Tag Archives: Yvonne Arnaud

Blonde Bombshells Of 1943 – March 2007

6/10

By: Alan Plater

Directed by: Mark Babych

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 5th March 2007

I really enjoyed myself tonight. The story was good, the acting very entertaining, and the music was excellent. What more could I ask?

The play covers one day in the life of a teenage girl, who joins a wartime all-girl band, and ends up playing and singing on radio that night. It’s topped and tailed by her granddaughter, played by the same actress, who says it’s the story her grandma told her after she’s sung her grandma’s favourite song for her birthday.

We get to see the motley crew assemble in a cold theatre space with some bomb damage, especially to the drums. The band leader has been in the business for years, and is the usual hard-bitten type with a heart of gold, though it doesn’t often get used. Her regulars are a trumpet player whose husband was taken prisoner by the Japanese, so she’s had no news of him for months, a bass player whose husband went down on the Royal Oak, and an Australian piano player. All were good musicians, but I particularly liked the bass player – very funky.

First to audition is a schoolgirl (granny), who joins in their warm-up number on the clarinet. A gifted musician, she later plays the saxophone first time out with no practice, but that’s theatre for you. The next to audition is a nun, who entertains them with a George Formby number – she can play a number of instruments, and her enthusiasm is very obvious – perhaps explaining why the Mother Superior thinks she would be such a valuable asset to the war effort somewhere other than the convent!

Next there’s the upper class totty – a good looking woman who has that irritating ability to just pick up any old instrument and get a tune out of it, by ear – no reading sheet music for her. Her commanding officer has sent her along, after hearing that the band needed new members – it’s amazing the effect a large group of GIs can have on female morale. At least the girls in the band are never short of nylons!

Finally, the new drummer turns up, only he’s not quite what they were expecting. He’s basically a chancer on the run from his call-up papers, and they reluctantly agree to take him on for one night only, as it’s their big opportunity to show what they can do on the radio. The two existing members have naturally got a down on him, as their men have done the decent thing, so towards the end of the concert, the leader, Betty, announces he’s enlisting, which he does.

We see the auditions, some rehearsals, as the band shelters in the theatre’s basement during an air raid, and then the concert, and it’s a great combination of good fun and moving stories. I really liked the way the ladies stayed in character throughout, especially the over-enthusiastic nun, and the naive schoolgirl, almost wetting herself with excitement at being in the band. Even hitting the triangle almost gave her an orgasm.

There was some interesting historical stuff, too, such as the band not being able to announce where they were playing on air, in case the Germans came and bombed the place. And there was a lot of humour, like the joke about the nun and the penguin, although the real nun wasn’t too happy. We enjoyed it, though.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Kindertransport – March 2007

8/10

By: Diane Samuels

Directed by: Polly Teale

Company: Shared Experience

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 2nd March 2007

This was a very moving play, with a surprising amount of humour. It’s based on the experiences of the Jewish children who were sent away from Germany just before WWII, to England, many of whom never saw their families again. This play focuses on one child, Eva, who, at nine years old is sent away to England by her parents. She is taken in by a family in Manchester, grows up there, and eventually rejects her original family to maintain her Englishness. We see the story both in the past, reliving Eva’s journey and experiences, and also in the present, as Evelyn (her new name) tries to keep her previous life a secret from her teenage daughter. Her daughter is persistent, however, and with the help of her grandmother, the woman who took Eva in all those years ago, a truth of a sort emerges. Throughout all of this, there is the figure of the Ratcatcher, as in the Pied Piper, a story told to Eva as a child, and which should serve as a dire warning never to tell children scary stories. Eva is terrified of this figure when it’s just a story, but when it takes on flesh and blood through Nazi persecution, her terror is multiplied, and affects her life and the way she relates to others profoundly. Hence her daughter’s insistence on knowing about her mother’s past – she knows there’s something missing, and she’s appalled that her mother could wilfully keep it from her, when it’s part of who she is as well. Of course, to her mother it represents all her fears, so she doesn’t want to face it, but through this confrontation, she seems to come to a gradual acceptance of her past, even if it’s not all forgiven and forgotten.

