Tag Archives: Orange Tree

Next Time I’ll Sing To You – December 2011

5/10

By James Saunders

Directed by Anthony Clark

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Saturday 10th December 2011

This was good production, but the subject matter and style weren’t our cup of tea. Nominally about a real-life man who spent most of his life as a hermit, it covered a range of existentialist topics and was a self-referential piece, with the actors frequently commenting on the fact that they were performing.

Some of the ‘sketches’ within the play were quite funny, especially the opening of the second half. Meff and Dust had entered under cover of darkness, and when the lights went up they found them too bright. They tried to get them lowered, but all their signals, handsweeps and the like, had no effect. As a last resort, they decide to use the ‘dark’ lantern, so Meff asked for a volunteer from the audience to help him light it. He tried everything; bigamist, either male or female, Jesuit monk, crematorium shoveller, cat thief – nearly came a cropper with that one when a lady in the audience misheard him and thought he was asking for a ‘Catholic’ – pathological liar, and a range of other absurd options, but no luck. Fortunately Spud had a box of matches, and between them they prepared to light the dark lantern, blowing out the match just as it came near the wick, causing the lights to go out. Success. Except that the lights came on again soon after, at which point they ditched the lantern and gave up on darkness for the time being.

There was one female character, Lizzie, who claimed she was one of two identical twins, although other characters were convinced there was only one of her. She played the female characters – the hermit’s mother and a girl he left presents for – and got on well with Meff. They were even completing each other’s sentences by the end.

Meff started the play off by launching into a prepared speech about something or other, and then breaking off from that to start chatting to the audience; this is familiar stuff nowadays. Dust arrived soon after this, and a lot of their chat was about the arrival of another character – don’t remember when we first heard his name – and this was where most of the references to the repetitive nature of their actions came in. Lizzie turned up next, and then, finally, the auteur character, Rudge. This was a lovely performance from Aden Gillet. With a small goatee beard, he was the ultimate creative poseur, throwing intellectual tantrums and bossing everyone around.

When the character of the actor who’s playing the hermit turned up, his main concern was how to play the part. What was the key to the hermit’s character? His pleas for guidance were ignored or rebuffed by Rudge, with Dust occasionally joining in to explain the philosophical non-basis of the hermit’s life. It was tough going, but to our relief, there was an interval, and we could rest our few remaining brain cells before the second half.

There were some snippets of the hermit’s life story in the second half, and gradually the ‘actor’ slipped more and more into being the hermit. His beard, which had been obviously false in the first half, became attached. He started talking differently, and even when he was talking ‘out of character’, he spoke more as the hermit than as the actor. The play pretty much ends with his death, as far as I can remember.

The performances were all very good, the set was simple and items were shunted around as needed. There was a ladder to our left across the corner, a plinth made of two parts, an inflatable bed, chairs, etc, and the clothes were relatively modern. There were some nice touches of the surreal and the absurd, but the whole piece ultimately depends on the audience being sufficiently familiar with the philosophical arguments being put forward, some of which the author seemed to be mocking. I have no background in these ideas, and so I couldn’t really engage with the play beyond a very basic level.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

How To Be Happy – October 2011

6/10

By: David Lewis

Directed by: David Lewis

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 20th October 2011

This play, written and first-time directed by David Lewis, is a look at consumerism and the ways in which it prevents increased happiness in society. It’s a patchy piece, with overlapping scenes in two houses which have identical sofas, and while there was some excellent humour and five excellent performances, it never seemed to have a clear focus; a scatter-gun approach instead of laser precision.

In one house live Paul and Katy, his second wife. He’s a semi-successful writer who went through a rough patch when his marriage to Emma broke up several years before, and who wrote a self-help book about being happy based on his experiences at that time. Katy is a primary school teacher, who was attracted to Paul because of his book. When she met the real man, she realised he wasn’t anything like her image of him, but decided to marry him anyway; it’s clear they’re not suited to each other.

Emma and her new husband, Graham, aren’t a great match either. He’s an advertising ‘guru’, always focused on the newest way to get into the consumer’s mind so he can sell, sell, sell. In this play, he’s trying out a very direct method for getting into people’s minds – an electro-cap which is connected (by wires – very old-fashioned) to his laptop so he can check up on his own brain activity. He does attempt to use the cap while making love to Emma, but the absurd look of him, plus some unexpected news, puts her off. Mind you, she’d thought Graham meant a different sort of cap! – we weren’t fooled.

Also living with Graham and Emma are Daisy, the soon-to-be-eighteen daughter of Paul and Emma, and Jack, Emma and Graham’s new baby. He’s giving them a lot of sleepless nights, which seems to be putting their relationship under a lot of strain, but is it? Or is just stopping them from dealing with their real issues?

