AndyRob
Stage Door
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Stage Door
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5852294784/
June 20 2011, 3:01am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre
Not Edinburgh or London but a Nottingham international arts and theatre festival. Nottingham’s Neat 11 theatre festival opens on 26 May 2011.
This article titled “Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre” was written by Vanessa Thorpe, for The Observer on Saturday 30th April 2011 23.06 UTC It might not seem the right time to launch an international arts festival, but Nottingham is to take this fearless step. Later this spring the city will hold neat11, the first Nottingham European arts and theatre festival, to prove the way to beat the cuts in the arts is to pool resources. Nottingham Playhouse has joined the city council, the regeneration body One Nottingham and many of the city’s other arts venues – including the Theatre Royal, Lakeside Arts Centre, and the Broadway Cinema – to present a range of radical theatre, music, film and visual art from across Europe between 26 May and 12 June. The festival will showcase the work of leading foreign companies such as Det Norske Teatret, Deutsches Theater and Theatre Nowy alongside the work of British companies including Cheek By Jowl and Gob Squad. In the face of reduced grants from Arts Council England, funding of £98,000 has been earmarked for the project. “This is work you would not be able to see anywhere else in the country,” said Giles Croft, the artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse. “Audiences will be able to see great performers from Kosovo, Bulgaria and Denmark. And for me, key highlights are Deutsches Theater’s productionq of Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, using the songs of Tom Waits, along with the only UK performance this year of Cheek by Jowl’s Three Sisters, performed in Russian. I am also really looking forward to Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther by Det Norske Teatret from Norway.” Croft argues the festival will emphasise the “strong cultural life” of Nottingham. “Bringing this kind of work here will also demonstrate that it is a European city. We are hoping we can bring the festival back in two years time and establish it as a bienniale. I am absolutely confident we can make it a success.”
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Related posts:Theatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips Theatre in Scotland Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
May 3 2011, 5:29am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/15/what-to-say-about-betty-blue-eyes
A rasher of pocine metaphors breaks out among the theatre critics as a ham-imatronic animal makes a pig of herself in the West End. No porkies. It’s just a theatre review for Betty Blue Eyes.
This article titled “What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes” was written by Patrick Kingsley, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 15th April 2011 14.52 UTC Way back in 2008, when Barack Obama was but the junior senator for Illinois, he was involved in a right rumpus with the then-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, about whether one could or could not “put lipstick on a pig”. At the time it seemed a debate into which Britain’s theatre critics were reluctant to wade. But people change. Would they put lipstick on a pig? Almost certainly, at least if that pig were animatronic, had the voice of Kylie Minogue and were on stage at the West End‘s Novello theatre as part of a heartwarming new musical called Betty Blue Eyes, directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.
“[W]itty, rude, lovable, warm, dramatic, hilarious,” proclaims the Times’s Libby Purves, a writer with more than a few adjectives up her sleeve. “[A] new smash musical is born.” The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer agrees, calling the show “popular entertainment at its very best”. Not for the first time, however, your correspondent was concerned for the safety of those sitting next to him, as the show left him “grunting and snorting with pleasure, and just occasionally snuffling with sentimental tears”.
Part of BBE’s appeal lies in its timely plot, which draws (conveniently enough) on the dual themes of recession and royal matrimony. “How fortuitous that it’s set in 1947,” point out bloggers West End Whingers, “with austerity and recycling paramount and preparations for a royal wedding celebration at full tilt.” It’s against this backdrop that we meet the show’s protagonists, Gilbert (Reece Shearsmith) and Joyce (Sarah Lancashire), the social-climbing Yorkshire couple who steal the pig that’s due to be roasted in honour of those royal lovebirds of yesteryear, Elizabeth and Philip.
It’s a story that, for the Guardian’s Michael Billington, trumps even A Private Function, the 1984 film part-scripted by Alan Bennett from which it is adapted: “The show’s creators [first-timers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman] preserve the satire on small-town snobbery, greed and racism from the Alan Bennett-Malcolm Mowbray movie script, while sharpening the storyline and using music genuinely to enhance character”. They’ve done this, notes Paul Raven of West End Theatre, despite being American! “[H]aving a bit of distance from a subject is not a bad thing,” Raven explains, helpfully, “and they’ve written some pacey, witty dialogue that captures the spirit of the times without paying undue reverence to the movie.” But the show-stealer is Betty herself: “an animatronic, blue-eyed and weirdly flirtatious porker with a permanent smile and the singing voice of Kylie Minogue,” writes Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. “What a star she proves,” enthuses Spencer, who was particularly captivated by Betty’s “amazing repertoire of grunts, squeaks and, above all, farts”. “It’s a great pig,” Purves confirms. “And I am happy to relate that, despite the usual desperate first-night deadline scuttle, two of us critics remained riveted by the escape door long enough to hear it sing in the final curtain call.” Some of the bloggers weren’t so easily impressed. “By the standards of modern stage wizardry,” complains Peter Brown at London Theatre, “this is not exactly an all-singing, all-dancing kind of mechanical hog.” Ian Foster, blogging at There Ought to Be Clowns, thought the pig “a bit freaky”. Brave man.
Meanwhile, not everyone admits to being fond of the rest of the show. “Some of the humour is clumsy,” says Hitchings, “and some reminiscent of pantomime.” And if you detected a characteristically arch tone in the West End Whingers‘ remarks earlier, give yourself a sausage: they simply didn’t like it. “Sadly, we weren’t smiling much,” whinge the Whingers. “Our (in the) minority report puts Betty on the butcher’s block along with our own necks, yet again.”
