Lucky Stiff - St Andrews Players (Toddington)

 

Lucky Stiff

***

 Haven’t done a blog for almost a year. Been too busy being doubled and trebled jabbed and avoiding human contact like the plague. Literally. But one has to get out occasionally and, quadrupled jabbed and ridiculously bullish, I ventured along to Toddington for Luton St Andrews latest. Lucky Stiff. Postponed more times than a certain infamous Scottish football match that got ditched twenty nine times. I exaggerate, but then I often do. But, exaggerations apart, I wasn’t the only one catching up on long lost and forgotten interaction with old theatrical friends. Loads in the night I went and all in full volume anticipatory voices. Simple pleasures long deprived. Noisy audience harbingered noisy show. Seemed appropriate, and the warmth of post covid meetings enhanced the mood. But, what about the show? say the two or three who read these ramblings. I mean, let’s face it, not a single soul is interested in the incipient musings of an ageing theatrical codger. Cut to chase, was it any good?

Well, yes and no. Lucky Stiff is a quick fire mad zany musical with songs easily forgotten and a plot so ludicrous you could not make it up. Except it was. Based, loosely or otherwise, I have no idea, on the tale of The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, a corpse is trailed through a variety of scenes to win some hapless individual a $6,000,000 dollar inheritance. Pursued avidly by a neurotically inclined dog lover and a gun toting blind bimbo with her equally hapless brother. It is a convoluted plot, there is much more which I will not relate, based on a pretty thin joke that gets increasingly thinner and desperate, so all brownie points rest on how well the production zings and how well those actors do. Forgive me, but I did say that this was a yes and no review and brains should not be engaged for the ride.

Audiences roared, or some of them, and actors on stage thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Why not? It is a fun show, much needed in these desperate times. Along with covid I now throw in Ukraine, the cost of living, energy prices, and that big fancy at Newbury that let me down in the final furlong. I and everyone else at Toddington needed a lift. It has been a rotten two years. I got one, as did all, and for that I thank the actors. Not my sort of show, it is my age, and director Dee Lovelock needed a bit more zing in her scene changes but some of the performers warmed the cockles of an old heart. And for that, in barren and bleak times, I will forgive almost anything.

Sarah Albert was superb as the dipsy Rita La Porta. Her performance as the myopic gun slinging sister had a genius touch of Lucille Ball, and I cannot give her more praise than that. Absolutely watchable throughout. She was well matched by the completely opposite Jo Yirrell as the straight laced dog loving Annabel Glick. Her song about loving dogs more than folks touched like few others. These were without doubt the outstandingly two best performances in a show loud on punch but a little short on imagination.

 Barry Hyde was presentable as hapless Harry Witherspoon, the central character of ludicrous inheritance, even if his acting convinced more than his singing, Ben Jaggers an impressive and assured optical sidekick to his zany sister, and Jo Wells, superb singing, a most engaging and sinuous Dominique. I would also single out Richard Alexander for an affecting Luigi, even if expecting the Go Compare Tenor reprise at any moment, Michelle Arnold for an unnervingly convincing, raucous Blackpool voiced landlady. And the admirable Stacey Peck for a totally convincing Lucky Stiff. Title role, constantly talked about, and hardly a line to learn. A part to die for. Literally. And he did it so well.

Director Dee Lovelock worked her actors well but the disparate scenes needed to zing a bit more to capture the full flavour of a show rich in persaz and narrative  but short on emotional depth. I did say I was an ageing curmudgeon. The hotel bed, so important for the unlikely coupling of Witherspoon and the doggy lady, created staging problems and the casino scene, small table and small wheel, poor in imagination and execution, diluted the necessary impact. Given the skilled cast, especially the ladies, we needed everything to zing. What we got was a half zing. A three star. But enjoyable all the same. Richard Cowling crooned and controlled it all, Martin Hart did a sterling job on the piano accompaniment, and a full theatre continued the highly vocal chatting long after it was all over. A post covid evening, much needed and much welcomed. So thanks Toddington and St Andrews. Not my sort of show, sniffy sod that I am, but in these strange times uplifting. As some would undoubtedly say I am getting soft. Infinitely preferable to being the enigmatic Lucky Stiff. When I go to my own personal Monte Carlo (Royal Ascot, Cheltenham, or wherever) I would prefer to be alive.

 

Roy Hall

 

 

Confusions - High Street Players

Confusions

Harpenden High Street Players

Katherine Warrington School

Sunday 11th July 2021

I did something very strange and unusual yesterday. Don’t get excited, I didn’t rob a bank or go skinny dipping. Far too old for both. No, the strange thing I did was to go to a theatre, sit with other people, and watch actors on a stage performing a play. In the modern, zoom infested, world it is the first time I have done that for nearly eighteen months. Okay it wasn’t really a theatre, only a school hall, and the actors were from my own small company but it was a start at getting back to some sort of normality. Hands were sanitised, faces were masked, and chairs socially distanced, so it wasn’t pre pandemic days at the National but it lifted my spirits. In a barren world the smallest gifts are precious.

I have always, in the past, studiously avoided reviewing a company I am associated with. I do have standards you know, albeit pretty low ones. Beside there are no brownie points in it. Any praise seems sycophantic and any criticism might get your tea laced at the next social get together. And, perish the thought, if on stage with some actor you slagged off in his or her last production you may get more than lines thrown in your direction. But strange times lead to strange decisions and having no involvement in any capacity with Confusions I skirted the boring tennis, popped along to see it and decided to give it a blog. It was either that or skinny dipping.

Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions is a series of loosely linked playlets from his early days which, pleasingly, have never dated. All beautifully illustrate both the sad and comic aspects of the human condition. And no one does that better than Ayckbourn. Mother Figure depicts a lonely and disturbed Lucy treating her neighbours as children, Between Mouthfuls has two warring couples linked audibly by their hovering waitress (a splendid Margaret Cox) and the manically comic Gosforth’s Fete has mayhem in abundance both on and offstage. Lewis Cox gave a first class bravura performance as the dominating Gosforth but all in this little gem of a play gave solid performances. The production was rounded off with the gentle and perceptive A Talk in the Park when communication, or the lack of it, underlined the sadness of many lives. Kirstene Henriksen, impressive in all her roles, particularly scored as the neurotic women convinced that all police women are really men in drag. Laughing through masks isn’t easy but I managed that one.