The whole production of this play was excellent. All the performances were perfect, and the interweaving of the stories and the time elements was masterful. We were shown so much about human suffering, and courage and compassion, that I was moved to tears. I wasn’t sure about the Ratcatcher at first – he just seemed to collapse onto the stage and crawl around for a while, but eventually the symbolism took hold, and Evelyn’s final identification of the Ratcatcher with her mother was very powerful. I increasingly saw the Ratcatcher as more of a victim than a figure of terror, as the character’s make up and behaviour became more tortured. And I particularly liked the way I could feel sympathy for the various points of view and the choices which had been made, without judging or supporting any specific person. All the women were tremendously strong characters, and showed great courage in the face of their difficulties. It was also nice to see a genuinely kind mother figure for once, in the shape of the Mancunian woman who takes Eva in and supports her with an amazing degree of understanding throughout her life in England.

The set was very evocative. It was a large attic space, with lots of “storage solutions” as they’re called nowadays – several wardrobes, chests of drawers, trunks and boxes lined the space, and various items of bric-a-brac were scattered around or piled in a corner. There was also a ladder resting on a cam ceiling, which was used to get Eva on and off her ship to England. Wardrobe doors doubled as room doors, and Eva did a fair bit of climbing over the furniture and boxes – good for showing us the scene settings, and also evoking the natural way children behave.

The one man in the cast played several parts. Apart from the Ratcatcher, he was also a German official on the train taking the children to the boat, who stole Eva’s money, but let her keep her mouth-organ, as well as giving her a sweetie – he thought he was being so good! He returned as a postman who delivers Eva’s Ratcatcher book from her mother, when they could still get post through, and who jokes with her about the Nazi salute. And he’s also an unpleasant railway guard who intimidates Eva when she’s waiting for her parents to arrive – they almost made it, but war broke out a few days too soon.

Eva’s rejection of her natural mother after the war was a very moving scene. I could see both points of view – her mother has never stopped loving her, and still sees Eva as her daughter, with the other mother just a temporary relationship, as if Eva had simply been a lodger. Eva/Evelyn, on the other hand, has built a life for herself, has been through untold suffering, trying to get her parents the papers they need to get out of Germany and join her, and now she’s not the little girl who left her mother before the war. Even then, her mother had been pushing her to do things for herself, and to stand on her own feet. Now she’s doing it, and both of them are suffering.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Signpost To Murder – February 2007

6/10

By Monte Doyle

Directed by Ian Dickens

Company: Ian Dickens Productions

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 19th February 2007

This was an entertaining thriller, not too surprising but reasonable all the same. A man escapes from a lunatic asylum having been sent there after supposedly killing his wife. He takes a woman hostage in her house because if he can stay free for 28 days, the order sending him to the loony bin expires and a new order has to be drawn up. The woman he takes hostage has some strange ways with her, and it soon becomes clear that she’s killed her husband and is using the escaped madman as cover – she can pin the blame on him when it comes to light. It’s also obvious that the orderly at the hospital had to be helping the madman both to go free and to know where to go. All very devious, and nicely done.

We’re keen on recycling, so it was good to see the Arsenic and Old Lace set reused here with a little different dressing. I spotted the window seat, but Steve realised it was the whole kit and caboodle. The actors were mainly from soapland TV, and there was an element of lignum in the performances with one, the Inspector, being well below average. Still, they managed well enough, and the central part of the wife was carried off convincingly, which made a big difference to the whole performance. Even so, there was a lot of laughter at some bits which were pretty ropey and the piece has dated a bit (set in the early 60s, and originally produced in 1962).

We enjoyed it well enough, and in some ways it’s a relief to see something not so challenging for a change. At the very end, when the doctor from the asylum had let his patient go, the lead actor turned to the audience and gave us a really good evil grin to finish the evening off nicely.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

French Without Tears – February 2007

6/10

By: Terence Rattigan

Directed by: Paul Miller

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 16th February 2007

I was well confused by all the signs that were up in the foyer before the performance. On the one hand, we were informed that the part of Lord Heybrook(?) would be played by some chap, and on the other, that the part of Kit Neilan would be played by Ben Lambert. What was going on? Especially as Lord Heybrook wasn’t mentioned in the cast list? Total confusion, finally cleared up at the very end of the play. So read on.