The two houses are fairly close, so Daisy in particular keeps popping back and forth until leaving home ‘forever’ on account of her guilt at causing her parents’ divorce. Unfortunately, Emma then freaks her out by finally telling her that the reason she and Paul split up was that he had an affair – too much for the sensitive young thing to take. She’d already walked in on Emma and Graham’s attempt at sex with the electro-cap – too gross for words!

With Paul believing he’s got lung cancer, and then finding out he’s been misdiagnosed and has something less deadly (not good with medical lingo – sorry) there’s a fair amount of life’s ups and downs packed into the first half, never mind the whole play. There’s also a lot of humour in the way Katy doesn’t know how to react to Paul’s ‘good’ news; she takes another bite of her biscuit before responding, which tells us a lot about their relationship as well as giving us a huge laugh. But my favourite joke of the afternoon happened when Paul apologised to Katy for misleading her when he pretended to be a success story. Her tart reply – ‘I’m not a fool! I never thought you were a success story’ – really put him in his place. And in his underpants, too.

So, not a searing indictment of consumer capitalism, but a fairly enjoyable couple of hours at the theatre with some good laughs and excellent performances.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Winter – July 2011

2/10

By: Jon Fosse

Directed by: Teunkie van der Sluijs

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 7th July 2011

God, this was dull. Mind you, I slept through most of it, which is probably why I didn’t hate it as much as some of the audience at the post-show. We’ve added this writer to our do-not-see-again list.

It’s a two-hander. A man, clearly a businessman, enters a park and seems to be waiting for someone. A woman in scruffy clothes runs in looking like she’s drunk or on drugs, or possibly ill, and starts to talk to him. He tries to avoid her and leaves, but she calls after him and for no apparent reason he stops and becomes involved in a conversation of sorts. They end up in his hotel bedroom – he’s in town for work, but seems happy to blow that off – they have sex, and then she leaves him. He’s infatuated, and when she doesn’t meet up with him later as she promised to do, he hangs around the town looking for her. When he does spot her again in the park, she’s wearing the nice coat he gave her, and they again go to his room, where their relationship goes absolutely nowhere. End of the play.

My difficulty with this piece was the banal nature of the dialogue. Instead of being mysterious and absorbing, such as Pinter often achieves, it sounded very much like the writer had taken lines from a lot of soap opera episodes and cut and pasted them together. As a result there was no sense of real conversation, of character, of an interesting background to either of them, of any insight into the human condition beyond the basic level, and so there was nothing to engage with at all as far as I was concerned. It was inkblot theatre, and I don’t get on with that style at all.

Having said that, the actors did a great job with their parts, and I could feel that for them there was a great deal of tension in the scene. Pity it didn’t translate itself to me, but that’s life, or rather, art.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Then The Snow Came – July 2011

6/10

Based on The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde, adpated by Jimmy Grimes

Directed by: Jimmy Grimes

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 7th July 2011

This was a devised piece, incorporating the story of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde and experiences of the homeless around Richmond. The stage floor was covered with gray paving, and two lines of inset light panels marked a wide lane. This flooring was mainly for the second piece, but didn’t feel out of place for this one. There were two slanted gray panels beside opposite entrances, to our right and far left, and these had strip lights attached. The far right entrance had a blue fire door with graffiti, and the initial setup included a hospital bed and two chairs, one with a woman’s cardigan draped over the back and a handbag on the seat, the other with a rucksack lying beside it. The scenes were short, and involved a lot of quick changes, with furniture being brought on and off, and sometimes rearranged, to give the different locations. They even provided a dead bird and a rolled-up woodlouse – how’s that for realistic!

The story was fairly simple. We were introduced to one homeless man, Mickey Flynn, by a policeman narrator, who popped up now and again to add a bit more information. Mickey had been on drugs, in jail, and was now living rough in Richmond. One day he gets a call from his son Ben to let him know that his mother, Mickey’s wife, was going in for an operation, and from then on Mickey’s determined to get up to Middlesbrough to see them. His mate, Stu, has some money, but won’t ‘lend’ it to him, so finally Mickey attacks Stu and takes his money to pay for his rail fare. There’s a scene in the wife’s hospital room – hence the bed, but no wife – and the play finishes with Mickey being arrested after causing a disturbance on Richmond green, upset because he’s lost his son for good.

The story, The Happy Prince, is woven into the play by having Stu tell it to Mickey bit by bit. He even does hand movements for the swallow. Later, they use a couple of puppets for the part where the swallow takes the statue’s other eye and then refuses to leave him; lots of moisture in my eye department for that bit. I wasn’t clear about the parallels between the two stories, even after the writer/director explained them in the post-show, but it was enough for me that Stu liked the story, and was telling it to his friend.