All in all a pretty good couple of hours. A bit more pace and projection in the early plays, coupled with some music to fill the necessary long scene changes, would have enhanced some proceedings but given that the most complex, Gosforth’s Fete, zinged, then Margaret Cox edges the directorial stakes over the admirable Mike Lees. And in this one the light and sound boys served up a highly realistic storm. I know, because I am an expert on storms and stage ones often fail to convince. Six actors played eighteen roles between them in the four plays with rarely a serious slip. Daisy Hollingsworth (an amusingly ingenuous Milly impregnated by Gosforth), Richard Pike and David Cox completed the pleasing sextet.

So, hopefully, no obvious sycophancy and, even more hopefully, no poisonously laced tea at our next theatrical get together. Besides, if we are all still wearing masks perhaps they won’t recognise me. I knew this pandemic had compensations.

Roy Hall

Relatively Speaking (Company of Ten)

 

Relatively Speaking

Live stream - 12th November 2020

****

Cracking theatre from a classy company.

 

I did something very strange last week but, after all, it is a strange year. I went to the theatre or, more to the point, the theatre came to me. Company of Ten live streamed their latest audience denied production and, being an Alan Ayckbourn, I decided to tune in. With a little help from someone far more techno savvy than me. Live streaming, a phrase that would have been alien in 2019 trips off the tongue in virus torn 2020. You watch an old fashioned but incredibly clever and funny play from the 1960s via your modern state of the art tablet, and studiously watch the actors socially distance their complex mask free parts. It’s a funny old world at the moment but at least you escape parking charges, petrol costs, and oodles of ice creams for your friends. And the drinks from the bar are free. Or that is what I tell myself.

I missed the first bit of the first scene of Relatively Speaking but knowing the play well it did not matter. Besides, set in Ginny and Greg’s London flat it is merely there to set up the delicious confusions that follow when the action moves to leafy Buckinghamshire. I shan’t regale you with the plot, I would be here all day, other than to say that Greg thinking that Ginny’s middle aged lover is her father leads to tortuously comic misunderstandings in spades. It is a rich seam which Ayckbourn mines beautifully with logical precision. You never for a moment think that one word or one line could explain all. Hence the play’s continuing charm.

Director Angela Stone had a cracking cast. Ben Cammack was an engagingly geeky Greg and Emma Barry, far too common for a Buckinghamshire family, a feisty Ginny. Both played their parts with super pace and delivery. But the stars of this, and all productions of the play I have seen or heard, were the so called ‘parents’ Philip and Sheila. When Philip, thinking that Sheila is Greg’s lover rather than Ginny, learns of a thirty year older man in her life he assumes he must be eighty. It was a delightful comic piece, both in delivery and reactions. And Sheila innocently questioning her so called ‘daughter’ Ginny about how she was brought up and where she lives was exquisite in timing and responses. Suzie Major and Russell Vincent, acting talents I have seen before, both bring exceptional skills to their rich parts even if, as I said earlier, I really should not try to explain the plot.

The play was excellently directed and staged by Angela Stone on Judith Goodban’s impressive patio garden set and, thankfully, the camera operators were not too intrusive. All in all a classy production from a company I have regularly admired. More so in these current challenging times. I only went to my private bar once, and that was in the interval, and if there are not many laughs in this semi-serious blog I assure they were in abundance at the Abbey. A reminder, think Rosemary Leach, Celia Johnson, and the Michaels, Hordern and Aldridge et al, of what we are all missing. Many, many, thanks, Ten.

Roy Hall

Finborough Theatre - Jane Clegg

****

An absorbing evening of lockdown theatre

It’s a funny old world. Being an old bird I don’t venture out much these days. Especially in the evenings. So lockdown changed little. But as a grumpy old sod one of my constant bleats in recent years has been the lack of anything decent for geriatric theatre lovers to watch on the telly. I fondly remember Play for Today, The Wednesday Play, Saturday Night Theatre, Armchair Theatre, and Play of the Month. I could go on but I am in danger of being boring. Oh all right I am boring. You got Priestley and Rattigan, Galsworthy, Chekhov, Turgenev. And TV master playwrights like Potter, Rosenthal, and Alan Plater. In spades. And they would be aired in the three or four TV channel era. Halcyon days. Nowadays bugger all. Hundreds of channels and nowt to watch. But as I say it is a funny old world. Come the dreaded virus and along with the plethora of singing birds in the garden we get plays, if not in battalions at least not single spies.

Finborough theatre in West Brompton has never figured on my radar till now. In horseracing terms, I can’t resist it, if the National Theatre is Arkle or Frankel (google them), then this modest 50 seat pub theatre is down amongst the claimers. I mean that kindly. Small is often beautiful and, recommended by a theatrical friend, this very much proved to be so. Dipped into it for an absorbing ninety minute Jane Clegg and both enjoyed and learned. My ignorance constantly amazes me. I knew not the play, the writer, or the company. I left an expert in all, or that is what I shall now pretend. Gaining such theatrical knowledge in this virus has its compensations.

Edwardian housewife Jane Clegg strikes me as a bit of a dry fish. No wonder her old man was having it away with some impregnated floozie he wishes to abscond with. Trouble is he doesn’t have any money and his wife does. Inherited wealth is a pretty powerful weapon and Mrs Clegg, a beautifully restrained performance from Alix Dunmore, uses it wisely. Can’t say the same for her hapless Henry, a contrastingly powerful portrayal by Brian Martin. He gambles, embezzles, and lies with the consummate ease of the inherently feckless. A modern woman would have kicked him out long ago. But this was Edwardian England and when he finally departs, almost with her blessing, the context indicates a degree of feminine courage.

If that was writer St John Ervine’s point then I got it. Written in the age of women’s suffrage, and first performed around about the time Emily Davison threw herself under the thundering hooves of the Epsom Derby, Jane Clegg is an Ibsenesque trumpet call to women. The set is tiny, pleasingly so, and the flowery wallpaper enhances the ambient claustrophobic staging. David Gilmore had a strong cast throughout and I was particularly taken by the awkwardness of Sidney Livingstone’s office manager Mr Morrison. He conveyed beautifully his distaste and discomfort over the unpleasantness of Henry Clegg’s embezzled cheque. Neither welcomed nor relished.