We were in the Circle for only the second time at the Yvonne Arnaud, and I wouldn’t recommend it. The front row is fine, but the other rows are very snug, both sideways and for leg room. Somehow it seemed steeper than in the second circle at the RST. But we managed. Our view was OK, though we couldn’t see faces very well, and some of the dialogue was lost.

There was an announcement at the start about the replacement for Kit Neilan’s part. Apparently Hugh Skinner had needed surgery last Sunday, and Ben Lambert had taken over at very short notice. (They had two rehearsal days scheduled, the Monday and Tuesday, then the opening night!) As a result, Ben was using the script, and they hoped we would be OK with that (well of course we would). Given that the setting is a language school, it didn’t seem too out of place to have one of the characters carrying a script around – they had notebooks most of the time anyway.

The set was a living room – door back left, French windows beside them to the patio and garden, door to kitchen back right, fireplace on the left wall with a couple of chairs and some stools in front of it, and in the centre of the room, a long table with eight chairs. There wasn’t much decoration on the walls – a map of Europe, a couple of pictures – and so the room seemed very sparse. Maybe the effect was different from another angle.

The play opens with a chap, Kenneth, sitting at the table with his books, apparently working on some exercise or other, as the maid brings in the breakfast things – bread and coffee, basically. We then meet the other characters as they trickle in for breakfast. There’s Brian, the man about town who’s only after a good time with lots of women, drink, fun and minimal work. Kenneth has to translate “she has ideas above her station” into French, for which Brian helpfully suggests “elle a des idées au dessus de son gare”, a line I remembered, but didn’t know from where. Now I do. As a general point, there were lots of French lines in this, and apart from not always hearing them clearly, I couldn’t have followed most of them anyway. It’s been a long time since I did any French, and it wasn’t up to this standard. So that did take off a bit from my enjoyment. Perhaps a copy of the text and a French/English dictionary are called for before we see it again.

The plot revolves around Kenneth’s sister, Diana, a total vamp. She readily acknowledges that her only talent is to make men fall in love with her, and while she’s staying at the villa while her brother learns enough French to join the Diplomatic Service, she’s put herself about a bit. One student, Kit has already fallen under her spell, and another, Alan (the son of an ambassador, and therefore expected to follow in his father’s career) has been resisting manfully. The action (such as it is in a Rattigan play) hots up when a new man arrives to start studying with them. Lt-Commander Rogers, or Bill, is treated to Diana’s charms from the off, and she manages to tell both him and Kit that she’s not really interested in the other, but loves only them. Matters come to a head when both men finally stop fighting long enough to discover her deception, and confront her together, demanding to know which man she truly loves. The devious manipulative she-devil-bitch then indicates that it’s Alan she’s really in love with, and he desperately enlists the help of the other two to protect him from her seductive spell.

Alan decides to leave the villa and take up writing full-time, partly because that’s his dream, and partly to avoid Diana. She’s all for going with him, but as Lord Heybrook is about to arrive, she sees a better chance, and hangs on. Everyone has a good laugh as she makes her entrance, all titivated up to entice the new student. It turns into an even bigger laugh as he comes through the French windows – all of fifteen, and not even shaving yet! Her disappointment was a pleasure for all to see.

There’s also a sub-plot concerning Jacqueline, the professor’s daughter, who’s been in love with Kit for a couple of months. She has a chat with Diana at one point, and it becomes clear that Diana isn’t prepared to share her men, even though she’s got more than she can handle. Fortunately, once Kit realises Diana’s deceitfulness, he starts to consider other options, assisted by Alan’s betrayal of Jacqueline’s confidences. It also becomes clear that for all Diana’s seductions, she’s not actually prepared to take things beyond the kissing stage – when Brian tries it on, she gives him a good slap.