I was moved by the stories, and it seemed to me that one of the problems facing the homeless is not just the lack of resources to help them, but the bureaucratic hoops they have to jump through to get that help – forms, assessments, etc. I was slightly surprised at how much these two were eating, but I assume that was based on the information the homeless folk had given the director.

All the performances were great, and Ed Bennett deserves a special mention for his multi-tasking abilities – he played every authority figure from the policeman through some kind of social worker to the MacDonald’s staff member, and did a really good job with all of them.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Three Farces – June 2011

7/10

By: John Maddison Morton

Edited by: Colin Chambers

Directed by: Henry Bell

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 2nd June 2011

To create a suitable atmosphere for these three Victorian farces, we were treated to Mr Daniel Cheyne acting as Master of Ceremonies, resplendent in a fine purple frock coat, and carrying a small guitar (or large ukulele) with which he accompanied himself during the performance. He chatted with various audience members as we foregathered in the auditorium, and when proceedings were about to get underway, he introduced the cast to us, using the formal designations of the Victorian era. Each actor, as they were introduced, appeared in the far corner, glided across towards us, and exited gracefully through the nearer doorway, all to warm applause. The only exception was Mr Edward Bennett, who remained in the far doorway, and simply closed the doors to effect his exit. Mr Daniel Cheyne then sang a little song which recounted the story of the play we were about to see, to the tune of When I’m Cleaning Windows, if I remember correctly. Similar songs were sung before the other two plays as well. He also filled in as a messenger in the first play, and was fairly reliable at providing ‘noises off’.

Smasher & Crasher

7/10

Set: there was a piano between seats which in our row were split in the middle, a partially filled bookcase in the entrance to the left of that. Next came a sofa, and there were two chairs and a couple of side tables around the place, with double doors to my right and in the opposite entrance. Beside each pair of doors was a pair of cupboard doors – this time the cupboard on my right, which was reasonably spacious, led to the preserve store.

Two men, Slasher and Crasher, are to be married to Mr Blowhard’s niece and sister, and the play is almost over before it’s begun. But a letter arrives exposing both men as cowards, and the marriages are off. An ex-military man, Blowhard can’t stand the idea of his family money being passed on to the lily-livered, so he sends both men packing. Crasher conceives the idea of a fake fight between them, to convince Blowhard that they’re made of the right stuff, but things become a little more heated when Crasher lets slip that he was the one who knocked Smasher’s hat off at the races the day before – it was swallowing this insult that got Smasher in trouble with Blowhard in the first place. Their duel becomes more vigorous than planned, and a good deal of Blowhard’s property is damaged, including a cow (off stage) and the sofa (onstage). All is happily resolved, however, and the end of the play is a reprise of the start, this time with applause from us.

A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion

6/10

The demolished sofa was removed and a desk and larger round table added, along with a pot plant stand, comfy chair, and a portrait of Mr Snoozle on an easel. The tables have some food on them, and also a goldfish bowl with two rather static goldfish. There’s another, smaller, portrait on the desk, of a grim-looking older lady, looking a bit like Whistler’s Mother.

It’s a simple plot. Mr Snoozle has the house to himself – wife, daughter and niece are all out for the day and the servants have all been dismissed. He’s looking forward to a day of total peace and quiet, but finds he has to stop a young man from drowning himself in the fish pond, and said young man proceeds to make himself at home in a very intrusive way. We’ve already heard about a Mr John Johnson Junior, who wants to marry Snoozle’s daughter; Snoozle has turned him down and not replied to his subsequent letters. We weren’t fooled for a minute – this young man was the daughter’s suitor, and he made himself increasingly impossible to deal with until Snoozle finally threatens him with this Mr John Johnson Junior. He even writes a letter to Mr John Johnson Junior to say that Mr John Johnson Junior can marry his daughter, and have five, no, ten thousand pounds into the bargain. At this point, the young man reveals his identity, takes the cheque, and…… The script peters out, so the actors have to improvise the final appeal to the audience. They did this very well, and again we applauded them mightily.

Grimshaw, Bagshaw & Bradshaw 

7/10

Out went everything except the desk and comfy chair, while the piano was covered up. We’re now in a bedroom, with a single bed to our left, leading away from the piano and with a semi-circle of rug at its foot, a chest of drawers and plain chair middle of the next side, desk and plain chair middle of the opposite side, with a fire grate towards the corner entrance, and the comfy chair and side table in the middle of the side to our right.