I have been regularly throwing in my own non embezzled tenner donation to the National whenever watching one of their magnificent plays. Finborough Theatre deserves the same. Viewed through Youtube over the silhouetted heads of the compact audience it made for a theatre lovers pleasurable, self isolating, Saturday night in this funny old pandemic world. And that, as they say, is where I came in. Roy Hall

 

 

Life in Lockdown - a plea for small theatres

I have a number of passions in my life. They have changed positions as I have aged, but the overall list is pretty stable. Horseracing, theatre, old murder cases, cooking, reading, and my lovely wife are all in there somewhere plus a couple I have no intentions of telling you about. With the exception of horseracing, sadly missed, they have all come to the fore in these weird endless weeks of lockdown. For the statistically minded I am now on Day 62 of self isolation. Made bearable by a first class service from Waitrose. And all those lovely delivery drivers. Especially the ones bringing whisky and fags. Benign weather and quiet skies bring birds in abundance to our small garden and acts of kindness, small and large, are witnessed everywhere. Only the daily parliamentary briefings of grim statistics and pictures of rainbows in small terraced windows remind you that there is a battle going on out there.

Theatre is just one of the numerous casualties and for those who perform in it as well as watch it is particularly frustrating. I am trying to do my bit for the professionals, anything I watch of theirs I make a small donation to their cause. The National Theatre’s Twelfth Night was well worth the £10 a sofa seat ticket we paid. I calculated that if everyone who tuned into it did the same they would have raised around £4,000,000. I hope they did. But that does not help those who perform for fun or seasonal visitors, especially the ones that have small theatres to run. From my own small world I am thinking of the lovely Manor Theatre in Sidmouth, our favourite holiday place and the home of England’s only permanent summer professional Rep Company, and, closer to home, Dunstable Rep, Welwyn’s Barn, and St Albans Company of Ten. And further afield Hitchin’s Queen Mother and Toddington’s TADS. Been to them all in my time. How will they survive I ask myself?

It ain’t going to be easy. Even if they can perform, not easy doing a social distancing Romeo and Juliet, will anyone come in the foreseeable future? Hopefully any gloomy prognosis will be thrown into the dustbin of history before long, but commonsense tells me that the next couple of years could be pretty fallow ones in the small time theatrical world. If they do not have strong reserves and, possibly, kindly local authorities, I reckon we lovers of their art will be asked to put our hands in our pockets. I would not blame them. We will need what they offer even more when this pandemic is finally over. If they sink it will be all our loss.

The even smaller companies, those without a permanent base, do not have the same problems. They can’t perform but they do not have a stonking large building to support. And if they are enterprising they can still have theatrical fun. The small company I am involved with, Harpenden High Street Players, have spent the last few weeks doing Zoom play readings and, ambitiously, recording our own version of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. As I said to the director driving it all, it helps to keep us sane. And it might raise some money for a worthy local cause.

So life in lockdown has not been too bad. Those interests listed above all help with my sanity and as I only walked into town to visit the local betting shop, closed, I can cope with talking to the odd duck on the riverbank every day. I worry, as we all do about all the usual things in these unusual times, wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t. Spent one night fretting that if I had toothache I would have to pull the bloody tooth out myself and spent another fretting about an imagined power cut spoiling all the lovely food I had stocked up in our freezer. And they are just the ones I can tell you about.

I don’t fret about theatre, or not yet. But I do hope they are all still there when the virus is in the history books. The National will survive, as will the Harpenden High St Players and their ilk. But what about those others I have mentioned. The ones with expensive buildings but no high profile and no income. They are scattered all over the country. And in my own small part of the world that means the Company of Tens and Dunstable Reps. So, if asked, add them to your list of ever growing deserving causes. The NHS, God bless em, help us when we are ill and are deservedly at the top. But theatre helps to keep us well. If they fold we will all be the poorer.
Roy Hall

Love From A Stranger (Wheathampstead DS)

Love From A Stranger

Feb 20th - 22nd 2020

Wheathampstead

***

Cruising happily down my blogs I see that I have not thrown my incisive, or irritating, theatrical opinion through Wheathampstead’s ample doors for nigh on eighteen months. They gave us a cracker (My mother Said etc.), lovingly scribed, and a damp squib (The Herd), sensibly silent. I love to praise, or at least commend, and found little in the latter. But they clearly miss me, given all the get well/stuffed cards I never received. Wait Until Dark may have been good, I am told it was, but thrillers on stage do not do a lot for me. Explains why in over forty years of directing I have only ever done two. And one of those was the real life Rattenbury murder case. Much more fun. But you should support local theatre and they do not get much more local than WDS. On a dreary Saturday night I threw my twenty quid for two into their collecting tin and prayed that the only murders on stage would be welcome ones.

Love From A Stranger may have Agatha Christie’s illustrious name on it but it is no Gaslight or Shadow of a Doubt. The main character is clearly a killer, probably a serial one, but there the similarity ends. The others have tension and narrative thrusts in spades, this Stranger had little. Teasing clues should engender a growing awareness in the prospective victim to deliciously engage a breathless audience. It’s a given. I am blowed if I could sense much in this script, not a great help to actors, and what there was suffered from muted direction and prosaic presentation. Director Robin Langer’s first port of call with an old fashioned pot boiler should have been to create oodles of menace in which to immerse the characters. But lack of atmospheric music and unimaginative country cottage setting scuppered that particular trick.

So it says a lot that most of those on stage turned in more than passable offerings and one or two were exceptionally good. Given some fine and spooky packaging they were skilled enough to add a grip the play never delivered. Or so I thought whilst contemplating a few more of those get stuffed cards. Damon Pattison was skilled and confident in his creation of the mysterious stranger who wins the heart of gullible and nouveau riche Cecily Harrington      (Lisa Fitzgerald). Eminently watchable, Mr Pattison’s too good to be true Bruce Lovell hinted at menace and danger almost from his first entrance. But if there were any warning bells in Ms Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the innocent prey they were pretty well muffled. Clues, some of them clunky, abounded but it was only in a slightly overwritten last scene that pennies seemed to finally drop. A signalling of earlier doubt would have enhanced an otherwise competent performance.

