falstaff’s upper room at the Garter was simply a bed which came up through the same trap as the sofa, and another long trapdoor which opened up at the very front of the stage to give access. I don’t remember how they screened off the back of the stage for those scenes.

For the very brief scene where the host of the Garter arranged to hire out his horses to some Germans, a red phone box rose up in the front left corner of the stage, and two characters – I realised later it had to be the doctor and the parson – crammed themselves into it to make their hoax phone call. The host took their call up on the balcony of Ford’s house, but as the lights had been lowered and only these two locations were lit, it could have been anywhere.

Doctor Caius’s surgery was a modern office space. There were two metal chairs to the right for waiting patients, and a desk with a computer came up through the trap along with Mistress Quickly. The back wall had a half-timbered look and there was one modern door with a glass panel in it for the cupboard. For the finale, Herne’s oak was a magnificent change from the urban to the rural. With the backdrops lifted, the space behind was filled with the shape of a fallen oak trunk and branches – the trunk was so big that they had to wait till the wall had been lifted before they could swing it round, and its roots stuck out into the stage a fair way. The little ‘elves’ had an actual pit to hide in at the front of the stage; this appeared and disappeared depending on the action – don’t want those little children falling and hurting themselves. Apart from these, there were a couple of locations which were pretty much blank stage, as with the places where the doctor and parson had been told to meet for their duel.

The costumes were similarly rich and varied. Mistress Page was the tweedy country wife to perfection, with welly boots for the rugger match and a headscarf most of the time. Mistress Ford was much more alluring. She’d kept her figure and believed in showing it off, although to be fair she only dressed seductively for Falstaff as part of the deception. Ford himself was the sporty type; he was in his kit after the rugby match and was also carrying a racquet later on, while Page had also been playing rugby from the looks of it and often wore a sports-type anorak. The doctor was a natty dresser and even had the full fencing gear for the duel, unlike the parson who was less well dressed and certainly didn’t look like he knew which end of a rapier was which. Falstaff was mostly in tweed or similar, apart from his brief spell in drag, and the rest of the cast wore appropriate clothes for their station. I’ll describe the final scene’s costumes later.

The opening scene with Justice Shallow having a rant at Falstaff was OK, but I had some lovely views of people’s backs and missed some of the dialogue – they’ll be much clearer once they’ve bedded the production down I’m sure. Slender had his right arm in a sling – don’t know if that was related to the cancelled previews or to the treatment he received at the hands of Pistol, Nym and Bardolph. He wasn’t wearing it later, so we assume it was the latter.

When they knocked on Page’s door, there was a laugh when young William opened it as they were expecting someone a good deal taller. His father soon appeared behind him, however, and I noticed that William stayed on stage during the rest of the scene until most of the group went back in to dinner. This was something mentioned by the director in his pre-show chat, that the children were always present in the play; they certainly were tonight.

Falstaff’s first appearance was a treat. Desmond Barrit wore a fat suit to create a very rotund Sir John, and he made the most of his bulk throughout the performance. Slender was noticeably nervous of Pistol and Nym – nobody seemed to mind Bardolph – and with Mistress Ford’s arrival, sadly obscured from my view, all but Slender went inside to enjoy the venison pasty announced by Mistress Page.

Slender rushed over to Peter Simple when he appeared and gave him a big hug; I wasn’t sure if this was a sign of deeper affection than usual or just an indication of Slender’s nerves. The parson and Shallow came out to talk with him, followed by Anne and then her father. The dialogue was still a bit limp at this point, and with Slender being so central to these exchanges I felt this portrayal needs more work. His final exit into the house was nicely awkward, and then Sir Hugh came out to give Simple a letter to take to Mistress Quickly.

The first Garter scene followed, with Sir John lying on the pool table when they wheeled it on. It took him a while to come to, and then he began downsizing his entourage. I suspect the host regretted his offer to take Bardolph on almost immediately, as Bardolph managed to fall down the stairs to the cellar and from the subsequent sounds of breakages he’s likely to be an expensive employee.