This is Grimshaw’s room. He’s a shop assistant, on his feet all day and just getting ready for bed at 9 pm when there’s a knock at his door. Who can it be? The new arrival is Fanny, a lady whom Grimshaw met recently, and who has lodgings across the street. He offered to share his umbrella with her when it was raining, she took the whole thing, and now he’s smitten. She asks him to let her stay in his room till morning. He’s thrilled, of course, because he naturally thinks she wants him to be there as well. When she tells him to go, he’s more than a little put out, and despite being an agreeable sort of chap, he does at least put his foot down a bit. She soon prises it up again, though, and sends him packing.

Her need for the room is soon explained. There’s a sliding door in the cupboard on our right that allows Emily to slip through from the next room. She’s hiding from her uncle Towzer, who’s some kind of bailiff, because she wants to marry Bradshaw and her uncle won’t allow it – he wants to keep £300 that’s supposed to be hers when she marries. Bradshaw has taken lodgings a few streets away, but Towzer seems to be keeping an eye on Emily’s room, so Fanny has devised this scheme to help her sneak out without her uncle seeing her. (Don’t ask me how Fanny and Emily met. They skated over it pretty fast, and it was clearly one of those unlikely coincidences so necessary for plot development in farces.)

Meanwhile, Bagshaw emerges through the communicating door on the other side; the door had been nailed up, but clearly the Victorians liked their comedy to be destructive, and Bagshaw soon kicked it open. He’s a young man with a taste for cheap cigars and fine clothes, but an aversion to paying his tailor’s bill. For this reason he too is avoiding Towzer, who has been chasing him for several weeks to get said tailor’s bill paid. Add in a returning Grimshaw, determined to find out Fanny’s secret, and copious use of the communicating doors, and there’s a fair bit of fun to be had, with all ending happily yet again, apart from Grimshaw not getting any Fanny, that is.

With all three plays complete, it’s time for a final song from the assembled company, much applause from us, and finish. Except for the post-show discussion, of course. There was a great deal of interesting information about the writer and Victorian theatre in general from the Sam Walters, Henry Bell and Colin Chambers, but the most interesting thing for me was that so many of us had found the humour not only funny, but very modern. Monty Python and the Goons were mentioned, amongst others, and I was reminded of the word-play of the Two Ronnies sketches, especially with the names of the characters. It was good to see how the Victorians liked their humour – Morton was a very popular writer in his day – as it shows a different side to their character, and reminds us that we’re not so different after all.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Autumn And Winter – May 2011

5/10

By: Lars Noren, translated by Gunilla Anderman

Directed by: Derek Goldby

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 24th May 2011

Steve and I have been seeing more Scandinavian drama on TV recently; not only the original Wallander from Sweden, but also The Killing from Denmark – a deserved Bafta winner. So I was happy to find that this play is by Sweden’s leading playwright, but I wisely kept my expectations low. One hour forty-five with no interval – it’s a high-risk situation.

Set: bare floorboards, light-coloured wash, round table laid with the tail-end of dinner – wine bottles, both red and white, variously full to empty with glasses ditto, plates with salad bits on them, cold meat and cheese on boards, bowls with salad remnants, bread basket almost out of supplies, one ashtray in the opposite condition. Four chairs stood around the table, and a couple of boots were scattered around, with a small black handbag hung over the back of one chair. To our left was a small bureau with photos on top and pigeonholes and two cupboards beneath. Across from us was a sofa with side table and lamp, and round to the right was a dark wood sideboard with a footstool underneath, which held the drinks decanter tray and a small lamp. To the right of it stood a cut-away floor-to-ceiling window – only the very bottom and very top were shown, connected by a slim rod. In the corner immediately to my left was an old-fashioned stove with a mantelpiece, all decked out in tiles with a simple green and white pattern. In the opposite corner, above the main entrance, hung a large portrait of a lady; from her dress I would have said early to middle 20th century. Just before the off, a small TV on a stand was placed in the main entranceway. This was never used.

The play began with the cast strolling on, indulging in some high quality rhubarb, as if they’d all just gone into another room and were returning to finish their meal. During the post-show, it was explained that the play just began, with no preamble, and Sam Walters stated that he would have just started with the lights coming on. The conversation then takes several turns for the worse, as Ann, the rebellious, troubled daughter, vents her feelings about her terrible childhood and demands answers from her parents as to why she feels so bad about herself. The various problems that the family have experienced over the years come tumbling out – distant father and cruel manipulative mother competing for younger daughter’s love, older goody-two-shoes daughter holding in all her problems and doping herself into a highly competitive workaholic lifestyle which seems to have ruled out the possibility of children, etc., etc. It’s all fairly standard stuff, and while it’s good to recognise the universality of human suffering – the Swedes have unhappy families, too – there was no great insight here to lift this above the average family confrontation drama. I could certainly recognise aspects of my own family life, now a distant memory, but I didn’t feel involved with the characters enough to care about them or how this particular family occasion would turn out, which probably explains why I nodded off during the last half hour a few times. From what Steve tells me, I didn’t miss much.