Other than Mr Pattison the best bit of acting came from Julie Gough in the role of best friend and London flatmate Mavis Wilson. Ms Gough has impressed before and her crystal cut accent created a character with brains and poise. I reckon she would have soon sent an incipient American killer and his mysterious suitcase packing. Her warning bells were decidedly not muffled. Viv Fairley made for a very nice Auntie Loo-Loo, even if the sniffy critic in me sensed a requirement for a more comic portrayal, and Sheila Scull was a pleasing country cottage maid. If she wasn’t making Cumberland pies offstage, everything about her suggested she should be. Steve Leadbetter struggled with his posh accent in the thankless role of Ms Harrington’s ditched boy friend and John Simpson, looking every inch the benign country doctor, merely struggled. I have no wish to be unkind and if Mr Simpson had relaxed into his role it could have been an absolute scene stealer. Especially in the scene where notorious past murderers are lovingly regaled to the unbelieving Ms Harrington. Malcolm Hobbs did a splendid job as the curmudgeon country gardener Hodgson and created so many alarm bells, buried peroxide bottles and financial chicanery, the heroine should have been out on her bike long before the last scene.

But Love From A Stranger is not a logical play. It is a bit of 1950’s thriller nonsense, adapted from a Christie short story by Frank Vosper, and needs mixing up in sign posted menace and dangerous atmosphere to make it work. Mysterious suitcases, prohibited cellars, the sinister bottles, and books on notorious murderers, are all very fine. They can provide a solid and pleasingly vicarious base to the most prosaic of plots. Christie does it in spades in her books. Wheathampstead had a pretty good cast overall but rather than murder most foul we got murder most bland. I quite enjoyed my evening, they deserve my twenty quid. But I shall of course, given my less than enthusiastic review, look warily for the get stuffed letters and any number of peroxide bottles. I reckon Crippen had similar problems. Roy Hall

Alligators - Company of Ten

Studio,
Company of Ten,
St Albans
Sun 26th January 2020

****
Another top class stunner from Company of Ten.

Andrew Keatley’s ‘Alligators’ is a searingly good and topical play and St Albans Company of Ten were on top form with some cracking central performances. As readers of this blog can see I don’t review much these days. Laziness and an unwillingness to be unkind limit the temptation to scatter the old keyboard. But the Abbey studio on a rainy Sunday afternoon often appeals. And this one ticked a few of my dramatic boxes. And, boy, it did not disappoint. 

Daniel Turner is a typical thirty something schoolteacher, married to an engaging and sprightly wife, and father to two young children. Toys and games litter the sparse but cosy flat and husband, wife, and seven year old daughter briefly live their equally cosy and anonymous lives. I say briefly because early dark hints suggest that, as the old song goes, there may be trouble ahead. An unseen headmaster not being his usual friendly self, a summons to chat about his position at the school and, most tellingly, an indication in lightly played games with his wife that schoolgirls have sexual appeal. 

An accusation from the past brings Daniel’s world crashing down on his less than saintly head. Teachers and fourteen year old schoolgirls are a potent and dangerous mix when the finger is pointed, particularly in post Saville times, and Mr Keatley’s play graphically illustrates how fragile respectability can so readily crumble. Few of us are as white as driven snow and the sexual skeletons in Mr Turner’s cupboard are fuel to an all consuming fire. He may be innocent, indeed he is innocent, but any man who watches adult schoolgirl porn and once engaged in a drunken student orgy must be guilty. Besides the papers say so and they are never wrong. And it could be anyone of us. It just wants that wavering accusing finger to point in a different direction.

Matt Hughes-Short gives a riveting performance in the central role of schoolteacher Daniel Turner. Always watchable, his descent into rage and despair beautifully etched the gradual crumbling of an ordinary man consumed by events beyond his control. A forgotten offstage schoolgirl, seven years on, jumped on a strident bandwagon and destroyed his life. He wasn’t a saint, in fact his sexual devilry was slightly overegged in the writing, but he did not deserve that all consuming and pointing finger. If, in his final desperation, he thought of Arthur Miller’s magnificent Crucible, I would not blame him. 

Katherine Steed was equally convincing as his supportive and troubled wife Sally. The scenes between the two were as sharp as razors and you were drawn into a private domestic drama so realistic you, occasionally, felt like apologising for your presence. Ms Steed effectively created a wife who loved her man, was not blind to his faults, and expunged all doubts. Or you hoped she did. And Darcy Jones, the seven year old daughter Genevieve, was absolutely perfect in a controlled performance well beyond her years. Her confusion of allegations and alligators, hence the play’s title, was beautifully done. When she told the social worker, a strong and convincing Deborah Cole, you can’t be tickled without being touched I wanted, simultaneously, to kiss her and slap the social worker. That should get the police looking into my past life. Abbe Waghorn brought total believability to her sharp suited lawyer Rachel Horne, uncomfortable truths readily amplified, even if my ears yearned for stronger projection of key lines. 

But I put that down to my age. An age with a long and rollercoaster past. Do not look into it. Do not point the finger. That is the message of this riveting play. Beautifully acted, excellently directed by Tim Hoyle, and yet another stunner from the Company of Ten. I am rather glad it rained on Sunday.

Roy Hall 

Runs to Saturday 1st February - Box Office 01727 857861

Dealing with Clair (Company of Ten)

Company of Ten

Abbey Theatre Studio

Runs to Saturday 19th October 2019

01727 857861 (Tickets £13)

****

A cracking depiction of Thatcherism.

The first thing that strikes you in Martin Crimp’s excellent play, rich in staccato rhythms worthy of Pinter and David Mamet, is that many of the characters inhabit various stages of unpleasantness. Mike and Liz, the yuppie couple selling their house are, as dear old Oscar would say, knowing of the price of everything and the value of nothing. Or that was how it seemed to me. Naked ambition for house price gazumping eclipsed much else. We got a tantalising hint of sexual connection in a wine induced evening of introspection but elsewhere this Liz and Mike rated money far above relationships. Ditching their unseen prospective buyers for creepy cash buyer James, laced with dubious Faustian offerings, seemed to say it all. Money may not grow on trees but its entrails were everywhere, destroying normal human values. Dealing in tens of thousands on a house sale does not stop you fretting obsessively about your Italian au pairs secretive phone calls or covering up stains on a carpet that may knock off the odd one per cent.

And in the mix of this, as well as that creepy counter cash buyer, is the ingenuous estate agent Clair. On one level strong and assertive, as estate agents are, and yet in other respects completely out of her depth. She goes along with the yuppies upping the value of their house and seems to accept cash buyer James on his own terms, almost buying in to his prevarications. And if he makes her uncomfortable, as he does, she never totally loses that estate agent high street patina. If it had been me I would have told him to piss off or put up the money. Preferably both.