As Sir John expanded on his financial plight to the other two, he gradually shifted himself off the table and was standing to one side when Pistol cracked the joke about Falstaff’s girth. They ditched the line “No quips now, Pistol”, and Falstaff acknowledged the truth of Pistol’s jest before turning to the serious matter of cozening money out of the wealthy of Windsor. His men turned their noses up at being mere messengers so young Robin, who had been sitting on a bar stool all the while, was sent in their place. Falstaff‘s rejection of Pistol and Nym was followed by their decision to land him in it with the two husbands, and that was that.

In Dr Caius’s surgery, Jack Rugby took an age to come when Mistress Quickly called him, but eventually he turned up to act as lookout and she could attend to Peter Simple. Dressed in a fitted grey suit, Anita Dobson played Mistress Quickly as a kindly busybody, using a light girlish voice for the most part and very occasionally dropping the pitch a couple of octaves to the deep tone she used when playing Joan Crawford in a recent tour, but without the American accent of course. It was quite effective, and added to the humour. She also had a tendency to bend down as if talking to a child, which was fine when she was talking to one of the children, but as she was usually doing it with adults it was amusingly patronising, though entirely in keeping with her character. Having said that, she was the only one who noticeably deferred to Sir John, curtsying regularly whenever she was in his presence, apart from her last visit to his room.

When Dr Caius turned up he was almost unintelligible, which is fine in one way as he’s meant to have a poor grasp of English, but I wasn’t even able to tell when he was speaking English or French, it was such a jumble. He did settle down in the later scenes, and his “by Gar” was clearly “bugger”. For now, he was in a rage when he discovered Peter Simple in his closet, dragging him out and throwing him on the floor. Jack Rugby brought the rapier, and despite Simple trying to slip away, he ended up on the floor again and about to be skewered when Dr Caius finally allowed him to explain his presence. Dr Caius left the room to write his letter, and after his massive tantrum it was fun to hear Mistress Quickly comment “I am glad he is so quiet”.

Dr Caius sent Simple off with the challenge for the parson, and Mistress Quickly smoothed the doctor’s ruffled feathers with assurances that Anne Page would be his. Fenton arrived after the doctor left, and was also reassured that Anne loved him. I caught the reference to the wart this time – never noticed it before – and it seemed an amusingly absurd item for Anne to be talking about with Mistress Quickly; from Fenton’s expression he was puzzled about it as well.

The rugby pitch was the next location, and after Anne and William had brought on the chair and coolbox, Mistress Page arrived in her welly boots. I don’t remember if she sent them off or they just left, but once she was on her own she took out the letter she’d received and read it out loud. Despite her initial scorn at receiving a love letter at her age, she was quite affected to find herself complimented so much, even making allowances for the tactless remark about her age given that the writer was equally blunt about his. Even though she wouldn’t have acted on the offer of a liaison, she was clearly enjoying the flattery until she turned the page over and read the last couple of lines followed by the signature. That changed everything. She was amazed and appalled in equal measure. Mistress Ford turned up a few moments later, and the two women were soon comparing the letters and planning revenge.

When their husbands arrived, Page tried for some time to open the coolbox to get a beer but it refused to budge. His wife walked over, lifted the lid and handed him a bottle – how we laughed. The chat between the two men was very clear, and although I noticed a strong physical similarity between Ford and Page in this scene – they were of a height, both bald and with a similar build – I was aware of who was who. I don’t know if this casting was deliberate or just a chance occurrence.

When Brook (Ford) turned up in Falstaff’s room, he was wearing a wig, quite a reasonable one for once, but it had a life of its own as we shall see and in any case stage wigs are funny, especially in farce. He also carried an attaché case filled with banknotes, and although Falstaff had it in his hands a couple of times, he didn’t get the full contents at this visit. Mind you, he did have several bundles of notes in his hands by the end of the scene, though I suspected they wouldn’t stay there long. When Brook was telling Falstaff of his suffering at being denied by Mistress Ford, he sat beside Falstaff on the bed and sank his face into his hands. Bent over like that, his wig flopped forward, and we laughed at the expressions on Falstaff’s face as he gave it his attention. He presumably decided that another man’s vanity was no business of his, so Ford’s disguise still worked while we had some fun. Ford wasn’t so over-the-top with his jealousy this time, which was less funny than we’ve seen before but did fit well with this production.