The enjoyable aspects of this afternoon’s offering were the performances and the occasional snippet of humour. I didn’t catch all of the jokes, as I did have some difficulty hearing all of the lines, but there were a few gems amongst the chaff. And all four actors did a splendid job of bringing their characters to life. Again from the post-show discussion, we learned that one of the actors had joined the team at short notice, which had led to more cuts than intended (thank God!), but we couldn’t tell from the performances who it was.

Also from the post-show, either Teunkie van der Sluijs, the assistant director, or Sam himself told us that the writer’s intention with this piece had originally been to send the audience screaming into the night at the end of the play. He’d moderated that intention, however: now he just wanted half of the audience to leave the theatre screaming, and for the other half to feel their lives had been transformed. He’ll have to do a lot better than this effort to have either effect on us!

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Mary Broome – April 2011

8/10

By: Allan Monkhouse

Directed by: Auriol Smith

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Saturday 16th April 2011

How do they keep finding these amazing, neglected plays? This was another gem from the Lancashire school of tell-it-like-it-is, 19th century playwrights, such as Harold Brighouse (Hobson’s Choice), and Stanley Houghton (Hindle Wakes), who, thanks to the program notes I now know were nurtured by Annie Horniman, but enough of that. This play throws a Wildean cuckoo into a no-nonsense businessman’s family, and a great of the humour comes from the ensuing culture clash.

The opening scene quickly establishes that the father, Mr Timbrell, and one son, Edgar, run the business, while the other son, Leonard, is a wastrel whom the father supports in order to keep him out of the family firm. Edgar is due to marry Sheila, a Thelma-in-the-making (Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads), and there’s also a sister, Ada. With these facts before us, it’s no time at all before we’re into the first family confrontation. Leonard, left alone briefly in the drawing room, is joined by Mary, the family’s maid. They’ve obviously had a fling of some sort, which is why Mary took a picture of Leonard that was by his mother’s bed. When his mother arrives clutching the picture, which she’s clearly found through searching Mary’s things, they’re about to have a small scene together when the rest of the family bursts in, and through various little comments it all comes out. Father is one of those bull-in-a-china-shop type of men; once he knows something’s going on he wants to have it out, regardless of the consequences. Mary keeps being told to leave, then told to stay; finally she speaks up for herself, as she wants to know what Leonard’s going to say. Ada and Sheila are sent out of the room once Mary’s impending motherhood comes out, but with ears and eyes competing for the keyhole, they don’t miss much. There’s a lovely moment after Leonard tells Edgar he doesn’t need to be there, and their father says, no, you stay – the look of triumphant smugness on Edgar’s face was a joy to behold, and got a huge laugh.

The story is a simple one – Leonard has got Mary pregnant – but the handling of it is hilariously funny. Leonard represents the Aesthetic Movement attitude, looking only for the beauty in life and heaping scorn on the mundane, practical, conventional and materialistic. He’s a writer, but earns very little for his writing, as he can’t bear to taint his art with mere monetary considerations. Mary can’t understand half the things he says, but wants to know if he loves her, even though she doesn’t expect him to marry her, class being what it was. The father, on the other hand, decides that Leonard’s off-hand manner about the whole affair is totally wrong, and issues an ultimatum – marry the girl or he’ll cut off Leonard’s allowance. With a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, the deal is done, and the couple agree to marry.

To make his point, the father had asked Ada to fetch the family bible – this is when the proximity of Ada and Sheila became apparent. The tradition was to write all the family events into their bible, and so the father prepares to inscribe Leonard and Mary’s names as soon as the proposal is accepted, never mind the prior claims of Edgar and Sheila. He’s so keen, in fact, that the word ‘yes’ has scarcely escaped Mary’s lips, and he’s already dipping his pen into the ink to make the entry – another good laugh, followed by more when he has to ask Mary what her surname is.

The next act is set in the same room, on Christmas Eve. The family are having a little get-together, with a couple of family friends invited as well. Mary and Leonard are over-dressed, and for once even I could see this – all credit to the costume designer. The situation is slightly awkward, and despite all efforts to avoid unpleasantness, Leonard just has to keep sticking his oar in. He makes some oblique reference to his mother having a past life – nothing terrible as far as I could see – which got his father very angry. He cuts Leonard off, despite his having to support a wife and new baby, and storms off to dinner. Incidentally, the dinner was delayed because there had been a fall of soot in the dining room which had to be cleared up. When the maid reports this, Mary makes a comment about the problems with that chimney, which reminds everyone of her origins. But for that fall of soot, the conversation may never have got round to people’s hidden depths, and the rest of the play may never have happened – very Dangerous Corner.

