Tag Archives: Minerva Theatre

The Browning Version – October 2011

9/10

By: Terence Rattigan

Directed by: Angus Jackson

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Friday 7th October 2011

This had really come on since we saw it last. All the performances were sharper, and my main difficulty with the earlier performance, back in September, had been totally rectified. I’d felt then that Anna Chancellor’s Millie wasn’t as unpleasant as she needed to be for the play to work; tonight she was as bitchy as could be, and everything fell into place. The only down side tonight was that our viewing angle cut out quite a bit of Crocker-Harris’s reactions, so I couldn’t enjoy Nicholas Farrell’s performance as much as I would have liked. Nevertheless, this was a very enjoyable way to spend an evening.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

South Downs – October 2011

8/10

By: David Hare

Directed by: Jeremy Herrin

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Friday 7th October 2011

Yet again, another great performance of this new play. While the performances had sharpened up a bit over the run, I didn’t feel this had come on as much as The Browning Version – Steve disagrees – but that was mainly because they had nailed the play so well from the start, so there was less scope for improvement. If anything, the audience was much better tonight – we laughed much more and much sooner, it seemed to me. No significant changes at all that I could see – I hope this play gets another outing soon.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Browning Version – September 2011

7/10

By: Terence Rattigan

Directed by: Angus Jackson

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Tuesday 6th September 2011

I like this little play very much. It’s well constructed, and while it might not be completely idiot-proof, it can certainly rise above mediocre performances. Not that this was a problem tonight. There were a few rough edges, but given that this is very early in the run, I’m sure they’ll be up to speed very soon.

The set used the same two wooden arches as the first play, but added in the walls of Crocker-Harris’s study, and some French windows out to the garden centre back. A screen shielded the main entrance to the right, and there was a small table beside the French windows on the left. Another small table stood front left, with a large dining table centre right and a sofa centre left. There were several rugs on the floor, and the sense of a 50s style study/living room was very clear.

I liked Nicholas Farrell’s portrayal of Crocker-Harris a lot. He was very stiff and formal most of the time, but not unpleasant, and the way he crumpled when he was given the gift was very moving. I’m intrigued by the way such formality of speech can actually be used to convey the emotions underneath – it was beautifully done tonight.

Andrew Woodall was fine as the headmaster, and Mark Umbers was good as Frank Hunter, the cuckolder who turns into a friend. Liam Morton was very good as Taplow, and I certainly got the impression that the gift was a kind gesture on his part, which is what it’s meant to be. The only fly in the ointment for me was Anna Chancellor’s performance as Millie Crocker-Harris. I didn’t get the full sense of her nastiness here; it’s as if she’s afraid to make the part too unpleasant, which undercuts everyone else’s good work. Perhaps I just need time to adjust to her way of doing it, and as we’re seeing it again next month I may find it’s improved. We still enjoyed ourselves tonight anyway, so we’re looking forward to the next time.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

South Downs – September 2011

8/10

By: David Hare

Directed by: Jeremy Herrin

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Tuesday 6th September 2011

We attended a pre-show Q&A with David Hare, who is a delightfully intelligent and entertaining speaker. He was very good about not giving away any details of the play which most of us were seeing this evening – some had already seen it – so his comments tended to be general; even so, it was an interesting event, and I found I agreed with many of his observations.

The play, South Downs, was commissioned by the Rattigan estate to be played in conjunction with The Browning Version, as a more suitable complement to that play than Harlequinade, which was Rattigan’s original companion piece. Hare himself wasn’t complimentary about Harlequinade, and from the fact that they commissioned this alternative piece, he suggested that the estate weren’t too happy about it either.