Even if the programme had not mentioned it you would readily pick up echoes of the Suzy Lamplugh case when, over thirty years ago, a young estate agent disappeared after meeting up with prospective buyer Mr Kipper. A case never resolved. And neither is it in Mr Crimp’s Dealing With Clair. This play is not about the ramifications of a 1980s real life mystery but more about the naked age of Thatcherism that was the background to it. We all want to better ourselves and if we can crawl over others whilst doing it so much the better. Money blinds to motives and allows exploitation.

Under Martin Goodman’s astute and spare direction we got some cracking performances. The cast, collectively, never missed a beat in regaling Mr Crimp’s insistent and percussive narrative. Every line delivered was as sharp as a razor and as precise as a bullet. We were rarely given time to indulge in emotional introspection. Not easy for the cast, as fleshing out characters with dramatic subtext in such a linguistic context is virtually impossible. What we know of the people, other than the coruscating words, must be suggested. I got Liz (Georgia Choudhuri) and Mike (Jack Kenward) in spades. A narcissistic couple more interested in selling a house than cementing a relationship that, to me, was fragmenting under money. Whenever the poor offstage baby cried, yes they produced one, it was the put upon au pair who dealt with the problem. Selfish buggers I thought. Georgia Choudhuri was exceptionally good as a wife seemingly to want status more than emotional satisfaction.

Lester Adams’ creepy buyer James could have been a bit creepier for my tastes, perhaps I wanted that mysterious Mr Kipper, but he nevertheless unnerved. Both of my female companions subscribed to this view so perhaps it is a male thing. But he clearly unnerved Lillie Prowse’s Clair. A ‘black suited’ waitress, the sellers sexist view, Miss Prowse oozed female confidence in a male dominated world and commanded the stage in all her scenes. If you got the feeling that this Clair was playing a role, the confident estate agent desperate for advancement, you would not be far wrong. All her instincts repelled against James the buyer but the commission percentage eclipsed everything. And that probably sums up most estate agents.

Louisa Bicknell was the cracking Italian au pair Anna, totally believable in everything she did, and Zodiac O’Neill particularly impressed in the third of his small roles. Estate agent Toby, full of all that bullshit that such folks are capable. Sitting where I was I could have hit his sharp suited persona in the face, and frankly I was tempted. I cannot pay the actor a higher compliment. Lighting and Sound were impressive and both Don Hayward and Ian Crawford are to be congratulated, especially for their combined efforts in creating the trains rushing by Clair’s small and claustrophobic bedsit. Very realistic.

A slight play in some respects but rich with beautiful dialogue delivered with consummate ease by a skilled cast. I expect nothing less from Company of Ten. And if they spread little light on the Suzy Lamplugh mystery, not their fault, they gave us an illuminating glimpse of old world Thatcherism. Roy Hall

 

 

 

Pagliacci - Irrational Theatre Company

Pagliacci
Irrational Theatre Company
Harpenden Park Hall
10^th February 2019


****
An uplifting touch of small scale opera class

 

In my younger days, I did have some, I used to go to a lot of opera. Working in London had its compensations and the ENO Coliseum frequently beckoned as a change from my beloved straight theatre. I am no musical purist but boy could that lot sing. Tickets cost a fortune and you occasionally had to draw a veil over some iffy acting, but voices and music from a Verdi and Puccini heaven eclipsed all. Theatre in its purest form and no way could I do it. Which made it all the more enjoyable. Watching skills alien to your own theatrical comfort zone is a special pleasure. Sadly my days in the city of sin and smoke are long over and opera in the sticks are a rarefied beast. Musicals, Webber and Sondheim, abound, but opera is about as rare as turkey twizzlers in Waitrose.
So that is why I take off my extremely tatty old hat, yes I was wearing one, to Irrational Theatre’s small scale production of Leoncavallo’s masterpiece in the equally small scale but packed hall of my local town of Harpenden. A one off performance which gave us seventy five minutes of powerful acting and singing so close you could have re-arranged the buttons on the colourful and clownish costumes. The evening zinged and tingled and all we watchers could, inadequately, say at the end was ta muchly. And come again. You enriched a wet weekend.
Shan’t regale you with too much of the plot. In this Wikipedia age you can look it up for yourselves. Actors playing clowns and, tragically, bringing their real life drama to the stage. All ends in blood and tears. Bit like most operas I suppose, or at least them without consumptive women. But I will regale you with the performances. If they do not earn a living from their singing then this quintet bloody well ought to. Sadly there were no CV’s in the simple programme so I can only guess. Randy Nichol was a mesmerizingly powerful Canio/Pagliacci, he gave us a scorching dramatic rendering of the famous mid act aria, and created a convincingly troubled man you would not want to mess with. Samantha Green in the role of unfaithful Nedda/Columbina was absolutely delightful and coquettish and clearly relished her amorous duplicity in both roles. Katy Bingham Best counterpointed effortlessly as the ugly, unloved, fool and Joao Valido Vaz acted and sang superbly as Peppe/Arlechino. A fun harlequinade character you wanted to wrap in a chocolate box and take home. And rounding it all up was Alejandro Lopez-Montoya’s Silvio/Stage Manager. This baritone had a voice to die for and a presence to match it. Nedda’s lover, stabbed at the end, sadly missed. So I have given you some of the plot whether you wanted it or not.
This superb fivesome were well supported by Gergely Kaposi’s equally first class piano accompaniment, my untrained ear never heard a false note, and Peter Jones’ astute musical direction. I noticed how he cleverly picked up one slightly missed actor’s beat but if there were any others he masked them beautifully. In a performance of clowns that would be appropriate. Paula Chitty, director and designer and costumes amongst everything else, must be well pleased. I know I and my companions were. And one of them so Italian she never once glanced at the subtitles. I did, pedant that I am, but I did not need to. The passion and the power and the music were beautifully displayed. And no more than three feet in front of us. You did not get that at the Coliseum. Roy Hall

 

I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (St Andrews Players)

****

I wasn’t going to review this one. I have a stinking cold, paracetamol and whisky to the fore, and dipped my toes into it when dress rehearsal audience were sparse. Means I did not have to sit close to anyone. Suits most folks who surprisingly sniff at my incisive opinions. And besides, spoiler alert, I go to bed with the director. Seems appropriate for I love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. Sex, or the lack of it, drives this episodic piece. More of a revue than a full blown narrative story, diverse relationships eclipsing developing character, it strikes me as the American musical version of our own Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions. He’s a national treasure, no idea if the creators of this are, but they tell the same coruscating story. Love denied, love consummated, love disappointed. Man and woman entwined til death in the dance that both teases and consumes. It’s sharp, it’s sassy, and it’s very straight and narrow. As it says, or sings, at the opening, this is man and woman and God created nothing else. Variations on the theme of the human condition are not an option.