Given the newness of the production, and having one cast member still reliant on the script, I thought they did this very well. All the performances were fine, and I particularly liked Alan, Brian and Bill, while Diana was seriously believable as a woman who can snare men without even lifting a finger. The scene where the men discover Diana’s duplicity was well done, and will come on more when Kit can drop the script fully. I also enjoyed the drunken aftermath, when the men have come back from the casino and are well sloshed – we get to see a different side to Bill. The French went largely over my head, and although it got a lot of laughs from the stalls, I suspect I wasn’t the only one missing out. I did find the amount of laying and clearing of the table a bit distracting, but on the whole I enjoyed this, and would like to see it again, to see how it develops.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

King Of Hearts – February 2007

8/10

By: Alistair Beaton

Directed by: Ramin Gray asnd Max Stafford Clark

Company: Out Of Joint

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 8th February 2007

This was the world premiere of this play, as it turned out, and we were also treated to a post-show discussion, as directors and writer were present to see how it went. Personally, I thought it was very good, needing a bit of work here and there, but very entertaining, and speaking out on some issues that are being skirted round at the moment, but which affect everyone of us.

General context – the King is dying, his heirs are his two sons. The elder (Richard) is in love with a Muslim girl (Nasreen), and plans to marry her while still becoming King. The younger (Arthur) is a layabout, keen on a dissolute lifestyle of drink, drugs, etc., and not at all keen on becoming King if his brother abdicates. The Prime Minister (Richard) is plotting the early demise of the King (he’s on life support, so it’s just switching off the machine), until he discovers Richard’s plans. Then he switches to trying to keep the King alive as long as possible to stop Richard marrying a Muslim. Constitutional crisis. The Leader of the Opposition (Stephen) is present also – this is “above party politics” – and all sorts of shenanigans unfold. Nasreen seems to be keen on power – I hoped she’d reject Richard if he didn’t become King, but no, love overcame all. There’s also a rambling Archbishop of Canterbury (Marcus), plodding head of security (Holbrook), King’s private secretary (Sir Terence Pitch), ballsy female spin doctor (Annie), and gay assistant (Toby), giving us a good mix of views on a tricky subject, and lots of options for humour. I especially liked Toby blackmailing the Leader of the Opposition with a video clip showing him enjoying a sexual act, and Annie slapping Arthur for using the word “cunt”. Overall, the language wasn’t as strong as The Thick Of It, but it was fairly meaty at times, all well within context.

Post-show – didn’t hear all of it. The intro, where we get to see that Richard is involved with a Muslim lady, will be dropped tomorrow, to see how it goes – is it better for the audience to know what’s coming, or to be surprised? We were a very warm audience apparently, and they learned a lot from our responses. Jade Goody joke was allowed tonight, would only stay in if it was well received – expect it to stay. Comments on the amount of swearing – audience seemed split on whether it was too much or about right.

Definitely one to see again, partly to find out how it’s bedded down, and partly to re-enjoy.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

King Lear – November 2006

Experience: 6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by David Tse Ka-shing

Company: Yellow Earth Theatre & Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 23rd November 2006

          Although part of the Complete Works Festival, we opted to see this production in Guildford, on its tour of the UK. I found it interesting, though not as emotionally engaging as I’m used to with Lear. The mixture of actors – half from the UK, speaking mainly English, and half from China, speaking mainly Mandarin – worked pretty well, although it can’t have been easy rehearsing this work. Checking out the surtitles, I realised that sometimes a short English line would translate to about two minutes of Chinese, while long English lines would occasionally produce a few terse Chinese syllables. I did feel this affected the rhythm of the piece, with some bits of dialogue trundling on long past the delivery of the emotional content (or the time it took to read the surtitles, depending).

The core idea was of a slightly futuristic world, with China now the major superpower, and Lear handing over the reins of his global business empire to his three daughters. Some of this worked quite well, and some just jarred. The final battle between Cordelia’s forces and the sisters’ troops was shown as a trading war on the exchange floor, with figures flying up and down so fast it was impossible to see what was going on. Hardly life and death. And what was the purpose? To break the Lear business empire? A bit difficult to do in one trading session, I would have thought. This version weakened the end scenes, when lives have supposedly been, and are being, staked on who ends up in charge. But in other ways this setting worked quite well. The use of mobile phones and text messaging to replace most of the usual letters was very well done. The initial scene with the daughters being asked to vie for their father’s love used video conferencing to good effect. Cordelia has obviously been sent to run the business interests overseas, and so has lost touch with her roots; she finds it difficult to speak what she feels, as Chinese is no longer her first language, and her cultural understanding has changed too. We can readily accept in our society the idea of older, Asian cultures having a strong paternalism that’s no longer so prevalent here. And family business empires are often run by Alpha+ males, who expect everyone else to obey without question, while perhaps having a few quirks of personality that can seem out of place in an otherwise rational person. So all that fitted, and Cordelia’s obvious separation from her family comes across loud and clear. The marriage proposals had to be ditched, but that’s a minor price to pay.