Although this new play is set in a boarding school in the South Downs in the early 1960s, and he was a student at Lancing College himself at that time, the play isn’t autobiographical. There are some elements of the playwright spread amongst several of the boys – an inevitable aspect of the writer’s profession – but otherwise you will search for him in vain. He was trying to get across some of the flavour of life at that time in that kind of school, a time when big ideas were being discussed and it was believed that ideas could change the world, unlike our own more cynical and fearful times. He made a point at the start which was that the events of the play are closer in time to the First World War than they are to the present day, which is true, but did surprise us. He explained that for him and his generation – there were many nods in the audience – the major event which shaped their world, the Second World War, had already been and gone, but everyone who had lived through it was affected by the experience, and their lives were often a reaction to that time, such as just wanting a bit of peace and quiet.

When asked whether he thought the new play would make a good film, David pointed out that with the stage, a writer has more control and more rights over the finished product, while with film and TV, those rights are signed away. The casting process for this production was very amicable, from the sounds of it, even if they did have to see a lot of boys before they found the right one to play the central part of John Blakemore. They both spotted him immediately, though Jeremy Herrin, the director, didn’t say anything to avoid prejudicing David’s selection.

He was also very complimentary about Jeremy Herrin’s ability to bring out the best in young actors, particularly those with no experience. When asked what he’d like the audience to focus on in tonight’s performance, David emphasised the youth of the actors playing the boys, and for us to notice how well they played their parts. We were more than happy to do that, and they were certainly impressive. The masters were played well too, but they remained as authoritarian figures whose inner lives were largely closed to us, as they would have been to the boys.

The set had two large wooden arches towards the back of the stage, one in front of the other, very evocative of that kind of institution. The wooden flooring was scruffy, with gaps here and there as well as rough edges. Chairs were brought on and off as needed, and there was one scene during afternoon tea when a sofa and table were added to the mix. Otherwise the scene was basically set by the lighting, which was very effective.

The story concerns one young lad, John Blakemore, as he adjusts to life at a boarding school. He’s unusual; he thinks a lot, and hasn’t yet learned how to fit in with society’s unwritten and often unspoken rules. This gets him into trouble as well as making him unpopular with the other boys. Through a meeting with a prefect’s mother, who happens to be an actress, he seems to start the learning process, and by the time the prefect leaves the school, there are signs that John is beginning to find his own way to fit in.  It’s not a conclusive piece – not with David Hare writing it – but it is an interesting insight into that kind of school life at that time, and it’s certainly a good foil for The Browning Version.

Alex Lawther was excellent as John Blakemore. He conveyed the character’s intensity and innocence, and allowed him to be slightly unlikeable as well. I loved the scene where he explained the meaning of a verse by Alexander Pope by reference to all sorts of other things, completely flooring the teacher who had to fall back on pomposity to ‘win’ the day. The other boys were excellent too – one, Liam Morton, was also in The Browning Version – and the teachers were played to perfection by Nicholas Farrell and Andrew Woodall. Anna Chancellor played the actress, while Stella Gonet did the voiceover for a letter John received from his mother – clearly not a sympathetic soul in terms of her son’s needs.

There was a great deal of humour throughout, and we both felt the audience wasn’t quite as responsive as it could have been, although it wasn’t totally silent either. David Hare had expressed an interest in seeing this play separately from The Browning Version, so that its merits could be identified more readily; with this pairing, it’s hard to tell how much the audience was simply wanting the Rattigan and couldn’t care less about the first play, and how much they were open to both. I certainly felt that having the actors from both plays take their bows together at the end blurred the edges for me. I would have liked an opportunity to show how much I enjoyed this play on its own.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

First Episode – July 2011

7/10

By: Terence Rattigan and Philip Heimann

Directed by: Philip Franks

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Sunday 31st July 2011

This was a rehearsed reading of a play which Rattigan wrote with a friend while at university and it was fascinating to see it, even just as a rehearsed reading. No one knows who wrote what, but there were enough of the Rattigan themes to make this definitely one of his. Although they didn’t play the homosexual relationship strongly, the accusation flung at one of the central characters, that he’s a ‘degenerate’, was a clear indicator of the original intention.