It mattered not a jot. This show is pure fun. Rich in sexual politics a variety of characters in a variety of short scenes effortlessly progress from first tentative date to poignant waiting at the cemetery gates. And in between the skilled sextet of actors, never a critical sniff of a weak link, paint rich pictures of dreadful dinner dates, desperate singles, besotted new parents, and family outings. Every American’s personal and private dream and nightmare writ large for a smidgeon of entertainment and a dollop of recognition. Given such a show, nineteen short scenes, you naturally cherry pick your favourites. Two of them came early. Steve Peters (Stan) and Emma Orr (Pat) gave us a skilled representation of speed dating taken to absurdity in Busy,Busy,Busy, and Richard Alexander (Jason) and Jo Yirrell (Julie) were beautifully buttoned up folk in A Stud and a Babe. The critic in me smugly notes that I knew that, on paper, this was a good cast and this early promise underlines it. But then I remember that, on paper, a few Cheltenham Gold Cups are crackers. But horses run on turf and actors thrive on good scripts and astute direction. Early hopes are often dashed.

They weren’t. Okay I was not a big fan of Satisfaction Guaranteed, over aggressive Americanism, and Waiting left me a bit nonplussed. I got the point of the latter; one partner always waiting for the other, but one of the trio desperate for a pee seemed a joke shoe horned in for no particular purpose. Take nothing away from the incontinent Jenna Ryder-Oliver, superb in everything she did, but this scene did not illuminate the frailties of relationships like most of the others. Perhaps, showing my age, I just do not like lavatory jokes. But these are small points. So many of the quickly rolled out scenes were just hilariously fun and brilliantly sung with never a false accent in sight. Tear Jerk, Wedding Day, and The Baby Song, all zinged for different reasons. Jo Yirrell's (Jane) eyes enraptured in filmic schmaltz, Emma Orr’s Oscar winning bridesmaid dress, fantastically awful, and John O’Leary giving thanks for his sperm to an increasingly uncomfortable Steve Peters all struck theatrical gold.

A good night at the theatre. In spite of colds, me, and the odd technical glitch, them. It is allowed at a dress rehearsal. I reckon all of this impressive cast have got at least one mention in the above. Hope so, they deserve it for consummate ensemble playing.  But a couple of bits deserve more. Emma Orr’s monologue in Rose Ritz’s Dating Video and Jenna Ryder-Oliver’s Muriel in Funerals are for Dating gave us touches of acting of the highest class. And in a cast this good that is saying something. Emily Wright (Piano) and Paul Costin (Violin) gave impressive accompaniment which rarely intruded and invariably enhanced and counterpointed the drama. Beth Thomas (Musical Director) and Frances Hall (Director) can be justifiably proud of their latest creation at Dunstable Rep. For the record I only go to bed with one of them. Roy Hall.

My Mother Said I Never Should (Wheathampstead DS)

****

A quartet on impressive form

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that I have been getting out a bit more lately. A few late season theatre trips have been added to the social whirl of Ladbrokes, the chemists, and the local cafe. Hardly surprising that in this latest trawl of Hertfordshire’s finest I roped in another visit to my old thespian friends down the B653. That’s the foreign field of Wheathampstead for those unfamiliar with the terrain. I am nothing if not adventurous.

If I was the nervous sort, I am but let us not go there, I would have stepped out with some trepidation. I have seen a few crackers recently and on my last visit to WDS they had dropped some way below their generally high standard. If I sensed sniffiness about their latest, Charlotte Keatley’s complex My Mother Said I Never Should, any Christmas cards coming up the Lower Luton Road would be wrapped around the proverbial eight by three house brick. Some folks can be so wasteful. Thankfully, I knew within ten minutes of settling that all missives would come lovingly stamped and letter box sized. These players were back on form.

My Mother etcetera is not an easy play to get a handle on. Four generations of females criss and cross the bewildering timescales of twentieth century life. Second World War to post Thatcherism aspirations in the blink of an eye and, in between, four actors of all the ages play at children against the symbolic wasteland backdrop. Could call for a few headache tablets but director Julie Field, astutely, signposted most with time referenced sound effects. She knows her audience. We ain’t thick but without a script the bombs of the 1940’s and the Falklands War 1980’s nicely pigeonholed potentially wandering minds.

Charlotte Keatley’s absorbing play is not so much plot as dysfunctional lives. Doris is the grandmother, in reality great grandmother, who buries her husband of sixty years and wonders if she ever really loved him. Margaret is her unfulfilled daughter sacrificing life for others and finally subsumed by dreary office life and even drearier cancer. Jackie is Margaret’s self centred artistic daughter offloading an inconvenient sprog, Rosie, to her own mother and posing as clever and interesting elder sister. All conspire in a massive family lie which, as I often say, is bound to end in tears. All their men are unthinking, unseen and offstage, which is probably the best place for most. If the youngest had one she never mentions him. At the end Rosie has a fetching kite and oodles of angst when she discovers her sister is her mother. I reckon most families down our way are like this.

That is about as much of character plot that I usually give. Says something about the performances. All totally believable and beautifully rounded. Irene Morris in her last performance with WDS, I shall certainly miss her, was on top form as the long suffering Margaret. She neither understood her mother or her children and probably went to her grave thinking that all men are shits, hers left her, and office life is less complicated and more forgiving. Sara Payne was a convincing selfish Jackie. The most awkward of the quartet and the least involved, her performance suggested a woman constantly confronting a girl she had literally and metaphorically abandoned. A  reminder of faults realised and ambition nakedly fulfilled. And Eleanor Field was an even better Rosie, the awkward elephant in the room ultimately betrayed. As much as she loved Margaret and Doris, especially the latter, none ever told her the truth.

And that leads me, nicely or otherwise, to Sheila Scull’s Doris. The grandmother come great grandmother who carried a lie and kept the peace. A wonderful performance, beautifully fleshed out. I loved her tales of her old man, her beautiful ending when, in flashback, old fashioned dress and ambitions told of a life to come, and her story of the posh teapot comically serving two poverty stricken houses. A portrayal so rich you wanted to put it in a Waitrose bag and take it home. Miss Scull was the cream of this production but all of this impressive quartet played their part. Longueurs on scene changes slightly irritated and a beautiful moving staging to the soundtrack of Both Sides Now was annoyingly cut short, but overall a pretty good production from my friends down the B653. Thankfully. I have no need of house bricks. Correctly stamped or otherwise. Roy Hall

Dangerous Corner (Company of Ten) - Full Review

****

A Sparkling Dangerous Corner.