With so few actors there was a lot of doubling as well, even with the cuts. Only Zhou Yemang stuck to the one role, Lear. I found it confusing at first, especially when David Yip came on in one scene, having previously been Gloucester, now playing Albany. I realised eventually that there were subtle changes of costume, but it took me a while to adjust. Overall, it worked reasonably well.

One excellent idea was to have the fool expressed as Lear’s inner thoughts, adding to the sense that he’s cracking up. The rest of the cast, wearing uniform robes, stood round him speaking some of the fool’s lines, while Lear reacted much more emotionally to what he was hearing. I liked this interpretation a lot. In fact, I found Zhou Yemang’s portrayal both restrained and moving – he conveyed a sense of the barriers this man has erected around himself, and the tremendous upheaval he’s going through very well, especially considering the language difference.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Marriage Of Figaro – November 2006

Experience: 6/10

By Beaumarchais, translated/adapted by Ranjit Bolt

Directed by Jatinder Verma

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 20th November 2006

This was a novel experience. The original play by Beaumarchais has been turned into an Indian extravaganza, complete with music. It ends up looking much more like a Brian Rix farce set in India (this is not a criticism). It took a while to get used to the characters dancing on and dancing off, as well as occasional bursts of dancing in the middle, but it was good fun, and the Indian hierarchy seemed to work just as well as the old European one.

The set was relatively simple – two walls at an angle to the front of the stage, with four or five doors. The musician sat to one side, playing a variety of instruments, mostly drums, I think, but the music blended in so well I can pay it the compliment of saying I didn’t notice it too often. There were only five actors, and more parts than that, so some characters were played with masks, allowing any spare actor to represent them. One of the masks seemed to be an ear, another a nose, etc. This mostly worked very well, but in a few scenes, actors had to slip away and leave their mask to be held by another character, so I might have preferred one or two more actors in the cast, just to make it easier on everyone, including the audience.

The plot came thick and fast. In fact, about the only criticism I have of the performances was that some of the dialogue went like the clappers, and what with trying to pick up on the different cultural references, I found it hard to follow at times. But I did get the gist (after all, I have seen the opera), and some of it was hilarious. References like “the rupee’s dropped, at last!”, and “pardon my Hindi”, after a brief bit of swearing, went down very well. It was a shame the audience wasn’t as full as usual, and the sheer volume of plot permutations did get a little trying at times. But this was a good fun production, very well performed, and deserves a lot of success.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof – November 2006

Experience: 8/10

By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Richard Baron

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Wednesday 8th November 2006

I didn’t remember much of the previous production I saw, so this was a very interesting one to see. The bulk of the first act is down to Maggie, the cat of the title, all jumpy because her husband hasn’t given her a child yet, and she sees her comfortable life slipping away if Big Daddy leaves his estate to the well-offspringed brother-in-law. For a women who has clawed her way up from close to the gutter, it’s not an appealing prospect. Her husband, Brick, doesn’t have a lot to say for himself in this act, but he makes up for it later on. All the performances were good. I didn’t notice much slippage in the accent department, although I’m no expert, and the reading of the play worked well for me. I could see who the characters were loud and clear, and the production was balanced enough not to take sides – just as well, since few of the characters get anywhere near likeable. It says a great deal for Tennessee Williams’ skill as a playwright that it can be so fascinating to sit and watch so many unpleasant people for nearly three hours.