The third act is set in a small part of the stage (yes, I know – how could anything be smaller than the Orange Tree stage!) with towels drying on a rack by a small stove, a sofa and table and not much else. Leonard and Mary are clearly in difficulties, and his flippant manner, which seemed charming in the drawing room, seems churlish and almost obscene at times in this setting. Their child is sick, and with no money for a doctor, never mind food for the baby and Mary herself, the situation is pretty serious, and Leonard’s attempts to lighten the mood show up the shallowness of his approach. Mary’s parents arrive, and her mother was pretty upset when she found out that Mary lied to them about leaving for Canada, when she was in England all the time. Mrs Timbrell also arrives, and with her help – she hands over her engagement ring for Leonard to pawn – they can get the doctor to look at the baby.

It’s all too late, though. The final act, a short while later, has Mary coming to the Timbrell house to tell them she’s leaving for Canada with the man she had been seeing before Leonard got her pregnant. They’re off to start a new life together, and the best of luck to them. It’s not long after the baby’s funeral, and it’s pretty shocking to find that Leonard contrived to be absent from that family event. Sheila is now pregnant and worried about having been unkind to Mary – she does at last seem to have learned some manners. Mr Timbrell is contrite enough to be willing to support Mary again – if he hadn’t cut them off, the little boy would still be alive – and Leonard is willing to make another go of it, but she surprises them all with her announcement. Only Mrs Trimbell understands, and is supportive. It’s a slightly low-key ending, compared with some of the strong about-turns of similar plays, but it fits with the characters we’ve met.

The performances were all excellent. I especially liked the nosy neighbours, who were only too happy to enjoy the family’s discomfort at the pre-Christmas dinner party. Jack Farthing as Leonard and Katie McGuiness as Mary were particularly good, and the play itself has lasted pretty well.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Ruffian On The Stair – June 2010

6/10

By Joe Orton

Directed by Emma Faulkner

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 8th June 2010

This was the second piece in the Directors’ Showcase. I think the program said this was Orton’s first play. It certainly felt like an early piece, though the themes of homosexuality, religion and death were strongly evident, as was the use of commonplace, even banal language with slightly ‘off’ behaviour to bring about a strong sense of menace.

Joyce and Mike live in a small flat, not much more than a bedsit. He’s an Irish enforcer type with misogyny running through him like Brighton rock. Almost as deeply imbedded are his religious principles, although they don’t deter him from bumping off the occasional victim at the behest of some unspecified crime boss.

Joyce used to work as a prostitute, but now she lives with Mike in a pretend marriage, putting up with his bullying ways either because she knows nothing else or because she’s too scared to try for something better. Or both. Along comes Wilson, who turns out to be the very loving brother of Frankie, the most recent chap to have been mown down by Mike’s van. Apart from freaking Joyce out with some seriously anti-social behaviour (this being the sixties, there was no one else around to witness his activities – remember them days?) his intention seems to be to commit suicide by having Mike shoot him over his, Wilson’s, supposed affair with Joyce, or Maddy, as she used to be known (and definitely in the biblical sense). I did wonder briefly if he also intended to get Mike arrested for killing him, to get some sort of justice for Frankie, but then I realised I’ve been watching too many crime dramas.

To be fair to Wilson, he did apologise to Joyce several times for any inconvenience he was causing her, like getting her rather violent ex-boxer of a pretend husband to think she’d been unfaithful to him, but there was a silver lining to all of this. When Mike actually considered killing her, the prospect of spending the rest of his life alone was too scary to handle, so he decided he loved her, and wanted to stay with her. It’s possibly the most romantic moment in the whole of Orton’s oeuvre.

So at the end of the play, Wilson is lying dead on the floor of the flat, just as he wanted all along, Mike and Joyce are as close as they’re ever likely to be (he’s going to tell the police he shot Wilson to defend Joyce from being attacked) and the only real casualty, apart from the pre-deceased Frankie, is the poor goldfish, whose bowl was smashed by a stray bullet. Still, it gave us one of the best closing lines I’ve ever heard in a play. As Mike comforts Joyce, telling her he’ll call for the police to sort it all out, he reminds her that they, too, have wives. And goldfish. Excellent finish.

The set was much more complicated for this one. In front of us was a sink cabinet, with both shaving and washing up equipment – I could smell the coal tar soap. To the left of that was a sideboard, then the door to the bedroom in the corner. Diagonally opposite us was the sofa, with a comfy chair to the left, a table in front of it, and a small cabinet to the right which held the crucifix and a small statue of the Virgin Mary. The outer door was in the far right corner, and to our right was the kitchen table and chairs. Props and costumes were all wonderfully period.