Company of Ten are one of the classiest amateur companies around and they are on sparkling form with Tina Swain’s virtually impeccable production of J B Priestley’s Dangerous Corner. In a good old fashioned 1930’s drama of seething tensions and destructive truths set and costumes perfectly realise the civilised age long gone. Russell Vincent leads an impressively strong cast as a man who, misguidedly, will not let sleeping dogs lie. An absorbing, four star, two hours that is well worth a ticket.

I wrote that, sorry to those who hate reading things twice, shortly after seeing a Sunday Matinee. (Dunstable Rep take note). Nothing has changed in my thoughts in the past week to make me alter my mind. I left Company of Ten’s latest production vowing to marry director Tina Swain if she will have me, her indoors may have something to say about that, but I did so for the best theatrical reasons. I reckon Ms Swain loves the old fashioned thirties as much as I do, her London Wall office life politics had me tingling, and she captured the post dinner party elegance and venom of Priestley’s first ‘time play’ with consummate style and pleasing presentation. Judith Goodban’s drawing room set and Lesley Ivinson’s costumes magnificently evoked a bygone age and metaphorical knives and damaging truths were drawn with finesse. Add in the fine directorial pointing of cigarettes lit, drinks poured, and refined seating by windows, and these numerous prosaic moments underline the hand of a director cleverly painting the gathering tension. Almost from the start I felt that this lot knew what they were doing. Sit back and enjoy.

It could all have gone pear shaped of course. If those bloody actors are blind to your concept they could scupper it by overblown or underplayed performance or by mistiming a line which destroys a lovingly created scene. Have seen the latter a few times in my long life and, pleased to say, my last prison sentence was suspended. Justifiable homicide the judge come theatre critic said. No chance here at St Albans. The seven strong cast were singing, collectively and individually, to Ms Swain’s Dangerous Corner tune. Shan’t regale you with the plot. Or only a bit. A chance remark regarding a musical cigarette box owned by the offstage and unseen Martin, conveniently dead, leads to smug and self satisfied dinner guests writhing like snakes in a bottomless pit. Lovely stuff. And beautifully played by actors collectively aware that this play had a solid theatrical base and individually determined to ensure that it zinged.

Russell Vincent was riveting as the slightly pompous and unduly pure host Robert Caplan who, misguidedly and doggedly, unearthed questions best left unanswered. A central performance of the highest class. And Abbe Waghorn visually ticked all my demanding boxes as elegant hostess Freda Caplan, torn between social niceties and destructive truths. Do you serve sandwiches when someone has confessed to murder? Probably. Lianne Weidmann was on top form as the slightly repressed and introspective Olwen Peel, Stuart Hurford spot on in the difficult part of the over emotional Gordon Whitehouse, and Apryl Kelly engaging as the doll like Betty Whitehouse. Miss Kelly needed to project a little more in her quieter scenes but this is a small point in an overall captivating performance. Besides, my ears ain’t what they used to be. But my favourite performance in a cast full of cream was Andrew Baird’s subtly crafted performance as the dinner party’s bad apple Charles Stanton. Drinks as much as me, Mr Stanton that is, which is no bad thing and his revealing social pariah cleverly knitted the growing tensions of the Caplan’s evening soiree. I first sniffed out Mr Baird as the friar in Juliet and her Romeo. Impressive then, even more so here.

That just leaves me with Jacqui Golding’s Maud Mockridge and my only caveat in an otherwise faultless production. Rest easy Ms Golding. Nothing about you. A beautiful, well modulated, and clear performance as an insufferable author publishers have to put up with. Social snob and convenient voice of exposition and, at the end, the underscoring point of the narrative. In a play that crucially goes full circle, hence its charm, Miss Mockridge is the important link. Her returning final scene was not reset with open curtains and afternoon light. Cigarette box and radio music repeated conversations not dramatically pointed enough for my taste. So the muted finale did not underline the tantalising beginnings. But my only caveat. Overall a superb Dangerous Corner. A superb production, first class director, excellent cast. Even if my small ending theatrical sniff means the marriage to Ms Swain is off. Roy Hall

Dangerous Corner (Company of Ten)

****

Company of Ten are one of the classiest amateur companies around and they are on sparkling form with Tina Swain’s virtually impeccable production of J B Priestley’s Dangerous Corner. In a good old fashioned 1930’s drama of seething tensions and destructive truths, set and costumes perfectly realise the civilised age long gone. Russell Vincent leads an impressively strong cast as a man who, misguidedly, will not let sleeping dogs lie. An absorbing, four star, two hours that is well worth a ticket. Roy Hall

 

Abbey Theatre,

St Albans.

 

Runs until Saturday 20th October 8.00pm

 

Box Office 01727 857861 (Tickets £12/£11)

Full Review to Follow

 

 

Neighbourhood Watch (Barn Theatre)

Barn Theatre,

Welwyn.

October 2018

****

A Classy Neighbourhood from the Barn

There is no pretending. Neighbourhood Watch is not one of Ayckbourn’s best. Hardly surprising. He has written as many as his age and that is close to eighty. On both counts. The cream of those have that wonderful frisson of middle class folk, superficially civilised, grasping each other by the metaphorical throat in family dances of exquisite comedy. Think Seasons Greetings, Absent Friends, Just Between Ourselves. The resident lot on the Bluebell Hill Development do not have that comic potential. These nice folk, well some of them, direct their angst at the anonymous oiks festering in the off stage and threatening Mountjoy Estate. Put up the barriers, erect the stocks, and create a private police force. We all, cosy middle class that we are, fear the Mountjoy worlds and given the opportunity would do the same. That is what Ayckbourn seems to be saying. It creates comedy, it creates absurdity, but it lacks that recognisable reality that underpins classic Ayckbourn. He really don’t do plot and Neighbourhood Watch has a bloody big one.