The story is mostly set in the sitting room of some student lodgings. Four young men live there – Tony who’s into theatre and is directing a play, David who’s his close friend, Bertie who’s the nerdy one, working hard and trying to follow the rules – he wants his future wife to be ‘pure’, then falls for the easiest woman in town – and Philip who’s pretty laid back and enjoys the good life as much as he can. He’s the one who has a bet on the big race with his bookie (this is set before the bookies were allowed to trade openly on the high street, so telephone calls and aliases were the order of the day), and eventually everyone else joins in; even Bertie, who’s acted all prudish about gambling, has his own bookie.

This is a side issue, though, as the main focus is the three-way relationship between Tony, David and Margot, a professional actress who’s agreed to appear in Tony’s production of Antony and Cleopatra. It’s hard to say who seduces whom; both Tony and Margot are up for it from an early stage, but it’s a temporary thing for Tony whereas she wants more. While visiting her at night to tell her to stay away from his friend, David gets caught by the university beadles, and is sent down.

There’s another romance going on, as Joan, a young woman with an easy-going nature, is also cast in Antony and Cleopatra, and starts off with a crush on Tony. As time goes on, she finds a more sympathetic companion in Bertie, and by the end of the play they announce their engagement. The horse race doesn’t turn out as expected, so David is leaving university with no degree and no money, but still with Tony’s friendship – purely platonic in this version.

The cast did an excellent job with very little preparation. They had a few items of furniture – a sofa, a chair or two and a small table at the front of the stage with the telephone. There was one scene change – to Margot’s hotel room – but the rest of the play was in the student’s room. No costumes of course, though Alex Waldmann did wear a pair of black spectacles as Bertie, which made him look the swotty type. It would be interesting to see a full production, of course, but this may be all we get. It’s still remarkably good for a first attempt.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Top Girls – July 2011

8/10

By: Caryl Churchill

Directed by: Max Stafford-Clark

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Thursday 14th July 2011

We’d seen this play back in the early 90s, and I hadn’t cared for it much. However, we do like to see every production in Chichester’s Festival seasons, so we included this production, but kept our expectations low. As so often happens when we do that, the experience turns out to be much better than we’d hoped, and I saw a lot more in the play than I remember from the earlier production.

The opening scene, the dinner party with several dead and fictional guests, was done virtually in the round, with a table towards the front of the space and the entrance to the restaurant at the back, down some steps. The conversation was just as muddled as before, and although it seemed contrived at times, on the whole I found it pretty realistic. Even though several of the guests had their backs to us, I actually heard and understood much more of this party scene than before, and some of the business was much more fun. Dull Gret, for example, with her back to us, could easily be seen tipping as much food as possible into the basket by her side, which gave her plenty of ammunition for the bread-throwing section.

The shift in tone to the rest of the play didn’t jar, as far as I was concerned, even if it was unusual. The kids’ conversation did go on a bit, but it did convey important information. The change to the employment agency was also good, with desks being brought on very quickly, and bales of hay removed just as fast. The final scene, with the confrontation between the two sisters’ perspectives and the confirmation of Angie’s parentage, was well done, and on the whole I can see why this play is regarded as a classic. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this it again, but it was nice to revisit it and gain a fresh perspective.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

She Loves Me – June 2011

6/10

Book by Joe Masteroff, Music by Jerry Bock, Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Directed by: Stephen Mear

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Thursday 16th June 2011

This was an excellent production of an above average musical. As we’re not great fans of musicals, I haven’t rated it that highly, but I don’t want to imply any lack of professionalism or talent on the part of the performers – they were all top-notch, and managed some amazing dance routines on a very cramped stage. The singing was excellent too, and other audience members were clearly enjoying themselves enormously; at the post show, several had seen the show at least once before.

