The Matchgirls (St Andrew's Players) - Full Muse

Those desirous of a bit of relief from Royal Wedding hysteria could do a lot worse than pop into St Andrew’s Players latest musical offering. The Matchgirls celebrates the famous and courageous strike of 1888 to improve the working conditions of downtrodden factory women. Heavy in theme but light in depiction, simple songs intertwine with complex social issues to illustrate both small community drama and the larger political stage. In an astute intimate setting, surprising in such a large arena, the camaraderie of London’s underclass is best displayed in some powerful collective singing and strong portrayals from the two warring lovers of Jo Yirrell and Joe Hawkins. More small scale musical than blockbuster, The Matchgirls informs, educates, and entertains in the best Reithian fashion. I doubt the Windsor lot being able to say the same. Malcolm Farrar directs with pleasing imagination. Roy Hall

 When I said all the above after watching the Wednesday dress rehearsal I had every intention of following up with a fuller review. Star ratings and all. You see, I am so clever I can project my imagination to actual performing nights with bursting audiences and honed and polished portrayals. Except I can’t, and besides it ain’t fair. Those on stage, and the ones twiddling electrics and musical batons, might be better, or worse, than I imagined. First night brilliance followed by second or third night wobbles, the latter almost guaranteed if a bloody critic is in. And that bloody critic gets the one, elusive, theatrical snapshot that provokes rave or rant. As it should be. All I get from a dress rehearsal is an impression, a promise that may or may not be fulfilled.  Bit like a Newmarket trainer watching his horse on the limekilns gallops. It may flash and flare in its prep but only the actual race will find if it flops or fires. I knew I would get in a racing analogy somewhere. It’s my own fault, should have attended one of the actual nights to get the full flavour. But I didn’t. So I am not going to do an official review. I might have done some musings instead and, if I had, here they are. If you know what I mean.

 Simple musical with serious issues underlining it. Needs a studio setting with bravura playing by the cast. Being belted in a small space fits the bill. It cleverly got the former thanks to director Malcolm Farrar astutely enveloping all in a small black set. Annie Besant’s palatial St John’s Wood domicile simply suggested by a splendid chaise longue, and leading man Joe’s backyard realistically evoked by Victorian street lamp and sounds of lapping water were particularly impressive. Mr Farrar clearly had the right idea and linked the disparate scenes pretty well. The switching link in the song ‘Something About You’ certainly ticked my theatrical boxes. Some other scene changes were a bit muted, most notably boys' low key whistling for distant pigeons, but imagination says this would have improved with performance. I am so kind. Acting and singing split me if that does not sound too painful. The singing was generally pretty good, individually and collectively, and if the songs aren’t memorable they were very catchy. I particularly liked ‘Men’, though God knows where it came from in the narrative. But who cares. Kate and Polly belted it over. And who couldn’t like ‘Waiting’ and ‘This Life of Mine.’ Stirring stuff both. In my reviewing days St Andrew’s Players had a reputation for being one of the best around for choral singing in musicals. You can still see why. I haven’t a single word or pithy phrase to say about the musicians, so they must have been good. I only notice duff notes. So I reckon Richard Cowling and his team did a pretty good job.

 Now acting is different. I am an expert on acting. Ask anyone who has ever thrown a brick at me. I can spot a mislaid cue or a misplaced line a mile off. Pace and truth are meat and drink to me in characterisation. My numerous unpublished books are only outsold by my best seller ‘How to Win at Newmarket.’ Don’t go, is the answer to that one. But, opinions folks not facts, I sniffed out a few in the acting stakes. Jo Yirrell (Kate) and Joe Hawkins (Joe) were spirited leads drawn apart by political circumstances. Neatly encapsulated in the dilemma Kate felt when the call of social agitation eclipsed the promise of flight to the American dream. A misunderstood matchgirl if ever there was one. If I preferred Joe Hawkins acting, very strong, to his singing I suspect he does as well. Of the others Allanah Rogers impressed for a sassy Polly, disconcertingly pleasing on the eye, Tracey Chatterley for a powerful Mrs Purkiss, all East End suffering in her face, and Evie Wright for a scheming and manipulative Jessie. In a mixed ensemble all gave notable performances. As did Frances Hall in the small role of Annie Besant’s no nonsense secretary and Reece Lowen as match factory foreman Mynel. All menace, mouth and moustache, he commendably stayed just the right side of archetypal Victorian villain. I should not, of course, mention Mrs Hall so I will not do so.

 I will mention the toffs though. Apart from anything else they were the real characters in a real piece of history wrapped up in fictional working class characters. Annie Besant, socialist reformer, and George Bernard Shaw, socialist windbag, lived and breathed through late 19^th century history and beyond. The matchgirls strike was meat and drink to their reformist agenda. They both did a fine job, Malcolm Farrar every inch one’s perception of a young GBS and Michelle Arnold a fine and gentle Mrs Besant. Possibly too gentle at times as always vocally more at ease in familiar settings of office and home than in alien surroundings of the great unwashed. Perhaps the real Mrs Besant had the same problems. I have no idea. This is a muse not a history lesson. And neither was Bill Owen’s musical. A history lesson that is. We got a slight flavour of the real social strife but we got more of a few jolly songs. And all in all it made for a pretty good evening, nicely choreographed by the excellent Sarah Albert and splashed with good sound and light by Tim Garside and Paul Horsler. And that was the dress rehearsal when, so I am told, everything usually goes wrong. I must have been lucky and, probably, it all went pear shaped on the opening night. I doubt it though. Once they warmed up this Matchgirls started to gel.