The failed duel came next, and the difference between the two ‘combatants’ was very evident. The doctor arrived on the bare stage in his fencing gear and fully equipped with his rapier, and began to do various exercises to warm himself up while Jack Rugby drove off in the car – an old Morris Minor I think. When the parson entered on his bike, he was normally dressed and his sword was on the back of the bike. I didn’t follow all the dialogue for this bit, but their reaction to the trick played on them by the host of the Garter was clear, and at least it had the effect of resolving their dispute, whatever it was. The car was good fun, too – not quite up to the Ferrari standard, but still enjoyable.

Falstaff’s first visit to Mistress Ford involved the setting up of the buck basket, a huge wicker basket with two handles. Some laundry was already in there, and the basket was placed just off stage on the left walkway. Mistress Page put the vase with a single flower on it at first, but soon realised it looked strange there so put it back on the side table where it didn’t stay long, falling off at the first opportunity – ripe for cutting?

With the room set up, Meg left Alice to her assignation, and Falstaff was soon at the door. To add to the occasion, he’d brought her some Roses – not the flowers, but a small box of chocolates of that name. He put them down on the sofa and got on with his wooing, which was deliciously absurd. Soon Meg was knocking at the door, interrupting their bliss with a warning that Ford himself was on his way to catch her red-handed. With such spartan furnishings, there was nowhere for Falstaff (or anyone else for that matter) to hide, so he was sent up the stairs – torment itself for such a man – and hid behind the curtain which Alice lowered by means of a remote control. Meg had to redo her entrance three or four times because the curtain descended so slowly it took an age to cover Falstaff, another enjoyable bit of business.

With Falstaff out of sight, Meg and Alice sat on the sofa and enjoyed a chocolate or two while they went through their dialogue about Ford’s sudden return. When the buck basket was suggested, Falstaff was downstairs surprisingly quickly and into the basket without quibbling – the women had moved it into the centre of the stage at this point. The two servants were about to take it away when Ford arrived with the others, demanding that the doors be locked and the house searched. As they stood around the basket, Falstaff farted loudly, we all laughed, and after a long pause Alice said “Meg”, and gave a disappointed look at her friend. Meg wasn’t too happy with this attribution, but gallantly took one for the team, which was even funnier.

The servants almost didn’t make it out of the door with the basket, it was so heavy, but once they got it sliding it moved quite quickly and they were gone. With the domestic trivia out of the way, Ford went berserk, chasing round the house, searching every room – sounds off indicated the violent nature of the search – while the wives waited below for his eventual defeat and planned the next phase of their revenge on Falstaff.

The next scene showed us the competing claims of Fenton and Slender for the hand of Anne Page, together with the competition between her mother and father to choose her husband. Very few people seemed to be interested in what Anne herself wanted, and I could see her choice of Fenton as possibly being more to do with teenage rebellion than actual love.

Back at the Garter, Falstaff arrived, wet, dirty and unhappy. Mistress Quickly soon had him interested in another tryst with Mistress Ford, and when Brooke heard the details of Falstaff’s first escape he was naturally furious. The next scene involved a number of the young boys playing around the stage, clearly not in school although they were in uniform. Mistress Page called her son over and asked the parson to test him on his lessons, and the other boys stood in a group near the front of the stage while William came out with his answers, and by their rections we could see how funny it all was. Some of the answers were funny in themselves, some of the humour lay in Mistress Quickly’s misunderstanding of the Latin words, and some was down to the parson’s Welsh pronunciation – “focative” was especially funny and had the boys in fits of laughter. As a demonstration of schoolboy humour this staging worked very well, and made much more sense of the wordplay in the scene.