But hey, at least they’ve got in the spirit with that butcher’s block analogy. For if there’s one thing that unites our reviewers, it’s their utter inability to avoid porcine metaphors. Bacon, for instance, has either already been “brought home” by Mackintosh (Spencer) or it’s in the process of being brought there by Eyre (Purves), or even by the show itself (Billington/Hitchings). It gets worse. For Michael Coveney at the Independent, Betty is “piggy in the muddle, all right”; for Hitchings, the play is no “mere pork scratching”; and Spencer, perhaps the most outrageous of the pigging punners, promises us “I’m telling no porky pies”. Not that I’m immune to hamming it up a touch.
Do say: [Some random aspect of the show] brings home the bacon …
Don’t say: … and [he/she/it] is laughing all the way to the piggy bank.
The reviews reviewed: Pigs can fly. Sometimes. If they’re animatronic.
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Related posts:Blue – Andy Roberts What to say about … The Wizard of Oz The Critics and Social Media
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April 15 2011, 10:25am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Smash! – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/smash-%E2%80%93-review
A Theatre review of Smash! at the Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre, London
This article titled “Smash! – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.30 UTC “Is there anything that matters less than a musical?” a character irreverently asks in this revival of the late Jack Rosenthal’s 1981 play. It’s not a sentiment one ever expected to hear on the stage of the Menier. But it sums up perfectly the comic anguish at the heart of Rosenthal’s biliously funny piece: a backstage story based on his own nerve-wracking experience of seeing his TV play, Bar Mitzvah Boy, turned into a musical floperoo. The musical, as everyone tells you, is a collaborative form: what Rosenthal captures is the high emotional cost of bringing together so many competing creative egos. In this instance, there is an added cultural clash: a Broadway composer and director find themselves yoked to a British lyricist and librettist under the shaky supervision of an American-Austrian producer. Things look bad from the initial New York encounter, when the veteran composer dismisses the book and its “cardboard, asshole characters”. Matters get even worse in the course of London rehearsals and a Manchester try-out after which the director demands new sets, costumes and rewrites of the rewrites. Yet, in the strange way of showbiz, everyone still believes miracles can be achieved by the time of the West End opening. I wish Rosenthal had defined more clearly the show on which they’re working: we learn its title, Whatever Happened to Tomorrow, and not much else. And, although Rosenthal forgiveably changed the book-writer’s gender to avoid a Twelve Angry Men feeling, it slightly weakens the enterprise’s testosterone-fuelled absurdity. But what he captures perfectly are the shifting loyalties of the team, the oscillations between insane optimism and despair, and the notion that a musical is like some giant, uncontrollable machine with which everyone feels obliged to tinker. As the director claims, in the play’s best single line: “In a musical nothing’s all right until it’s too late to be changed.” Tamara Harvey’s production creates exactly the right sense that everyone, while working for the good of the show, is protecting their own territory. Richard Schiff, of The West Wing fame, makes the composer a figure of wondrously acerbic vanity who prefaces every remark by reminding everyone of his 28 Broadway scores. Cameron Blakely’s director is all elegantly attired bombast masking profound insecurity. And Natalie Walter plausibly makes the writer, clearly representing Rosenthal himself, the still, small voice of sanity in this creative madhouse. But the funniest performance comes from Tom Conti as the producer who seeks to exude avuncular reassurance while secretly aware that the show is under-capitalised. What Rosenthal’s delightful play really proves, however, is that musicals operate in a special way: in conjuring up a world of fantasy, they leave their creators trapped in their own private bubble of preposterous self-delusion.
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Related posts:The Unthanks: Last – review The Wizard of Oz – review The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – review
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April 2 2011, 11:37am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-little-voice-%E2%80%93-review
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – a theatre review
This article titled “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – review” was written by Alfred Hickling, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.45 UTC Jim Cartwright’s 1992 comedy has matured into an enjoyable period piece – just how much so becomes apparent in the first scene when Mari, a noisy northern housewife, is beside herself with excitement over the acquisition of a new phone. It takes two engineers to install it and plug it into the wall. It’s a minor miracle that the play has had any kind of continued production history at all, having specifically been tailored to expose Jane Horrocks’s uncanny ability to impersonate the great popular divas from Gracie Fields to Judy Garland. Yet it was successfully revived in the West End with X-Factor contestant Diana Vickers; and here it is the remarkable Rebecca Hutchinson who proves capable of switching from Bassey to Piaf and back again in a single breath. Cartwright’s drama has an archetypal quality – it’s essentially the Tale of the Ugly Duckling in reverse – and might be said to have invented its own genre of glittery northern realism. Director Amy Leach points out that it’s hard to conceive of Shameless or The Royle Family without it; though Cartwright’s language remains one of a kind. When Eithne Browne’s Mari rhapsodises over a “real pronto lip-lapping snog”, it’s hard not to picture exactly what she means. The downside of such loquacity is that it leaves little room for subtext. It’s a good job Hutchinson’s Little Voice and Sue McCormick’s amiable, roly-poly Sadie are practically mute or else the play would go on all night. Leach’s production is long enough, but the young, Bolton-born director has had an impressive run at the Dukes, suggesting that hers is another significant little voice on the rise.
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April 1 2011, 5:48pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips
Arts Council cuts have hit many of this week’s theatre companies, from Shared Experience to Manchester’s Greenroom. All the more important to go on theatre breaks and see them – now.