The revelations over the next two acts were unsurprising, but the presentation made them very watchable. I was especially moved by Big Daddy’s stories of his time abroad, and the abject poverty he witnessed. Brick’s despair and grief were obvious, and I liked the nice tussle between him and Maggie over the pillow. He kept putting it on the couch where he’d been sleeping since his friend died, and she kept returning it to the bed, where she wanted him to be. God knows what any child born into that family would have to put up with (now there’s and idea for a sequel). It’s a shame this wasn’t better attended, but fortunately there were lots of younger people there who may have got an insight into more powerful drama than we usually get on stage, and even on TV.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

An Hour And A Half Late – October 2006

Experience: 10/10

By Gerard Sibleyras with Jean Dell, adapted by Mel Smith

Directed by Tamara Harvey

Theatre Royal Bath Productions

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 19th October 2006

          Adapted by and starring Mel Smith, that’s mouth-watering enough as it is. Also with Belinda Lang, even better. And then add a superb relationship comedy. What more could we have wanted?

Nothing really. There was so much humour in this that I can’t possibly cover it all, so just (some of) the highlights. There was lot of laughter for the wife’s first three entrances. The husband is obviously waiting for her to finish getting ready, and she appears first in one top, then goes back into the bedroom, appearing a few moments later in another top, then goes off to another room, re-enters the bedroom, and comes back out in ….. the first top again! All of this was accompanied by Mel Smith’s wonderful expressions.

The wife wants to talk. She’s feeling old and useless, not helped by her husband’s lack of sympathy. He wants to get to an important celebration dinner being hosted by the man who’s buying him out of his business, thereby making him very rich. He’s also the man the husband’s worked with for twenty years, so it made sense at the time for the husband to tell his colleague about his wife’s unfaithfulness. The unfaithfulness, she now admits, which was a lie, designed to give their flagging marriage a boost. It succeeded, but now the husband is shocked to find out his wife hasn’t slept with another man, and she’s shocked to find out he told his colleague she had! (Apparently it helped the colleague’s sex life in his marriage.)

It’s a lovely comedy that points up the differences in approach and attitude between men and women. At one point she’s disheartened to realise she’s now a granny. His thought is that it’ll be his first time with a granny. When he complains about her obsessive tidiness, she tells him to spill his drink, and, reluctantly, he does. This triggers a mad session of hurling food, objet d’art and pot plants about the place. It’s a very stylish flat they live in, by the way, which makes it even more fun. Afterwards, they consider ways to restore their sex life, and he comes up with the squeaky floorboard idea – they’ll sleep in separate bedrooms, now their last child has flown the nest, and prowl to each other’s rooms, making the floorboards squeak as they go to heighten the anticipation. This is a very funny scene, as they try out all the squeaky floorboards they can find.

Eventually, this all calms down, and the wife is in a much better mood. She disappears off upstairs, and this time she reappears in her little black number, dolled up to the nines, and ready to go to the celebration dinner, an hour and a half late!

I can’t convey all the wonderful humour that was in this production. Much of it is in the performance, of course, but there were many great lines, and the overall construction was great. It’s been well adapted – although the ‘Frenchness’ of the play was still discernible, it worked well in a contemporary London setting. I will definitely see this play again when I get the chance.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Three Men In A Boat – October 2006

Experience: 6/10

By Clive Francis, adapted from the book by Jerome K Jerome

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 2nd October 2006

This was good fun, but needs some more work to iron out the creaky bits. Clive Francis, Neil Stacy and Simon Ward were fine as the three men going for a constitutionally refreshing trip on the Thames. Although longer in the tooth than the originals, their combined experience helped the piece along. I suspect this performance was early in the run, and there were wrinkles – some hesitancy about the lines, some lines failing to get a laugh, and some clunkiness due to the surprisingly elaborate set, using a boat on a revolve. Mostly, the actors moved fluidly (sorry!) from place to place and character to character, but the boat, graphic though it was, did hamper things a bit. It was nice to see, but perhaps there’s a better way to represent it.

There wouldn’t be a better way to represent Montmerency, though. His invisible presence, indicated only by occasional yapping and his ability to pull various characters all over the stage via his lead, was excellent. The best trained dog in the business. And no little messes to clean up afterwards.

My favourite part was the scene where, in total darkness, all three men attempt to sleep in the same bed, having blown out their candles by mistake. Even though we couldn’t see a thing, the dialogue was so good, it was clear what was happening, although at first I didn’t realise all three had landed on the floor. Very funny.

I wouldn’t mind seeing this one again, once it’s has a chance to bed down.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me