The second visit to Mistress Ford was even funnier than the first. With the basic set in place, Alice threw some cushions on the floor at the front of the stage, and used the remote control to lower the lights and play some mood music. She was wearing a diaphanous white top and animal print leggings and slinked seductively round the stage, dancing to the music. Falstaff was enchanted, and even joined in the dance a little, but his main aim was to get her into a clinch as fast as he could, while she did her best to fend him off till Meg got there.

When Meg did arrive, Falstaff threw himself onto the carpet and rolled himself up in it, a totally ineffective hiding place. After the women had hit on the idea of using a disguise to get Falstaff out of the house, he was sent upstairs with Meg to get ready, and while servants brought the buck basket out again, Alice went to get some extra items from the kitchen. She returned with two melons, held close to her chest, which drew the attention of the servants (and the audience as well). She told the servants off when she realised what they were grinning at, and dashed upstairs to help with the disguise. This left the men to carry the surprisingly light buck basket towards the door just as Ford and the others came in. As usual, the dirty linen went everywhere, the buck basket was toppled over and Ford even crawled inside to check for hidden compartments before acknowledging the knight wasn’t there.

In the commotion, various items had been thrown around and broken, and when Mistress Ford came down I saw her pick up the bottom end of a snooker cue and hold it behind her back. After she called to Mistress Page to come down with “the old woman”, and her husband had flown into a rage that the old woman of Brent was in his house, she held out the stick for her husband to take on his way up the stairs, even as she was saying “Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman”. But he did, and mercilessly too, chasing her out of the house before locking the doors and conducting yet another fruitless search.

The women decided this time to tell their husbands the whole story, but before we saw the result of that there was the trick to be played on the host of the Garter; I’ve described the staging of that earlier on. Once done, the lighting rose again on the rest of the stage and the husbands and their wives, together with the other characters, planned their revenge on Falstaff.

At the Garter, Falstaff reappeared in his own likeness, gave some entertaining answers to Simple and then the host learned how he had been tricked and his horses stolen. Mistress Quickly lured Sir John away to his room to excuse his beating and set up the final assignation, and during his absence Fenton explained to the host (and us) the plans for the marriage of Anne Page to three different men. There only remained the brief visit by Master Brooke to whet Falstaff’s appetite, some short scenes where Anne’s suitors were informed of their signals and then we were off to the forest, to Herne’s oak, for the final scene of the play.

The set change took a little while, but gave us another beautiful setting for the action. The children came on in their fairy disguises with the parson and hid in the pit before Falstaff entered, done up as a stag with antlers on his head. He looked ridiculous, of course. The women arrived shortly afterwards, and they were also done up in deer disguises; Mistress Ford as a sexy doe with a white scut and short horns, and Mistress Page like the front end of a pantomime deer with the back end sticking out behind – very unglamorous. They were soon startled by a noise and ran off, while Falstaff hid behind the trunk. The sprites and goblins came out of the pit and stood listening to the fairy queen’s instructions. The fairy queen was Mistress Quickly, and she was done up like Elizabeth II in the white full length gown with blue sash, another topical reference to the recent Jubilee celebrations.

Once Sir John was spotted, the fairies gave him a hard time, and I didn’t really notice the disappearance of the three Anne Pages. The revelation of the trick left Falstaff down but not out, and the announcements of the weddings were good fun, with Page and his wife finally coming round to accepting their new son-in-law. With the closing lines, Ford grabbed his wife and ran off with her, obviously planning to carry out the lying with Ford’s wife sooner rather than later. The others left as well, apart from Falstaff, who sat in the pit with the leaves falling on him as the lights went down, a fitting end.

Given the difficulties they’ve had this was a very good start to the run, and we’re looking forward to seeing it again. Once they can get the dialogue across better it should be a very entertaining experience.

The Sacred Flame – October 2012

Oct26

8/10

By W Somerset Maugham

Directed by Matthew Dunster

Company: English Touring Theatre

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 26th October 2012

It was an interesting choice by ETT to put on this neglected Maugham play. The style of the production was equally interesting, and although I didn’t care for some aspects of the staging, the play itself and the performances quickly had me engaged and involved.

