Experience: 7/10
By Agatha Christie
Directed by Joe Harmston
Agatha Christie Theatre Company
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Friday 14th June 2013
No programs? What do you mean, no programs? We had to be content with a photocopied cast list and actors’ CVs – no details of the creative team, background info, nor any interesting and entertaining articles. I had to get the essential details from the flyer – good job Steve has a penchant for collecting such things.
Experience: 7/10
By Matthew Bugg
Directed by Peter Rowe
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Thursday 6th June 2013
This was an enjoyable musical burlesque, a bit like Funny Girl does Cabaret in WWII London. A young woman, Maggie Brown, was trying to make it as a singer while working during the day. Her composer friend George was a Jew who fled Germany before the Nazis made it impossible to get out. He was also gay and earning a bit on the side as a rent boy. One close encounter with a posh chap turned into a close encounter with a policeman, as George allowed himself to be caught to save the other man’s reputation. This good deed was returned later, when the posh chap, Sir Frank Worthington-Blythe, turned out to be the owner of a new nightclub who was looking for talent to entertain his discerning clientele. Maggie and George were a perfect fit, and once Frank got over his concern that George was trying to blackmail him, the three of them developed a mutually beneficial relationship.
Experience: 6/10
By – see below
Directed by Jonathan Kemp
Company: European Arts Company
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Wednesday 8th May 2013
This was a good collection of one-act farces by Victorian writers. We’d seen one of them before – A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion – and being a Gilbert and Sullivan fan I was very keen to see Box And Cox, the basis for Sullivan and FC Burnand’s light opera Cox And Box. The cast was limited to three actors – Richard Latham, John O’Connor and Asta Parry – so the farces had been selected with that limitation in mind, and it was good fun to see the actors take a variety of roles throughout the evening.
Experience: 6/10
By Ellis Peters
Adapted, designed and directed by Michael Lunney
Company: Middle Ground
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Friday 29th March 2013
Fortunately I’m already a fan of the Cadfael books, as this rather choppy adaptation of Ellis Peter’s The Virgin In The Ice wouldn’t have encouraged me to become one. Middle Ground did their best, but it’s hard to transpose detective fiction successfully to the stage – Agatha Christie adapted several of her own books to make sure they worked – and despite the clever use of video for backgrounds, maps, etc., there was still a lot of stage furniture to be wheeled on and off between quite short scenes. Even with the help of an abundance of monks, this took some time and inevitably lost momentum.
I won’t go over the story again; they were pretty faithful to the book, and the scene at the robbers’ stronghold was very well done. With so much of the action being on the top of a tall structure we couldn’t see it very well, but the dialogue was clear enough. Gareth Thomas was fine as Cadfael himself, and there was good support from Paul Hassall as Hugh Beringar and Daniel Murray as the young man, Yves Hugonin. But with so much story to tell, the other characters were sketchy at best, although I wouldn’t criticise any of the actors as I did feel they weren’t helped by the adaptation.
We enjoyed ourselves well enough – as I said, we’re fans of the books – and I did have a few sniffles at the end when Cadfael came face to face with his son. A good effort, but not Middle Ground’s best work.
© 2013 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
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
7/10
Original concept and book by Den Stevenson
Directed by Bruce James
Bruce James Productions
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Thursday 28th June 2012
One thing we were sure of before we left for the theatre tonight – the music was going to be good! And it was, too, with a fifteen-piece band on stage to give us a rich, full sound throughout the evening. Three of the band left their seats at times to play other characters and contribute vocals, while Ian Knauer and Lisa Lynch, who played Glenn Miller and his wife Helen, also sang in character. With so many on stage, there wasn’t much of set, just a large screen above and behind the band, and a few furnishings as required for some of the scenes. The actors played the train journeys on tour by carrying suitcases and jiggling a lot, and the whole story was framed by an interview with Helen telling the story of Glenn’s life on a radio program. The costumes were all good, and with the music really getting us ‘In The Mood’, we had a great time.
Ian Knauer was fine as Glenn Miller, having just the right degree of stiffness as he stood conducting the band. Lisa Lynch’s voice was a bit harsh for me, too brassy in the wrong way, but Maddie Cole was a great singer – she did the rest of the woman’s parts – and she was the only one we could hear clearly above the band. Of course they were all miked up, but then that’s a necessity these days, and much less strain on the vocal cords. I sniffled a good deal, especially when they announced the loss of the plane that he’d been on, and also during the final montage of pictures, and quite a few other times as well; just a big softie, me. They certainly got a good response from the audience; given the average age in Worthing, that’s not a surprise, but I hope they get an equally warm welcome wherever they play – they deserve it.
© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
6/10
By Janet Green
Directed by Bruce James
Company: Bruce James Productions
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Wednesday 4th April 2012
An old one, this, which we’d seen many years before. Steve remembered it, I didn’t, but there weren’t many twists to unravel in this psychological ‘thriller’. A man kills his much older wife for her money, only to find that he’s not as well off as he thought he would be. Another rich woman comes along – will she meet the same fate? Meanwhile another tempting female with money turns up, and we’re wondering who will do what to whom? With moments to spare, will the murderer be revealed in time, or will he succeed in getting the money he craves through another murder? Decent performances all round in this fairly average will-he-get-away-with-it (the last we’ll be seeing from this company, as it turns out).
© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
6/10
By Ernest Thompson
Directed by Michael Lunney
Company: Middle Ground
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Wednesday 14th March 2012
This is not our preferred type of entertainment; nothing wrong with the production or performances, but the story itself is on the bland side. An elderly couple spending the summer by a lake are visited by their daughter and her new partner. The parents end up taking care of the partner’s 14-year-old son while the younger couple have a holiday in Europe, and in the course of the summer some attitudes are changed and a major rift starts to be healed. It’s very predictable, and if it wasn’t for the good performances and a regular dose of humour, the evening would have been a complete snooze fest.
The story actually stood the test of time pretty well. The slang of the late seventies had dated a bit, of course, but the sense of an out-of-the-way location and the effects of getting old were still understandable, while difficulties with relationships are never likely to lose their relevance, sadly. A good effort, and despite the modest size of the audience I felt we responded well both during the performance and at the end.
© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
5/10
By: Peter Gordon
Directed by: Ian Dickens
Company: Ian Dickens Productions
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Tuesday 18th October 2011
Not a great play, although the cast did a good job with what they were given, and the audience were remarkably appreciative. The humour was pretty basic, with plenty of sexual innuendo, grabbing of buttocks and breasts, the occasional fart joke, etc. Some if it worked quite well, and we did have a few good laughs, but most jokes signalled their arrival a fair way out and fell limply onto the stage, hardly raising a chuckle.
The set was a sitting room with an old-fashioned look; turned out it’s an old country house setting. There was a main door at the back, a door to a linking corridor on the right, sofa, chairs, table and the usual assortment of furnishings including two large pictures, one above the fireplace and the other on the right-hand wall. The time was November 1940, and the costumes were appropriate.
The opening scene had a man sitting in one of the chairs in the gloom, and when a woman arrived, she found that he was dead, made some comment about her mother, and then grabbed the poker to defend herself when she realised she’s not alone. Someone else was lurking in the corridor, and she got as far as exclaiming ‘it’s you’, or some such, before the lights went out again and we were left in the dark. The next scene started us off on the quest to discover what had happened to a missing constable, PC Atkins. Along the way we met two randy women, one fake husband, an even more fake Italian, a fake medium, and an elderly local called Miss Joan Maple, with at least one skeleton in her closet! The local police inspector was called Pratt – yes, the humour was that obvious – and kept calling people by the wrong name, as well as mangling nearly every other word. The constable who was helping him, PC Tomkins, was much smarter, and figured out the solution before his boss, but as he’d also broken the law he was likely to be in trouble too. Never mind, it all ended happily enough, although the ghost of Colonel Craddock showed his displeasure at the end.
There were references to other works during the evening; Miss Maple quoted from The Importance Of Being Earnest before the rest of the cast pointed out that was from the wrong play, and the Squadron Leader’s limp and cane were highly reminiscent of a certain Herr Flick – not too surprising since the Squadron Leader was played by Richard Gibson. I suspect David Callister is doing the near-corpse as a technique now – we’ve seen him do it a few times, and last night I found it unconvincing, even though other cast members did their best to back him up.
Overall, the cast did a decent enough job, and I particularly liked Katy Manning’s Welsh psychic. The material wasn’t up to much, but they managed to create a passable performance out of it, which is worthy of an award in itself. Not one I’ll see again, but well done to the cast.
© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
7/10
By: Edgar Allen Poe, adapted by John Goodrum
Directed by: John Goodrum
Company: Rumpus Theatre Company
Venue: Connaught Theatre
Date: Saturday 24th September 2011
Before seeing this production, the film, starring Vincent Price, was still in our memories. Tonight’s performance has certainly pushed those to one side. With only two actors and one set, this company managed to create a tremendous sense of fear. The pace was slow, and it was mostly two people talking, but with short re-enactment sessions built in to the narrative, they evoked the horrific situation the young man found himself in very well – I’m still creeped out days later.
In an attempt to rescue his wife, William Trevelyan has been kidnapped by an evil bunch, one of whom is his wife’s uncle. He’s been confined in a dark room, circular in shape, and with a nasty hole in the middle of the room. He’s been put through various forms of sadistic torture, including the swinging pendulum blade, but after the opening scene which showed us this gloomy cell, he’s rescued when a group from the local village come out to the house he’s been kept in and arrest the various wrongdoers. As he’s still weak, his rescuer, Josiah Bellamy, gets him to recount his ordeal before taking him upstairs to freedom. As the story unfolds, we’re shown some of the events – given the gloom, it wasn’t always easy to make things out – and then the play reaches the final, disturbing twist as William gets to meet his wife’s uncle, the man who’s behind his suffering.
The set was simple. A raised circular platform in the middle of the stage, with the requisite hole in the middle, and a series of chains hanging down at intervals round the outside. That’s it. The lighting was good, though as I’ve mentioned it was often very dark, making it hard to see what was going on. Once the story started, though, we were talked through the action, which worked better for me.
This same group did The Signalman, which we saw back in 2009; this is another good adaptation of an old-fashioned horror story, and I’ll definitely look out for their work again.
© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me
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