The story is the familiar one of two people who think they don’t like each other gradually realising they’re in love and getting together. It’s done via letter-writing through a dating service, so although they work together every day, they don’t know who they’re writing to until an arranged meeting which leaves one of them still in the dark. Around all this is wrapped the story of a shop which sells all sorts of potions and creams to beautify women, and the characters who staff this shop. There’s some good songs, including one which uses Ravel’s Bolero as part of the tune, and a fair bit of comedy, although I found I didn’t laugh as much as the person behind me, who clearly loved the show.

Set: circular tiled pattern on floor, echoed by circular curved wheel structure above with globe lamps. The backdrop of a street perspective is screened by another curve, this time windows with a central door. The windows also have elaborate curved patterns on them, with bird images and coloured bottles on shelves creating a stained glass effect. The words above the shop door were “Maraczek, Parfumier”. The shop front was on a revolve, and there was another counter-revolve outside that, so the location could be changed pretty quickly, but from the post-show I gathered the cast needed a lot of practice to be able to walk on them. Most of the action takes place inside the shop, but we also visit a hospital room and Amalia Balash’s flat. The band was split between left and right balconies. The setting is an American version of a European city in the 1930s. The accents used were mostly American, as this fitted better with the dialogue, although the names were middle European and the prices shown were good old LSD! Such is the magic of theatre that we didn’t particularly mind.

I particularly liked Annette McLaughlin as Ilona Ritter, the good-time girl shop assistant who finds one man who’s disgracefully unfaithful and another who’s more the marrying kind, and Steve Elias as Ladislav Sipos, the only married shop assistant who has some of the best lines. His comment about the anonymous letter – next time, I’ll name names! – was really funny. But there were many good performances, though sadly, no more chances to see them as no transfer has been arranged. Shame. This was a good start to the season at the Minerva though, so if the rest are up to this standard we’re in for an excellent summer.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Critic – July 2010

6/10

By R B Sheridan

Directed by Jonathan Church and Sean Foley

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Monday 5th July 2010

Second play of the double bill, this wasn’t quite as sparkly as I remembered from the National production, where the collapsing scenery at the end was massively impressive. To be fair, this is a smaller theatre and Health and Safety would probably be a bit squeamish about putting the audience at risk, but even so the theatrical effects were still pretty good. I liked the waves and ships, and the final falling wall providing a Buster Keaton moment was good fun. The costumes were spot on, literally in some cases, and the dialogue was pretty good, although Sheridan can be pretty impenetrable at times to the modern ear.

Again, I found Nicholas Le Provost’s delivery less clear than the others, but overall the performances were fine, with Una Stubbs again turning in a superb performance as the largely unspeaking maid.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Real Inspector Hound – July 2010

7/10

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Jonathan Church and Sean Foley

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Monday 5th July 2010

This was the first play of the double bill. Even though I knew the play, it took me a few moments to realise what was going on, as the Minerva’s seating has been rearranged to include seats at the back before. This time, I spotted Richard McCabe, and realised the seats at the back were for the cast.

When the second critic arrived, the lights had already gone down so he had to sneak on past the audience like a regular latecomer. The extra cast members sitting around the two critics were a plus this time – I think the two men sat in splendid isolation in the National production – although it did seem a little odd that they weren’t bothered by two men chatting away next to them.

The set was excellent for the stylised crime piece the critics are watching. A few pieces of furniture places around the central square created the drawing room, and across the corner nearest us was the sofa which concealed the dead body. Una Stubbs was marvellous as the charlady, the rest of the cast were also excellent at conveying the mannered delivery of the time/genre, and the only let down was Nicholas Le Provost’s delivery, which lost a lot of the dialogue as far as I was concerned.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Bingo – April 2010

6/10

By Edward Bond

Directed by Angus Jackson

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Tuesday 27th April 2010

This play is just tolerable, thanks to the second half opening scene in the tavern, with Ben Jonson and Will getting totally blotto, and giving us most of the play’s sparse jokes in one chunk. This was a very good production, mind you, and the performances were all splendid, but Edward Bond can be so dreary. I suppose he feels he has something to say about life, or in this case about money and death, but he overestimates his abilities in my view.