The set was spartan but effective. Blank walls demarcated the space: there was a bedroom centrally placed at the back, a wide space in front of it, a door to the garden back left with some gravel in front of it, and stairs leading up to a balcony on the right. There was a door up there to the upper rooms, and some shelves to the left of the bedroom for the drinks tray, books, etc. The furniture was equally Spartan – apart from the hospital bed for the invalid there were a few chairs and several large fans which were in action at various times; I found the noise a bit distracting, and as there was no reason for them other than the occasional references to hot summer weather, I could have done without them altogether. The costumes were also in period, the late 1920s.

The story and style were both unusual. The story concerned Maurice Tabret, a WWI pilot who was severely injured either during or after the war, and who was completely bedridden, paralysed from the waist down. His young wife, who had married him only a few months before his injury, was doing her best to stay both cheerful and faithful, but it was soon obvious that she was actually in love with Maurice’s brother Colin, who was back on leave from his plantation. Mrs Tabret, Maurice and Colin’s mother, also lived with Maurice and Stella, his wife, and they were visited regularly by Dr Harvester and the recently arrived Major Liconda. Nurse Wayland looked after Maurice daily and lived in, and it was her insistence, after Maurice’s death, that he had been poisoned which created the whole drama. The first half of the play set up the situation and the characters, while the second half dealt with the fallout from the nurse’s assertion about the missing pills.

In dealing with the question of murder or assisted suicide, Maugham is much more explicit about female sexuality than usual, even nowadays. Stella’s difficult situation and her needs, the passionate affection felt by the nurse and the mother’s love for her son are all explored in a somewhat clinical way, yet I found I was engaged with the characters and emotionally involved. There was some lovely humour too; the Major had a very entertaining expression on his face when Mrs Tabret was exposing his feelings for her from many years before, and her dismissal of any current prospects for him were equally amusing.

The play’s language is formal and heightened, like a Greek tragedy, and this was emphasised by the stark nature of the set. This created a claustrophobic atmosphere, entirely suitable for the nature of the accusations which were being flung around. Although this wasn’t a murder mystery as such, we were still keen to know the truth about Maurice’s death, and the final revelation was very satisfactory on that score. The nurse’s decision was also believable, given the circumstances and her personality, and when it finished I was very glad that we’d caught this on tour – it’s a good play, though I can see why it might not be revived very often.

The performances were all very good. Robert Demeger is an established favourite with us, and his Major Liconda was very enjoyable. Margot Leicester was an imposing presence as Mrs Tabret, and she was matched by Sarah Churm as Nurse Wayland. Al Nedjari gave a strong performance as the doctor, and although I found Beatriz Romilly a little lightweight as Stella, overall the rest of the cast were fine.

The Second Mrs Tanqueray – October 2012

Oct25

7/10

By Arthur Wing Pinero

Directed by Stephen Unwin

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Thursday 25th October 2012

As Steve remarked, you wait years for a Pinero and then three come along at once! (The Magistrate at the National and Trelawney of the Wells at the Donmar are the other two – we’ve booked.) We saw this play thirty years ago at the National, with Felicity Kendal and Leigh Lawson playing the Tanquerays alongside a classy support cast. The story had faded; all I could remember at this distance was that Felicity Kendal was a troubled woman with a past, that I felt sympathetic towards her, and that we enjoyed the play. Not a lot to go on, but enough to make us keen to see this revival at long last.