Here endeth the unwritten muse.

Roy Hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Matchgirls (St Andrew's Players) - Preview

Those desirous of a bit of relief from Royal Wedding hysteria could do a lot worse than pop into St Andrew’s Players latest musical offering. The Matchgirls celebrates the famous and courageous strike of 1888 to improve the working conditions of downtrodden factory women. Heavy in theme but light in depiction, simple songs intertwine with complex social issues to illustrate both small community drama and the larger political stage. In an astute intimate setting, surprising in such a large arena, the camaraderie of London’s underclass is best displayed in some powerful collective singing and strong portrayals from the two warring lovers of Jo Yirrell and Joe Hawkins. More small scale musical than blockbuster, The Matchgirls informs, educates, and entertains in the best Reithian fashion. I doubt the Windsor lot being able to say the same. Malcolm Farrar directs with pleasing imagination. Roy Hall

 

 

St Andrew’s Players

The Matchgirls,

St Andrew’s Church, Luton.

17^th – 19^th May     7.45pm

 

Box Office: 07778 241457     www.standram.co.uk

 

Full Review to follow

Funny Money - Redbourn Players

Funny Money

Redbourn Players

Village Hall

Redbourn

4th May 2018

**

I have been musing on my two loves of theatre and horseracing this week. Well, the horses anyway seeing as it is the Newmarket Guineas Meeting. Those classy three year old colts and fillies strutting their stuff on a big stage after months wrapped up in winter cotton wool. If you were lucky a few of them would have had a pipe opener somewhere in the proceeding weeks. Well in a way, tortuous analogy slowly coming to the point, that is what I have done. Other than cavorting various boards in sundry murder mysteries, great fun, thespian activities have been pretty thin on the ground. No scribing for months. I wish to change that with a sharpened pen for Wheathampstead’s Dangerous Corner at the end of the month. A favourite play by a favourite author. So popping down to the Redbourn Players for Ray Cooney’s Funny Money was my equivalent of an early season spin on the gallops. Even knackered old geldings have to get out sometime.

Ray Cooney is a master of farcical comedy. They may not tick all my theatrical boxes but even this misery will admit that done well, frenetic pace anchored to inner truthfulness, they will invoke involuntary chuckles. As long as real characters increasingly notch up ludicrous inner desperation, along the way making you laugh rather than think, they can be and are a great success. Funny Money has all the necessary ingredients. Switched briefcases, £750,000 in one and a cheese sandwich in the other, switched characters from compliant neighbours, an irate and quirky taxi driver, and two rather unusual rain coated detectives. All conspire with a nondescript accountant desperate for Barcelona and a nervy wife desperate for the bottle to create mayhem in a little bit of London suburbia. Cooney territory writ large. All it needed was Brian Rix both dropping in and dropping trousers to complete the happy picture.

If the picture in my mind was not matched by the portrayal on stage it was, nevertheless, an enjoyable evening. Redbourn are a small company but they created a nice bit of living room suburbia with lots of pleasing doors and an impressive realistic staircase. And in that suburbia we got a convincing minor accountant from Andy Turner’s Henry Perkins, bluster and opportunism equally displayed, and a nervy, alcoholic dependent, Jean Perkins from Lucy Goodchild. These two central players did a pretty good job. Personally I would have liked a little bit more panic and quiet desperation from Mr Turner to flesh out his lines but, in fairness, he never bored. And Ms Goodchild, in the best performance of the evening, suggested by her wavering voice and uncharacteristic reach for the bottle, the long suffering and anonymous housewife behind many a suburban door. When a man, even a dreary accountant, seizes an opportunity, his woman seizes some other support.

Of the other characters Maureen Wallis and Jordan Davis were an ill matched pair as the neighbourly and complicit Johnsons, stronger direction needed in ensemble scenes, and Euan Howell and Hilary Violentano two of the strangest detectives I have seen this side of  Wormwood Scrubs. I would not trust either of them with my parking ticket appeal, let alone a quest for a dodgy £750,000. Mr Howell, thin and rain coated and with a fetching little tache, had clearly blown in from some 1950’s bleak filmic murder mystery, and Ms Violentano’s DS Slater suggested nothing more than a homely June Whitfield. I quite liked her performance and if she had baked us a cake, so in keeping with her persona, I would have liked her even better. If my opinion on these motley subsidiary characters to the Perkins household is pretty firm the fifth one had me in more theatrical opinions than you could shake the proverbial stick at. No one on stage delivered lines better than Benita Gilliam’s quirky taxi driver. With her jaunty Joe Orton hat and manly clothes she suggested nothing less than Theatre Workshop’s Joan Littlewood. I suspect this was intentional. But a performance that displayed considerable skill was marred by over physicality. In other words the bloody woman never stood still when delivering those lines. I would have directed it out of her because, undoubtedly, Ms Gilliam can act.

But overall not a bad evening. A new director, David Howell, will learn as I hope I did, that sharper pace and more truthful characterisation will yield even more positive results. For instance the unseemly, blanket covered, sofa shenanigans should have been a highlight of the comedy but underdeveloped characters devoid of the essential innocent manic drive induced merely mild amusement and the thought of missed opportunity. Farce has its own internal logic. Miss it, even by an inch, and it falls flat on its face. Bit like my fancy for the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket. But I still enjoyed the race and, overall, I enjoyed my evening out to this one. As the art mistress said to the gardener, I may not be blind to your faults but I thank you for the pleasure. Horses at Newmarket or theatre in Redbourn. All matter. All gratefully received. And pen readily sharpened for Wheathampstead.

 

Roy Hall