I realised watching this that one of the reasons I don’t get on so well with some writers such as Orton and Beckett is that I wasn’t brought up a Catholic, or any particular religion for that matter. I often feel there’s something I’m missing when I watch these plays, and perhaps there is. Still, I got most of the humour today, and I certainly found it uncomfortably menacing at times. The performances were perfection, and I only rated it 6/10 because there was so little to it. At fifty minutes long, it certainly packed in the action, but it took a little too long to establish Wilson’s connection to Mike, and the unpleasantness of both men towards Joyce was never going to endear me to the play.

Post-show. There were several attempts by one gentleman in the upper level to hijack the discussion with a solo diatribe on the awfulness of the first piece, Tom’s A-cold. Fortunately the audience and the two young directors (Sam sent his apologies) managed to fend him off.

Lora found her play through attending a play reading at Oxford(?) several years ago, and had wanted to put it on stage since then, so this was the perfect opportunity. Emma found it quite hard to select her play. Her remit was to find a short piece by a well-known writer which used three or four characters, and ran for only fifty minutes. It took months, but finally she thought of Orton and discovered this play, which she hadn’t known before. They each had to direct on their own this time – no assistants for the first-time directors – although they did the casting process together. I got the impression that as well as learning a lot about what the director’s job entails, they’ve also started to establish their network of contacts, which can be so important in many areas of life.

Apparently we were a quite sophisticated audience – not too many of us fell asleep, and we laughed at some of the jokes. Our quick response to the second line of Ruffian told them we were with the cast from the off. Perhaps the grim nature of the first play made us more receptive to the humour of the second – we needed a good laugh by then – although both pieces were pretty dark. Many people enjoyed both of the plays, though in different ways, and the cast and directors were warmly applauded at the end.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Tom’s A-Cold – June 2010

5/10

By David Egan

Directed by Lora Davies

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 8th June 2010

This was the first play in the Directors’ Showcase. It was written by a Canadian playwright. Two men sit in a boat, trapped on an island in the far north of Canada. They’re survivors of the ill-fated Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage; however as the play progresses, we realise that one of the men may not actually be there. Cannibalism rears its toothy maw, and eventually we find that there’s only one man left alive, though clearly not in his perfect wits.

The only set was a rowing boat, with oars, placed diagonally across the stage. It rested on a piece of hessian, and there were lots of props on board – spoons, comb, books, a gun, etc. Costumes were nicely in period.

The story started out with a fair bit of humour, as the two men attempted to keep their spirits up with various games, including the most predictable version of I-spy ever. It then became darker, as the story of the original ships was told via flashbacks, and as the “captain’s” insanity started to show itself more clearly, I was pretty sure his shipmate was a figment of his imagination long before he turned up again wanting to be told the story of his own death.

This was a mixed bag. There was a surprising amount of humour, some ‘scenes’ that were uncomfortable to watch, and some bits that dragged because they seemed repetitive. I felt the hour and a quarter running time could have been cut by twenty or even thirty minutes to create a tighter piece, but maybe that’s just me. The performances were excellent, as usual.

Post-show. There were several attempts by one gentleman in the upper level to hijack the discussion with a solo diatribe on the awfulness of the first piece, Tom’s A-Cold. Fortunately the audience and the two young directors (Sam sent his apologies) managed to fend him off.

Lora found her play through attending a play reading at Oxford(?) several years ago, and had wanted to put it on stage since then, so this was the perfect opportunity. Emma found it quite hard to select her play. Her remit was to find a short piece by a well-known writer which used three or four characters, and ran for only fifty minutes. It took months, but finally she thought of Orton and discovered this play, which she hadn’t known before. They each had to direct on their own this time – no assistants for the first-time directors – although they did the casting process together. I got the impression that as well as learning a lot about what the director’s job entails, they’ve also started to establish their network of contacts, which can be so important in many areas of life.

Apparently we were a quite sophisticated audience – not too many of us fell asleep, and we laughed at some of the jokes. Our quick response to the second line of Ruffian told them we were with the cast from the off. Perhaps the grim nature of the first play made us more receptive to the humour of the second – we needed a good laugh by then – although both pieces were pretty dark. Many people enjoyed both of the plays, though in different ways, and the cast and directors were warmly applauded at the end.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Taking Steps – March 2010

8/10

By Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 25th March 2010

What joy! Not only a great performance of one of Ayckbourn’s funniest plays (as with Shakespeare’s ‘problem’ plays, the description ‘funniest’ seems to apply to the vast majority of Ayckbourn’s work), but the master himself was there at the post-show, answering questions with patience, kindness and humour. A great afternoon.