This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 1st April 2011 14.06 UTC There’s plenty of great theatre around this week, but the question after this week’s cuts is whether the same will be true in five years’ time – or even a year. The Arts Council is not to blame for the hand it’s been dealt by the government, but has it really done enough to realign the landscape and redirect money away from the haves to the have-nots? Most importantly, has ACE’s strategic thinking been as robust as it needs to be to ensure that theatre continues to thrive and audiences grow both in numbers and diversity? So let’s start What to see this week with fine companies who have been unlucky in the recent funding round. Shared Experience have been excluded from the National Portfolio but who – as their multi-layered production Brontë confirms – can deliver probing and beautiful work. Catch it at Oxford Playhouse until tomorrow, and then at London’s Tricycle Theatre from next Tuesday. Another casualty – and one of several small touring companies who have been cut, including Northumberland Theatre Company and Oxfordshire Theatre Co – is Forest Forge, which is out on the road playing village halls and venues with Peeling (tonight at the Lighthouse, Poole). Then there’s Manchester’s Greenroom, which for 28 years has been supporting artists making performance and live art in a city dominated by the Royal Exchange, and who are this week playing host to Kings of England and Levantes Dance Theatre through their Method Lab, a scheme that previously helped nurture Nic Green’s Trilogy and Drunken Chorus. Remove the venue, and where do the artists find the support they need? Despite an 11% cut for many organisations, regional theatre buildings are going to have to do a great deal more to nurture talent, support companies and present work. Feeling the pinch will be no excuse and it can’t be business as usual. Every bit of theatre is now reliant on collaboration. This week Coventry’s Belgrade theatre, which took almost a 15% hit, has a new version of Uncle Vanya, which will then transfer to London’s Arcola (which, with an 82% rise, was one of the day’s big winners). North in Bolton, the Octagon opens its tale of local hero and steeplejack Fred Dibnah, The Demolition Man, in the same week that its highly acclaimed revival of The Price transfers to the Stephen Joseph, which says goodbye to Paines Plough’s touring show, Love Love Love, which in turns is heading into the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It’s all connected, and my hunch is that it will have to be more so in the years ahead. Staying in the north, Birmingham Rep’s teenage drama of life and death, Notes to Future Self, goes into the Royal Exchange Studio, the excellent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf continues at Sheffield Crucible before heading to Northern Stage, and Alan Bennett’s tale of the woman who took up residence in his garden, Lady in the Van, is revived at Hull Truck. While we’re in Yorkshire, do think about booking for Harrogate’s Two’s Company Festival in May, a mini version of BAC’s brilliant One-on-One Festival, which features Laura Mugridge’s delightful camper van show, Running on Air, a new piece by Analogue, and Tea is an Evening Meal, a collaboration between Northern Stage and Third Angel, (the latter very mysteriously cut by ACE). Two successes in the funding round are Freedom Studios who are behind Mill – City of Dreams in Bradford, and Theatre in the Mill, which this weekend offers the interactive thriller, The Falling Sickness, and follows it with Instant Dissidence’s One on One, When Night Falls, from Tuesday. Let’s head further south to the Royal and Derngate in Northampton, where Rattigan’s In Praise of Love opens next week, and from there into London, where the lively young Colombian circus, Circolombia, which is made up of former street kids, returns to the Roundhouse (another funding winner). Looking ahead, at the Roundhouse you should be booking for The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories, Mark Storor’s participatory show made with teenagers. The Almeida may have suffered a substantial 39% funding cut, but it still gets £704,000, which should be more than enough to ensure that it continues projects such as Crawling in the Dark, a new play for young people inspired by the current main house hit, David Eldridge’s addiction drama, The Knot of the Heart. Soho Theatre – another significant loser but with new artistic director Steve Marmion at the helm – has Bryony Kimmings’ Sex Idiot, a tale of STDs and pubic hair. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre bring Mark O’Rowe’s play about Dublin life Terminus to the Young Vic, which has a small uplift in funding. Cheek by Jowl take their Russian Tempest into the Barbican. Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton collaborate on The Quiet Volume, a unique experience in a library as part of the London Word Festival and check out Chisenhale Art Club, which always happens on the first Wednesday of the month. I rather like the sound of Hotel Confessions, too, which is performed in a Bermondsey hotel. Just outside London, Lee Hall’s terrific The Pitmen Painters sets off from the Theatre Royal in Windsor on a nationwide tour. Derek Jacobi’s King Lear is at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Fevered Sleep’s delightful children’s show And the Rain Falls Down goes into Bristol Old Vic, Comedy of Errors continues at the Tobacco Factory, Journey’s End goes into the Theatre Royal in Brighton and at the Basement choreographer Ivana Muller considers her place on the stage in 60 Minutes of Opportunism. Circus did well in the funding shake-up and its happy birthday to Circomedia in Bristol who are celebrating in style. Marivaux’s A Game of Love and Chance opens at Salisbury Playhouse. In Scotland – which is, of course, unaffected by ACE funding decisions – Liz Lochhead’s Educating Agnes, a version of Molière’s School for Wives, is at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in the capital, the Jimmy Boyle-inspired The Hard Man is at the King’s, and Catherine Wheels’ new version of Beauty and the Beast, Caged, is at the Traverse today before moving to Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree tomorrow, with more tour dates to follow. Head to The Arches in Glasgow from Tuesday for a double showcase of award-winning work, which includes Me and the Machine’s dislocating love story When We Meet Again, Claire Duffy’s Money… the Game Show, Thickskin’s tale of teenage catastrophe, Blackout, and Gareth Nicholls’ Pause With a Smile, which lingers on everyday coincidences.
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Related posts:Theatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks Theatre breaks in London Is British theatre more highly prized abroad than at home?
