Tag Archives: Harry Burton

I Found My Horn – October 2009

8/10

By Jonathan Guy Lewis and Jasper Rees, adapted from the book by Jasper Rees

Directed by Harry Burton

Company: Sweet Spot Theatre

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Saturday 31st October 2009

This was much better than either of us expected or hoped. I’m familiar with the Flanders and Swann track, but this play was a different beast altogether. Based on Jasper Rees’s experiences of re-learning the French horn and taking us up to his solo performance before an assembled throng of French horn players after just a year of practice, this piece took us through a roller-coaster of emotions. There were glimpses of his time in the school orchestra, a trip to ‘horn camp’ in the States where he was confronted by some superb players, the run up to the final performance and of course the performance itself. Despite being a bit ropy at the start, once he let go of his fears and realised it couldn’t get any worse he started to relax and enjoy himself. His playing improved considerably.

Although based on Jasper’s book about his experiences, the part of Jasper was in fact performed by Jonathan Guy Lewis whom Jasper describes in the program notes as “rather better than me”. He certainly covered a range of parts, from the school orchestra’s conductor through to a semi-crippled but still brilliant German horn player who was the teacher at the camp. Jasper’s teenage sons featured occasionally as well, and all this with only a couple of costume changes. It was a superb performance and much appreciated by everyone.

The other great thing about a play like this is that the music tends to be bloody brilliant as well. And so it was. It left me wanting to log on to Amazon and buy some CDs immediately, so I’m glad the excerpts were identified in the program. Makes searching easier. We would happily see this again.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Quartermaine’s Terms – June 2008

8/10

By Simon Gray

Directed by Harry Burton

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Date: Thursday 19th June 2008

This is a much kinder play than I’m used to seeing from Simon Gray. Although all the characters have their less likeable qualities, there wasn’t so much unpleasantness around as usual. Quartermaine himself was an affable chap, doing his best to please everyone, and spending most of his days in dreamland, even when he was supposed to be teaching. He reminded me of Firs from The Cherry Orchard – he always sat in the same chair in the staff room, and at the end it seemed likely that he would still be sitting there when everyone came back for the next term, even though he’d been fired.

The setting was a school for teaching English language and culture to foreign students. The other teachers included an older spinster who lives with her invalid mother, a woman married to an academic chap who is having an affair with another woman, a husband who is having an affair with his typewriter and whose wife therefore leaves him, taking their son with her, a new man who shows a remarkable affinity for accidents, and an older academic sort who is perfectly capable of talking at great length in learned detail without actually adding anything to the conversation. The proprietors are a male couple, one of whom we never see.

The set was a marvellous depiction of a staff room back in the late fifties/early sixties. The walls were scruffy, the furniture shabby, but there was lots of room. There was no plot as such, just a tour round the different characters and their ups and downs. Husbands and wives split up and got back together again. The spinster apparently bumped off her mother by pushing her down the stairs, to judge by her reactions to a police visit, about another, unrelated matter of some students trying to kill and cook a swan. She then gets religion, only to end up some time later on the fags and booze, looking desperately unhappy. The new boy ends up a permanent member of staff (just as well, as he seems to be the most hard-working of the lot of them), and experiences a brief accident-free period during his engagement, only for normal service to resume once he’s married. The older academic takes over the school when the unseen proprietor dies, and finally someone has the courage to sack the one man who doesn’t really contribute to the school’s purpose. It’s a sad moment, but inevitable.

Although we don’t get much of an explanation of why Quartermaine is the way he is, there are some oblique references to his aunt’s house, and some childhood fear of swan’s wings. We seem to be getting a number of plays and productions at the moment that don’t attempt a psychological explanation of their characters, and it makes a nice change. Steve spotted a number of Chekhovian parallels throughout the play – I’ve no idea if this was intentional on the author’s part or not. Anyway, we enjoyed it very much, and the performances were all excellent, getting a lot of subtle detail across about each character so that I felt I knew them all personally.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me