This particular play was first performed back in the 70’s, and because of the way it’s set up, it only works in the round, as with the Stephen Joseph theatre itself. So the London transfer to a proscenium arch didn’t work too well, and, knowing this, Sam Walters persuaded Alan Ayckbourn to let him put it on again at the Orange Tree, a space only slightly smaller than its Scarborough birthplace.

The plot of this farce is unbelievably complex, but as usual Ayckbourn has woven a rich tapestry of humour with a fairly straightforward situation and a cast of complete misfits. Lizzy, an ex-dancer, is married to Rowley, a successful, sorry, very successful businessman who’s in buckets. And bin liners. If you’ve got rubbish to dispose of, he’s your man. Only he’s not going to be Lizzy’s man much longer, as she’s in the process of writing a note for her husband to tell him she’s gone for good. If only her handwriting was clearer. Her brother, Mark, a man who could take gold in 2012 if boring people to sleep was an Olympic sport, attempts to read it out, and we were in fits of laughter as he tried to figure out what she was saying. ‘Courage’ did especially badly, coming out first as ‘cabbage’, then as ‘carnage’. Lizzy takes so long packing that Rowley’s back home before she can make her escape, and she has to wait for a suitable moment to get away, Mark having already left to pick up his ex-fiancée Kitty from the station.

When Rowley does get back, he’s confronted by Mr Watson, who’s been sent by Rowley’s solicitor with the contracts for the purchase of the big Victorian house he’s currently renting from Mr A. Not that Mr Watson explained his presence so concisely. He’s one of those characters who drifts along on sporadic eddies of words; if you’re lucky, they make a coherent sentence. Few people were lucky this afternoon. Mr A also turns up, hardly recognisable in his biker’s gear and helmet, and he, Rowley and Mr Watson go for a tour of the house. Mr A is a builder, and Rowley wants to talk through the massive amount of work that needs to be done.

Mark arrives back with Kitty, and leaves her in the attic, where she also decides to leave a note and run off. By this time, Lizzy’s note has been found, and after an initial misunderstanding, Rowley learns he’s been abandoned. Mr A leaves without getting the money he needs to keep his business afloat, and Rowley persuades Mr Watson to keep him company, just for the night. With the usual awkwardness of characters in farce, Mark ends up in one of the ‘brown’ rooms, Rowley goes to bed in the attic, thereby trapping Kitty in a cupboard for the night, and Mr Watson spends the night in the master bedroom. When Lizzy returns, having decided to make a go of it with Rowley, she’s completely unaware that it’s not her husband she’s getting into bed with, while Mr Watson, believing the story of the ghost of a prostitute who spends the night with a man who then dies the next morning, is horrified when this ‘ghost’ materialises next to him. And that’s just the first half!

The second half involves suspected suicide attempts, Mr Watson being discovered in bed with two different women (on separate occasions), a near strangling, the purchase of the house, and yet more bids for freedom. And it was all huge fun, and well appreciated by the audience.

Now for the set. We sat at the left end of the first row far left. To our left was an upright chair, then a dressing table with stool, then the corner was filled by the folding bed in the attic which was just in front of the cupboard door. Next to that was a bedside table with a small light, then the sitting room sofa with coffee table in front, then a space for a doorway, then a bedside table next to the master bedroom double bed which was on the diagonal, then another doorway, then another armchair from the sitting room, then the third doorway right by us. To our right, and along the far side, there were banisters with strips of green carpet beside the set, and these had brass strips across them to represent stairs. From the ceiling hung two lights, a fancy one for the sitting room and a plain one that didn’t work (no bulb) for the attic. The action took place on all three levels, often at the same time, and the actors did a lovely jogging movement to indicate that they were going up and down stairs. The amazing thing is that it worked so well – we always knew where people were, and even when the set was crowded they managed to keep out of each other’s way. Alan Ayckbourn commented on this during the post-show, explaining that the actors’ movements had to be planned carefully so they didn’t all try to go through the same doorway at the same time.

Other gems from the post-show: Ayckbourn doesn’t do rewrites. Actually he did one for this production – we were the first to hear the changed word! The script referred to Foxtons as a business within the world of the play. As it’s also the name of a local estate agent, he changed it to Scanstons for this run. He also told us that when he was starting out, not yet twenty years old, everyone thought they knew how to make his plays work better, even the theatre cleaners. He had to work hard to keep things as he wanted them. Once he was successful, and got a reputation, people started taking the text too seriously, even memorising the misprints. He’d had to correct someone when they read a line wrong because the text had a mistake in it.

He was asked if he’d ever suffered from writers block. He told us that for a short time after his stroke, a couple of weeks say, he hadn’t had any ideas in his head at all. As he works by letting ideas develop in the back of his mind, sometimes for years, this was a frightening experience. But one morning he woke up, and an idea was floating around in there, so he knew he was alright.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me