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April 1 2011, 3:47pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Regional theatre should take more risks
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/regional-theatre-should-take-more-risks
Programming Barrie, Noël Coward or Daphne Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the past
This article titled “Regional theatre should take more risks” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 11.57 UTC A couple of years back, in a passionate post on this blog about regional theatre, the Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom observed that “Regional artistic directors used to behave as if they were on Countdown: ‘I’ll have a Coward, please, a Shakespeare, a new play in the studio, and another Coward, please, Carol.’ These days, I can only imagine producing Noël Coward if an artist has a personal connection to the material and a burning desire to give it fresh theatrical life.” Two years is a long time in theatre. Since Sansom’s post on the vibrancy of programming in regional theatres, we’ve had an election, the formation of a coalition government that has no understanding of the crucial role theatre can play in its community both economically and socially, and the prospect of funding cuts. But it is clear that, long before the axes have fallen, many theatre programmes have taken on the look of a nervy Countdown selection. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising: just as hemlines go down in a recession, maybe artistic directors are inclined to look backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a reminder how much confidence and psychology plays a part in creating the conditions necessary for a theatre to take risks, then reap the rewards. Back in 2001, the fact that there was money on the way (in the form of the £25 million that was injected into theatre after the Boyden report) created a sea-change in British regional theatre that was apparent long before theatres saw a penny of the cash. In the circumstances, then, perhaps it is no surprise that the seasons currently gracing our stages – in many cases programmed more than a year ago – reflect a certain nervousness about audience attendance, and suggest a headlong retreat into pre-Look Back in Anger drama. That impression may be somewhat skewed by the Rattigan centenary, not that I begrudge him his moment in the sun: Thea Sharrock’s timely (and award-winning) After the Dance at the National made as good a case for Rattigan’s rehabilitation as the Almeida’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993. But, even if you take Rattigan out of the equation, we’re still seeing a rash of Cowards and Priestleys, even the odd Du Maurier and W Somerset Maugham. Or how about Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton? Restoration comedy seems to be making a come-back too. I can’t recall so much interest in The Rivals since the 1980s. Of course there’s wrong with directors rummaging around in the theatrical attic and finding plays that glimmer in the dark. There are also horses for courses: Salisbury Playhouse, which recently saw a fine revival of The Constant Wife, may actually be the only theatre in the country where you could still do Somerset Maugham, and there is no one more qualified to do it well than Philip Wilson – who knows how to mine beneath a brittle surface and who, incidentally, has previously has proved himself a superb director of Coward. Sansom was right two years ago and he is still right now, in suggesting that it is a burning desire to give a play new theatrical life that makes it worth doing. The results can be transforming, as we saw in the 1990s with Stephen Daldry with An Inspector Calls, or have seen recently at the Finborough with a rare revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade. And David Grindley’s touring revival of Journey’s End demonstrates that even an old war horse can have real vigour and relevance. So I certainly don’t want to write off the plays of the past, but do want to point out that if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future it can’t play things too safe. It’s risk-taking that keeps theatre alive.
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Related posts:Is British theatre more highly prized abroad than at home? Enlightenment at Hampstead Theatre and Deathtrap Theatre breaks in London
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March 23 2011, 6:22pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/the-umbrellas-of-cherbourg-review
Theatre breaks review of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” by The Guardian’s Michael Billington
This article titled “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 23rd March 2011 00.24 UTC “Charmingly attenuated” was how the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael described the original 1964 Jacques Demy movie. Suspiciously thin would be my verdict on this stage version adapted and directed by Emma Rice for Kneehigh. The Michel Legrand score still offers its fitful pleasures, and the bittersweet ending is retained; but it seems an oddly gratuitous translation of a highly successful film into theatrical terms. Rice is faithful to the story: Genevieve, a naive teenager, falling for Guy, a Cherbourg garagiste; and then, when he is drafted into the Algerian war, being ardently wooed by a rich jeweller. But, one has to ask, what exactly is gained by the stage transfer? Rice heightens aspects such as the jealous pangs felt by Genevieve’s mum, who has her own eyes on the jeweller’s assets. Lest we miss the fact this is an essentially French story, Rice has also imported a roguish compere in the shape of a cabaret diva called Meow Meow, and adds a chorus of matelots in striped vests. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky she stopped short of an itinerant onion seller. What is lost are the very things that made the film so original. One is the way in which the fluid camera movement matched the seamless recitative of the Legrand score: take that away, and you are left with a show that, with the exception of I Will Wait for You, seems strangely lacking in musical or dramatic highlights. The other missing ingredient is the candy-coloured artifice of the film, in which even the wallpaper matched the characters’ costumes. Watching the stage version is like seeing a Technicolor film rendered in black and white: Lez Brotherston’s set, with its partitioned steel structures, seems determined to evoke the reality of Cherbourg, whereas the point of the story is that it is a romantic fairytale. The performances themselves are fine. Carly Bawden conveys Genevieve’s innocence, Andrew Durand shows Guy plausibly embittered by both the war and his lover’s desertion, and Joanna Riding as Genevieve’s mum has the right flighty desperation. Nigel Lilley’s musical direction is tireless. And there are one or two striking images, such as that of a lovelorn Guy marooned in the midst of the Algerian conflict. But when you recall how ingeniously Kneehigh interwove film and live action in Brief Encounter, this seems a strangely prosaic attempt to capture the elusive poetry of the Demy original.