The set had another picture frame straddling the stage, a slim one which didn’t intrude too much into the acting space. The opening scene was set in Aubrey Tanqueray’s rooms at the Albany, at the end of a meal with two of his friends; the dining table with appropriate debris was on the left of the stage with a cabinet behind it, a wide doorway screened with a curtain was centre back and a chair, sofa and fireplace were on the right hand side. For the rest of the play, the location was Highercoombe, Mr Tanqueray’s country house. The second act was in the breakfast room while the final acts took place in the drawing room. The breakfast room had the table on the right of the stage with a different sofa and chair on the left and no curtain over the doorway. The change took a little time, and Mrs Tanqueray had already turned up before it was complete. She waited, looking somewhat bored, while the servants completed their task, then sat down to wait for the start of the scene. During the interval the furniture was completely changed, with a circular seat over on the left, a sofa on the right with a piano behind it and various tables and cabinets. Everything was in period style, as were the costumes, and despite the sparseness of the design it worked well for this production. Not as sumptuous as the National, of course, but better for this space.

The plot was relatively simple, but there was some back story we had to be told during the first act. Mr Tanqueray was a widower with a daughter in a convent whi was shortly due to become a nun. The following day he was to marry again, and his wife had a past, which was why he hadn’t mentioned the impending nuptials earlier to his friends. There was a good deal of discussion as to the social consequences of marrying such a woman, both in terms of Tanqueray himself and in relation to Sir George Orreyed, who had himslef only just married another scarlet woman, much to his mother’s distress.

We learned a lot of this from the conversations between Tanqueray’s friends; Tanqueray obligingly took himself off to write some letters – the 19^th century equivalent of sending a few texts. To avoid being disturbed, he went into the next room, so his friends could gossip freely, and what fun it was! Cayley Drummle, Tanqueray’s closest friend, stayed after the others had left to get more information about the bride-to-be, and this was followed by a visit from the lady herself, so by the end of the first act we were pretty well acquainted with the situation. The future Mrs Tanqueray had made her living by associating with a series of men, not actually married to them but adopting their names and being a charming hostess to all their friends. Aubrey was convinced that she’d been treated badly by each and every one of these men (the brutes!) but I wasn’t persuaded so easily. With Tanqueray’s young daughter Ellean (pronounced Ellie-Ann) returning home after receiving ghostly guidance from her deceased mother, there was very little likelihood of this second marriage ending happily, and so it proved. We’d both forgotten the dramatic conclusion to the play, but it was not unexpected given the circumstances.

The picture of Victorian marriage painted by Pinero was certainly unflattering, and possibly more accurate than not. Many of the social niceties of those times no longer apply, of course, so I had to be patient occasionally as characters went through agonies over some trivial difficulty which wouldn’t raise an eyebrow today. But there was plenty to enjoy as well, and we laughed often throughout the performance. I felt that this production was taking a deliberately lighter tone than the National’s, making it more of a melodrama. The emotions were more exaggerated, and while we felt kinder towards Paula during the second half, she wasn’t a sympathetic character this time with her temper tantrums and shallowness. (Felicity Kendal, just post-The Good Life, was an angel, of course, and entirely sympathetic – how dare these men think anything bad about her!)

Laura Michelle Kelly showed us Paula’s nervousness and waywardness along with some of her charm and intelligence, but I wasn’t always clear why Aubrey found her attractive. Her dignity started to show through in the later scenes, and there was a sense that but for misfortune she might have been both a decent human being and acceptable to Victorian society. James Wilby did reasonably well as Aubrey Tanqueray, but despite his ability as an actor he seemed to be rushing his lines so much that I missed many of them – very puzzling. Rona Morison was suitably priggish as Ellean, with a noticeable change when she arrived back from Paris, and Joseph Alessi gave perhaps the best performance as Cayley Drummle, Tanqueray’s confidante, gossip-monger and the life of the party. There were good supporting performances from the rest of the cast as well, and the production was nicely balanced.

It was good to see this again, and I hope we don’t have to wait so long for our third opportunity.

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ilovetheatre

Notes on theatre performances since 2006

Category Archives: Theatre

Old Money – December 2012

Boris Godunov – November 2012

The Haunting – November 2012

Twelfth Night – November 2012

Duet For One – November 2012

Good Grief – November 2012

The Orphan Of Zhao – October 2012

The Merry Wives Of Windsor – October 2012

The Sacred Flame – October 2012

The Second Mrs Tanqueray – October 2012