I saw this one on my own for once, as Steve, bless him, had come down with a bad cold and couldn’t stop coughing. The performance was the quieter, apart from a mobile going off during the closing stages! It’s strange not to have our usual discussion afterwards, but as we’ve booked again for this one he’ll have a chance to catch up later. I’ll be interested to see how the performance changes in that time.

The set was entertaining in itself. The first scenes are set in the garden of New House, Shakespeare’s retirement place in the country. There were large hedges at the back with a central opening, symmetrical beds, indicated by woodchip mulch, on either side, and also at the front. The stage had angled corners on two levels and was cut away to provide triangular steps at the front and side. There was a gate front right corner, and a bench back left.

For the rest of the first half, there was an unspecified location. The hedges were on a revolve, and on the other side were bricks, which were now at the back. In front of them was a wooden pillar, and the poor Young Woman was set up there, now dead. She did at least have a wooden headrest to help her stay still. The gate and bench were removed, and the woodchip scattered across the stage. I thought it might be a barn at first, but the gallows with grass at the base suggested an outdoor scene.

The second half starts in the tavern, and the front of the revolve now has walls either side and a fireplace in the middle, thrust forward. There were two tables and assorted stools, Ben and Will at the one to the right. For the next scene, outside in the snow, the revolve turned to give us an open space – don’t remember what was at the back – and a pile of fake snow which was swept vigorously forward to cover the stage (and the feet of the folk in the front row). Simple and effective.

The final scene is set in Will’s bedroom, so it took a minute or two to set up. The walls are back, but this time with a sturdy-looking door between them. There’s a bed to the left, an upright chair to the right, and a small, very small writing desk in front, covered in papers.

The story covers Shakespeare’s last months in Stratford, and brings in the enclosures and the hardships facing the poor at that time. Shakespeare is approached by William Coombe to agree to the common land being enclosed, and eventually agrees to that provided his rents are guaranteed. A young woman wanders into their lives, who shows us the restrictions on movement between parishes. There are protests against the enclosures, and in the meantime, Will is in a kind of depression as he toils towards death. He doesn’t get on with his family, loathes them in fact, so living in Stratford is torture for him, though he no longer wants to be in London. Frankly, just about everyone is miserable.

Bond is a political writer, so there’s a bit of drum-banging going on, but on the whole I’d have to agree with Patrick Stewart’s comment at the post-show that this was one area where Bond was scrupulously balanced. It is, after all, the area he’s most interested in, and he does understand the other points of view, at least well enough to present them fairly. I’d also agree that it’s the only area that’s balanced. I was very aware that many of the characters simply don’t communicate with each other, and while that’s certainly a valid situation to demonstrate and explore on stage, it doesn’t necessarily work if the lack of communication extends to the audience as well. Surely Judith could have been given more opportunity to express her feelings about her absentee father? Surely she could have made better points about his lack of care towards his family? There was enough to hint at the past injuries, on both sides, but I never felt the personal was anything more than a side issue for Bond.

Unfortunately, the political side also felt underwritten. One of the main protesters, Son, son of Old Woman and Old Man, Will’s servants (God, these names are dreadful!) was so caught up in religious rhetoric, and spoke with such a strong accent that I lost most of his lines. I got the anger, but the arguments against enclosure were decidedly lacking. In fact, the best argument against was the wonderfully sleazy performance by Jason Watkins as William Coombe, the main mover in the land grab campaign. I will just say that the accents were all fine, as far as I could tell, and if I’d remembered, I would have liked to ask about them during the post-show, but they did make it hard to follow the dialogue at times.

So it wasn’t the greatest evening, but the time did pass fairly quickly, and we had some laughs along the way.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me