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March 23 2011, 3:04pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Flare Path with Sienna Miller
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/flare-path-with-sienna-miller
Flare Path with Sienna Miller
This article titled “What to say about … Flare Path with Sienna Miller” was written by Leo Benedictus, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 15th March 2011 15.50 UTC It is easy, and enjoyable, to snigger at Britain’s vision of its wartime flying heroes. The awfully wholesome banter, the Mansellian moustaches, the jovially racist dog-naming, the dark emotions, sealed in concrete, buried and forgotten 50 feet below some Hampshire rugger field. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Flare Path, Terence Rattigan’s 1941 play about the concealed strains of a bomber crew and their wives, had almost all the critics struggling to control their upper lips. “A masterly piece of theatre,” writes Sam Marlowe of The Arts Desk. “This is essentially a shattering ensemble work, in which every detail glows with truth, compassion and humanity, and where every seemingly ordinary second of life in an existence hemmed in by the ever-present threat of death is charged with a quiet intensity.” “The occasional romanticism is counterbalanced by Rattigan’s genius for barely expressed emotion,” agrees our own Michael Billington. “A simple exchange of goodbyes between a tail-gunner and his wife, as he leaves for a raid, brings a lump to the throat.” And it does even more to Charles Spencer. “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now,” he writes. “Trevor Nunn’s superb production [is] a three-handkerchief weepie that somehow manages to be both profoundly moving and wonderfully funny.” And to think the show’s publicity revolved around its star name, Sienna Miller, about whom it is also easy to be snooty. Pretty young things made famous by their film-star former boyfriends make big targets, remember. So it is remarkable, again, that the critics (this time) held their fire. “She brings to her role just the right mixture of glacial poise and agonised tension,” says Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. And, in the Independent, Paul Taylor agrees: “Her performance as the conflicted actress-heroine,” he says, “is genuinely heart-tugging in the subtle way it communicates this young woman’s struggle between patriotic duty and extra-marital desire.” But if Miller did well, her castmates did better still. David Benedict singles out “a career-making performance” from Harry Hadden-Paton, “[whose] character detail is there but not on display. It’s the fuel he uses to charge up his difficult, climactic breakdown.” Meanwhile, Sheridan Smith (now always to be known as “Olivier-award-winning scrubber Sheridan Smith”) is singled out for special praise by almost everyone. “She is wonderful as the barmaid married to a Polish airman,” says Libby Purves on a page you can’t read, “naive, cheerful, yet radiating immense doubt and pain in stillness.” “Smith is superb,” concurs the FT’s Sarah Hemming. “Always warm and impish, she becomes heartbreaking as she sits, smiling determinedly through her tears, while Peter gently translates for her a letter left behind by her husband.” Meanwhile, for balance, here are the views of the Express’s Paul Callan, who seems to have been watching a different show from everybody else. “All these stereotypes sadly combine to show the age-lines on this play,” he says. “The pace limps along like a battle-battered Wellington bomber flying on one engine.” Ah well, you can’t please everyone. Do say: “Chocks away!”, “Pip-pip!” and “squiffy”. As frequently as possible. Don’t say: Er … they were, you know, dropping bombs on people and stuff. The reviews reviewed: Jolly good show.
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March 15 2011, 11:27am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Is British theatre more highly prized abroad than at home?
The state of theatre appreciation in the UK. Possibly not as bad as made out really. Interesting to see what’s happening in Iceland and Ljubljana though it may be.
This article titled “Is British theatre more highly prized abroad than at home?” was written by Clare Brennan, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 10th March 2011 12.40 UTC Flying out to Slovenia for a new production of Simon Stephens’s 2008 National Theatre hit, Harper Regan, I found myself wondering whether UK playwrights really are more popular abroad than at home, or if it just seems that way. Mark Ravenhill noticed this a few years ago, commenting on his own work and that of fellow writers such as Sarah Kane – two of whose plays currently feature in rep at Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre. But the phenomenon stretches further than the so-called “in-yer-face school”. Arnold Wesker, for instance, has always been performed more on the other side of the Channel; Howard Barker, seen as almost an outsider by the British theatre establishment, is revered throughout much of Europe and had a season devoted to his work at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris in 2009. In the past five seasons in Slovenia alone (population two million), there have been more than 30 productions of plays by British or Irish writers – including, alongside Kane and Ravenhill, Patrick Marber, Bridget O’Connor and Alan Ayckbourn. Ljubljana’s MGL studio theatre, where Harper opened last Thursday, also features plays by Caryl Churchill and Conor McPherson (besides Shakespeare and Shelley) among this season’s 20 productions. Given the quality of so much British playwriting, its popularity is not exactly surprising. What seems curious is that once a premiere is over, a new play will have almost no afterlife in this country, yet will enjoy extended runs in other parts of the world. Harper, which was such a huge success at the Cottesloe, has been performed in Germany, Chicago and San Francisco (with productions underway or upcoming in France, Israel, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) but has had no other professional UK productions. According to literary agent Howard Gooding, one of the reasons for this is that, here, “the premiering theatre will have a period of exclusivity over British rights”. In other countries, such as Germany, for instance, “plays are on at many theatres all at once. You can read about a new play in a German paper and be pretty confident of it being on somewhere nearby”. The difference between the systems means that: “There are certainly instances where a new play has many German productions before its first UK revival.” It’s not just the waiting period before rights become available that holds theatres back from reviving new plays; reviews also play a role. “Once a play has been seen in London,” says Ian Brown, artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, “theatres find it all but impossible to get the work reviewed – and theatres need the reviews to sell tickets.” So far, the reviews for MGL’s Harper have been positive, which promises well for ticket sales. From my perspective, watching the final run-through and the first night was fascinating. I know the text reasonably well, having read it a number of times (at one point, it looked as if I might collaborate on it with the director Boris Ostan), and had never really liked it. For me, Simon’s dialogues made up of quasi-monologues and non-consequential exchanges (with occasional exceptions) seemed hollow. But experiencing Boris’s clear, focused vision of the play – expressed in Petra Veber’s evocative set and realised through the intensely vivid performances (especially by Jette Ostan Vejrup in the title role) – enhanced my understanding not only of the structure but, paradoxically enough, given that the performances were in Slovene, the words as well. I now find myself looking forward to Stephen’s new work, Wastwater, which opens at the Royal Court, London, at the end of this month. This is, appropriately enough, a co-production with the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna festival). It will be interesting to see how many Wastwater productions are staged in Germany and elsewhere before it is revived in Britain – if it ever is. Given that I live 200 miles away from the capital, I guess I’d better book an intercity train ticket to be sure I catch it, because the odds are that it won’t be appearing anywhere near me anytime soon.
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March 10 2011, 7:10am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to say about … The Wizard of Oz
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/02/what-to-say-about-%E2%80%A6-the-wizard-of-oz
A round up of Wizard of Oz reviews
This article titled “What to say about … The Wizard of Oz” was written by Patrick Kingsley, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 2nd March 2011 17.48 UTC Kind reader, spare a thought for the shoppers and strollers of Oxford Street this Tuesday afternoon past. Many of them, we fear, may have been victim to the sight of an enraged Charles Spencer, the Telegraph’s theatre critic, rampaging through the capital’s premier retail district, humming “We’re Off to See the Wizard”, as he himself relates, “through gritted teeth”. If he sounds like a man possessed, perhaps it’s fair to point out that he was off to see the Wizard – or, to be precise, the press night for a new musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, an event to which he seemed not to be looking forward. Toto is, also quite literally, no longer in Kansas. He and all the other characters from Frank L Baum’s children’s classic can now be found on the stage of London’s Palladium theatre, in a production adapted from the 1939 film score by Harold Arlen and EY Harburg, with a few new numbers from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Critics have mostly agreed on two things: that the production lacked soul; and that, in writing as much, it was open season for every Oz-related metaphor in the book. “[T]he paradox of the evening,” writes the Guardian’s very own Michael Billington, perhaps with his little finger raised to the corner of the lip, “is that it suffers the same dilemma as the Tin Man: it might have been so much more if it only had a heart.” The Times’s Libby Purves agrees: the show’s “technology, polish, and scientifically calculated hype”, she argues, end up “drowning the magic”. Henry Hitchings, writing in the Evening Standard, is slightly more forgiving – but only just. “The story is lucid and well-paced,” he proffers, “though the technological wizardry occasionally obscures its inherent magic.” Hitchings is more unconditional with his praise of the show’s lead: 18-year-old Danielle Hope, who plays Dorothy, and who won the part through a BBC talent contest. She, says Hitchings, “makes a winning impression. Her performance combines innocence with easy charm, and her voice soars.” He goes on: “It’s a vindication of the TV casting show – a phenomenon readily mocked, yet capable of unearthing a likable, credible new talent.” The Sun’s Jenna Sloan went even further. “She knows she has huge ruby slippers to fill,” – boom, boom – “reprising the role made famous by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie classic. But judging by last night’s performance,” continues Sloan, who has moved suddenly into italics, “Danielle will ensure the Lord has yet another smash on his hands.” Others weren’t convinced. “Serviceable” was how the Independent’s Paul Taylor described Hope, while the Telegraph’s Spencer thought her merely “competent”. Hope, he writes, “lacks the heart-catching vulnerability of the young Judy Garland”. For some bloggers, such an argument was merely academic. For Little M, who blogs at Mummy’s Little World, “the true star of the show was Toto!” Why so, you might ask? Well, for starters, says Little M, “there was a REAL dog on stage!” Except, if the write-up from Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail is anything to go by, Toto wasn’t just played by one West Highland terrier, but four. And what a performance they gave, says Letts: “numerous doggy entrances and exits were performed without straying, scratching or so much as a hint of cocked leg. Some very creditable barking was done bang on cue, too.” But Toto’s performance did have unexpected side-effects, says the West End Whingers. He – or they? – tended to be “marvellously, completely unfazed by the drama or spectacle going on around him”. In turn, write the Whingers, this meant he’d be “fascinated by the odd smell on a floorboard or a glimpse of something in the wings” – and, as a result, “Toto’s honesty showed up everything going on around him as the fragile tissue of lies on which theatre is built.” But in the end, who really cares what the critics think, eh? Not even the critics themselves, apparently. Oz made £10m just in pre-sales, and perhaps as a result, Purves has “a helpless sense that it’s a … predetermined hit”. Billington concludes that regardless of the show’s quality, “people will go to see both the winner of the TV talent contest and to luxuriate in the sumptuous visuals”, and that “in the end the show will be critic-proof”. But is it Charles Spencer-proof? Just about, it seems. While much of the 1939 movie “had me metaphorically reaching for the sick-bag” – hence the gritted teeth, perhaps – “I did at least manage to sit through it without throwing up in the aisle.” Do say: We’re off the see the wizard! Don’t say: … but we’ve heard he’s lost his whizz. The reviews reviewed: Ain’t got no soul.
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March 2 2011, 5:24pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The Wizard of Oz – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/02/the-wizard-of-oz-review
The Guardian amongst others has published a review of The Wizard of Oz with Danielle Hope at the London Palladium. If you like The Wizard of Oz on film you will undoubtedly enjoy the stage version too. Red Shoes Blues sung by Hannah Waddingham as the Wicked Witch of the West is one of the highlights, and a new song with lyrics by Tim Rice: “She’s pretty, she’s clueless and I want her shoeless”.
This article titled “The Wizard of Oz – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 2nd March 2011 00.53 UTC The Victorian theatre of spectacle is alive and well, and residing at the London Palladium. But although this adaptation of the Frank Baum book and the 1939 movie, with additional songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is quite an eyeful, it’s somewhat lacking in humanity. I came out feeling blitzkrieged rather than charmed. The star of the show is undoubtedly the set and costume designer, Robert Jones. The Kansas cyclone that whisks Dorothy into a dreamworld is evoked through vorticist projections (the work of Jon Driscoll) that betoken chaos in the cosmos. The Yellow Brick Road is on a tilted revolve from inside which poppyfields and labyrinthine forest emerge. The Emerald City is full of steeply inclined walls suggesting a drunkard’s vision of the Chrysler Building lobby. And the Wicked Witch of the West inhabits a rotating dungeon that might be a Piranesi nightmare. Not since 19th century Drury Lane melodramas can London have seen anything quite like it; one has to admire the director and co-adaptor, Jeremy Sams, for marshalling the effects. But the story and the people get swamped. Danielle Hope shows a natural, easy presence as Dorothy, but can’t hope to compete with the scenery. Even Michael Crawford, playing both Professor Marvel and The Wizard, seems slightly subdued, and misses a trick by not highlighting the latter’s resemblance to PT Barnum whom he once played. Only two of the cast transcend the spectacle. Hannah Waddingham makes the Wicked Witch a pointy-chinned ogre who at one point flies over the audience’s heads with an elan that Spider Man might envy. David Ganly notches up a first by making the Cowardly Lion explicitly gay and announcing “I’m proud to be a friend of Dorothy.” Of course, there are the songs; it’s good to be reminded of such classics as Over The Rainbow, We’re Off To See The Wizard, and Follow The Yellow Brick Road. The additions by Lloyd Webber and Rice are also perfectly acceptable. Dorothy is given a good plaintive opening number, and Red Shoes Blues, sung by the Wicked Witch, has a pounding intensity. But, as a film scholar remarked to me, the movie was a story with songs rather than a full-blown musical. That delicate balance has been changed, and an essentially simple fable about the importance of individual worth seems overblown. I suspect in the end the show will be critic-proof and people will go to see both the winner of the TV talent contest and to luxuriate in the sumptuous visuals. But the paradox of the evening is that it suffers the same dilemma as the Tin Man: it might have been so much more if it only had a heart.
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March 2 2011, 2:14pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Toto recall: the Wizard of Oz hits the West End
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/28/toto-recall-the-wizard-of-oz-hits-the-west-end
A preview for the Wizard of Oz opening soon in London’s West End starring Danielle Hope as Dorothy and Michael Crawford as the Wizard, with Hannah Waddingham as the Wicked Witch of the West.
This article titled “Toto recall: the Wizard of Oz hits the West End” was written by Maddy Costa, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 21.59 UTC ‘From where I’m sitting,” splutters Jeremy Sams, “I can’t think of anything less safe in the world.” The director seems flabbergasted, wounded even, by my suggestion that his new West End production of The Wizard of Oz seems a surefire hit. After all, it reproduces much of the formula that made Sams’s 2006 staging of The Sound of Music such a triumph: it’s a musical better known as a film; it’s an Andrew Lloyd Webber collaboration; choreographer Arlene Phillips and set designer Robert Jones are back on board; the lead, Danielle Hope, is an unknown who won the part in a reality TV show, Over the Rainbow. “Nothing’s safe,” continues Sams. “Nothing’s safe, and to say safe almost sounds pejorative and derogatory. There are good titles – but if you don’t respect a title, the audience throw shoes at you very quickly.” If contemplating the audience makes Sams nervous, he has no fears about his creative team. “These are all people who have done big shows, so when things get hairy and scary and look massive, they can say we’ve got through this before, we’ll get through it again.” It also helps, says Arlene Phillips, that “we can pick at each other’s work. None of us are precious about anything if, in the bigger scheme of things, it isn’t going to work.” Nor does Sams feel any trepidation about working with a young actor whose only qualifications are a drama A-level and three months of training. “We always wanted a young girl, aged 17 or 18, so whoever we cast, it would have been the same issue,” he says. As far as he is concerned, Hope’s appearance on reality TV has been nothing but advantageous – not, oh cynical reader, because of the attendant publicity, but because “someone who’s got the fearlessness to get through a TV job like that arrives with a certain amount of chutzpah. It’s an audition process and an unbelievably stressful and public one.” Hope is perfect casting, he thinks, because she embodies “the most key thing for Dorothy – not ever to be defeated or downhearted. Even when things are going against her, she has to believe it’s going to be OK.” A few minutes in Hope’s company is enough to see what Sams means: she is radiant with optimism. She is so down-to-earth, you wonder what possessed her to enter Over the Rainbow. “I’d never watched a reality TV programme,” she laughs. “I didn’t know what I was in for.” She only applied because she didn’t think she would be able to afford to go to drama school. Despite her inexperience, Hope talks like a seasoned actor. Asked if she feels burdened by the responsibility of comparing favourably with Judy Garland, she admits that she did initially, but then says firmly: “I’m not going to imitate Judy because no one could and no one should. I made a conscious decision to find out who [Dorothy] was – if you make that as real as possible, an audience should forget about what they’ve seen.” Nonetheless, it’s clear that the fame of the film is as much a curse as a blessing. “There’s no way of replicating it, because how do you put a movie on stage?” asks Sams. “Movies have different logic, different structures, different feel, different tempo.” Yet there is a sense in which it is the movie that audiences come to see – and the creative team respect that. “I’d be mad to reinvent it completely,” says Robert Jones. “Everyone’s got images in their head of what The Wizard of Oz is, and to an extent you’ve got to give them that. But it’s got to be my take.” With another Oz story, Wicked, already attracting huge West End crowds (last year it broke box-office records, earning over £1m in a single week), Sams and Jones know that, to compete, this has to be a lavish show. But it isn’t just that, says Sams: the story demands visual extravagance. “It’s a picaresque with scene after scene after scene in different places, so the show has to be perpetually delivering more things,” he says. The stage for Oz has a triple revolve, with a system of hydraulics that can raise or tilt each section. The models for the design alone took five months to make; and, with 25 scene changes, the building of the set has been “a nightmare”. It has also made the transfer from the rehearsal room – a bog-standard space with a resolutely flat, still floor – problematic. “So much of the movement becomes hit and miss,” says Phillips. “A stage section you thought was going to be smooth has a gap and you can’t ask people in high heels to tread on it. It’s a complicated process.” And then there’s the last-minute work required to tailor the show’s lighting and sound. I spend an afternoon watching rehearsals, and progress is agonisingly slow. I start watching at 2pm, as the projections team screen a just-finished animation of the haunted forest. There is a long lull, then the Wicked Witch’s wrought-iron castle revolves into position, presided over by Hannah Waddingham’s imperious witch and two terrifying monkeys. It looks glorious – but it has taken an hour and 20 minutes to run through barely two minutes of show. The danger, Sams recognises, is that this intense focus on getting the technology working, testing lighting and sound effects, tailoring the choreography to the stage, might swamp the story at the heart of the show. “The trick,” he says, “is to take what we had in the rehearsal room, which is a heartfelt, touching, small thing, and make it small but big.” But despite all his jitters, he’s clearly having the time of his life. “It’s The Wizard of Oz,” he says cheerfully, “and who wouldn’t want to work on The Wizard of Oz?”
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February 27 2011, 6:06pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Drowning on Dry Land – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/27/drowning-on-dry-land-review
Theatre review of Alan Ayckbourn’s Drowning on Dry Land at the at the Jermyn Street theatre.
This article titled “Drowning on Dry Land – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 17.58 UTC Long before it became trendy to attack celebrity culture, Alan Ayckbourn satirised it brilliantly in his 1988 Man of the Moment. He returned to the theme in this play, which had its Scarborough premiere in 2004: the year that The X Factor made its debut. And, even if the fame game is now madder than even Ayckbourn foresaw, it’s salutary to be reminded that comedy, at its best, can have a moral purpose. Ayckbourn’s hero, Charlie Conrad, is a TV celebrity who has charm but no talent: he has risen to the top by his persistent failure, first as a middle-distance athlete and then as a hopeless quiz contestant. But Charlie’s world unravels when he is caught in a compromising position with a female clown at his son’s birthday party. Even if Ayckbourn takes time establishing Charlie’s epic incompetence, he is very good at showing what happens when the bubble bursts. While Charlie’s wife, agent and the sexually impetuous clown all benefit from his humiliating downfall, he himself retreats into a shrunken private life. Although Ayckbourn ends with a faint gesture of hope, the play burns with indignation at the way fame is now divorced from hard work and achievement. Christopher Coghill makes Charlie a little too blandly apologetic. Otherwise, Guy Retallack’s production nails all the key points. Mark Farrelly is buoyantly funny as a vain celebrity lawyer who helicopters in to destroy the charges brought by the litigious clown, played by Helen Mortimer with a touching solemnity. Emma Swain as Charlie’s resentful wife and Les Dennis, who knows a thing or two about the whirligig of fame, as his agent also lend weight to a play that may not be major Ayckbourn but is one that effectively harpoons our society’s elevation of the untalented.
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February 27 2011, 12:18pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
West Is West – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/26/west-is-west-%E2%80%93-review
East is East was a stage play which I saw at the Theatre Royal Stratford some time in the 90s. So here’s a review not of the theatre but of a new film West is West.
This article titled “West Is West – review” was written by Peter Bradshaw, for The Guardian on Thursday 24th February 2011 22.15 UTC In 1999, East Is East was a smash-hit 70s-set British-Asian film and a key commercial cinema success of the New Labour era; it was a comedy about Pakistan, Britain and Islam that was of its pre-9/11 time, just as Chris Morris’s Four Lions is very much of our time. But this sequel shows that its scenario and characters have an awful lot of life and relevance left in them. Young Sajid (Ajib Khan) is now a tricky teenager, unhappy at school, bullied by racists and patronised by a teacher who presents him with a copy of Kipling’s Kim. So his formidable dad George (Om Puri) takes Sajid for a restorative trip to Pakistan, where he has been sending money to his first wife and family. His second, British wife Ella (Linda Bassett) pursues him out there, and effectively forces him to choose between identities. Perhaps it doesn’t have the novelty of the first film, but it’s refreshingly un-parochial, with charm and fun, and Bassett and Puri are reliably excellent.
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February 26 2011, 5:10am | Comments »
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Legally Blonde and Wicked dominate Whatsonstage.com awards
Legally Blonde, Wicked, Les Miserables, Love Never Dies mentioned. This article titled “Legally Blonde and Wicked dominate Whatsonstage.com awards” was written by Mark Brown, for The Guardian on Sunday 20th February 2011 19.00 UTC They are both West End productions which appeal to teenage girls and young women and they were both crowned big winners at the only major theatre awards voted on exclusively by the public. The 11th Whatsonstage.com awards were handed out in central London with Legally Blonde the Musical winning the most. The feelgood show, about a pink-obsessed society girl who astounds and dazzles everybody at law school, won four prizes including best new musical and best choreography. Sheridan Smith, who co-hosted the ceremony, was named best actress in a musical for her portrayal of Elle Woods and Jill Halfpenny, the one time Geordie police officer turned nail salon owner in EastEnders, won best supporting actress in a musical for her role as a sassy hairdresser, Paulette. Wicked the Musical, with its enormous social networking savvy fanbase, always does well in any public vote and it won best West End show for the second year running. It has been dropped from this year’s Olivier prize public vote to give someone else a chance. Rachel Tucker also won best takeover in a role for her performance as green witch Elphaba. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Love Never Dies, which got off to a rocky critical start but this month extended its run into 2012, won two prizes for best actor (Ramin Karimloo) and best supporting actor (Joseph Millson). Les Miserables’ 25th birthday celebrations were celebrated. The anniversary concert at the O2 was event of the year and best ensemble performance and the production at its first home, the Barbican, was best musical revival. In the straight play categories, the all-black cast Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won best play revival, Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn at Shakespeare’s Globe was best new play, Yes, Prime Minister was best new comedy and the National Theatre’s Hamlet was named best Shakespearean production. Zoe Wanamaker and David Suchet were named best actress and actor in a play for All My Sons, with Tamsin Greig named best supporting actress for The Little Dog Laughed and Nigel Lindsay best supporting actor for Broken Glass at the Tricycle. Glee star Jonathan Groff was named newcomer of the year for Deathtrap. Terri Paddock, whatsonstage.com’s editorial director, said the awards were different to the Oliviers, where theatres such as the Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court routinely dominated. “Our 45,000-plus theatregoer votes have instead, once again, concentrated their accolades on the strong work produced by the commercial sector. “It’s fantastic to see crowd-pleasers like Legally Blonde, Les Miserables and Yes, Prime Minister receive the recognition they deserve, alongside smaller but equally worthwhile productions like Broken Glass and Anne Boleyn.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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February 23 2011, 5:46am | Comments »
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Phoenix Theatre Stage Door
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Andyrob
April 20 2009, 7:27am | Comments »
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