But even a minor Ayckbourn is littered with rich characterisations. The brother and sister Massie’s have religion and sexual frustration in spades and their misguided campaign to embrace their new neighbourhood in civilised vigilantism captures a motley crew of willing, and unwilling, participants. The Bradleys at number whatever are a wife beater and a sensitive musician, and the Janners, so some say, a nymphomaniac and a masturbating loner. Mix in a security obsessed ex army man and a gossipy old fogey completely out of her depth and you have a heady mix for an interesting pudding. All united against those unseen monsters of the Mountjoy estate. As my old mother used to say, it will all end in tears. This one did as pigeons and people perished in fire and gunshot. And you can’t say that about much of Ayckbourn’s canon.

I take my hat off to director Bob Thomson. He not only flagged up the growing threat to those cosy residents of Bluebell Hill with astutely filled living room backdrops and Mosleyite donning of black costumes but he created a delicious mix of complex characters in which there was not a single serious weakness. I have never seen Godfrey Marriott on stage before, but by God I can’t wait to see him again. His performance of Martin Massie, misguided lover of Jesus and most of mankind, was a joy. A character who could have been bland almost to the point of non existence was, in Mr Marriott’s hands, rich in nuance and vulnerability. A central performance of the highest class. Linda Vincent was an equally excellent Hilda, feet more firmly on the ground, and Hazel Halliday a touching and sensitive wife beaten Magda. Her second act speech on childhood abuse was riveting. Of the others, all totally believable, I will only single out Ruth Heppelthwaite’s portrayal of Amy Janner. A refreshing antidote to the righteous indignation of most she invested all her scenes with aggressively strong characterisation and consummate skill. A booted bitch, we suspected, but with an enormous sense of fun.

I have a few caveats but that is probably because I saw the Scarborough original, directed by that man Ayckbourn himself, and have played the obnoxious security man in a later production. Directed by my wife. With all that baggage you could say, unkindly, that I went to the Barn determined to theatrically sniff. If I did, and I didn’t, those sniffs were quickly packed away. I know a good production when I see one. And this, I am pleased to say, was one of them. Well worth four stars. I reckon the one I was in only got three and a half. Roy Hall

 

 

 

The Accrington Pals ( TADS theatre Group)

Tads Theatre

Toddington

September 2018

****

Theatre's Joy, Accrington's Sorrow

Being a man of a certain age I have seen a lot of War Memorials in my time. Through the length and breadth of this country the smallest hamlets and towns and villages all have them. It humbles you to see the long list of names from World War One, in even the tiniest of places. I have never been to Accrington, famous for its Stanley football team and its wartime Pals, but I reckon their war memorial must be amongst the biggest and most awe inspiring. Over 700 of their young men signed up for Kitchener’s army and nearly 600 of them lost their lives in one of the twentieth

century’s bloodiest battles. The Battle of the Somme, 1^st July 1916. The ‘Pals’ recruitment policy was soon ditched. The downside of a community going to war together was the desolate whirlwind created in the town left behind.

Peter Whelan captures all this, poetically and beautifully, in his small scale telling of the tale of a town which went to war and, tragically, inscribed its name forever on the British memory. The Accrington Pals encapsulates those men in the Tom and Arthur and Ralph of his dramatisation but also, even more, paints a tender and realistic picture of their women. As someone much cleverer than me said, he could have just as easily called his play The Accrington Gals. They it was who had to pick up the pieces when passions and hopes of a wasted generation lay dead on a foreign field. This play is Oh What a Lovely War writ small and telling. And it packs, especially at the end, a similar punch.

The gritty May has unspoken love for her younger cousin, the idealistic and introspective Tom. The sensitive Eva yearns and succumbs to the cheerful charms of irrepressible Ralph. And pious Arthur takes up gun and God to escape the acerbic Annie. Or that’s how I read it. Mix in the sexually liberated Sarah and the jolly and comic Bertha, splendidly attired as a bus conductress, with unseen and unsatisfactory beaus and small town lives engagingly focus against the backdrop of a devastating war that devoured the innocents. These men knew not to what they willingly marched.

The ensemble playing did not totally please, I wanted more pace and vigour in early scenes, and a couple of the players lacked that essential inner truth to completely engage the small town life. But where they did in Jenna Kay’s directorial debut we were given some cracking performances. Tracey Chatterley was a superb no nonsense May, conscious both of duty and denied emotional fulfilment, Joe Hawkins (Ralph) a delightfully uplifting man of pleasure, and Iain Grant (Tom) a sensitive artist destined to have ideals and body bloodily destroyed. My small caveat with Mr Grant is that this ageing critic wished for more projection in his quieter scenes. A criticism I also directed at Connie Wiltshire’s eminently watchable Eva. You felt for this cuckoo in May’s domestic nest, her expressions oozed emotion, but some of her lines were lost.

But overall, especially in a vigorous second act filled with consummate sound and lighting effects from Paul Horsler and Josh Halsey, the production generally pleased. Jennifer McDonald was a telling Bertha, an emancipated girl who could not love a man who stayed at home, Claire Moore a nicely dirty minded Sarah, Andrew Naish an especially impressive bible thumping Arthur, and Nathaniel Chatterley a convincing ragamuffin constantly avoiding his mother’s stick. The young Mr Chatterley’s stage timing would put some older hands to shame.

Director Jenna Kay sang the two evocative songs beautifully and the second, counterpointing the harrowing end scenes depicted, softened even the hardest theatrical heart. Miss Kay shows much promise as a director. I may have quibbled at some of her narrative scenes but fine individual acting coupled with the quiet and still intensity of the final war strewn tableau will long remain in the memory. I have directed over fifty plays. Jenna Kay’s ending of The Accrington Pals eclipsed much. It makes you muse over that late night introspective whisky. Theatre, like wars, relies so much on the promise of the young. Theatre’s joy. Accrington’s sorrow.

Roy Hall

 

 

Dangerous Corner (Wheathampstead DS)

Dangerous Corner

Wheathampstead Dramatic Society

May 2018

**

Those of you who read my piece on Redbourn’s Funny Money, there were a few, may be wondering why I have not blogged Wheathampstead’s Dangerous Corner. After all, I was looking forward to it and sharpening my pen in Redbourn was a mere theatrical taster following a winter as fallow as my racing wins. Perhaps I didn’t go, you may say. Stayed indoors watching some dreary reality show about Peruvian knitting or custard making in the Cotswolds. Actually, the latter might be fun so look out for it on BBC Four sometime soon. But I digress, as they say. I did go and see it, Dangerous Corner that is, and came away thinking fondly of those Peruvian knitters and that Cotswold custard. That comment is not meant to be cruel. It is said, or written, with a heavy heart. I watched this favourite J B Priestly play and thought, as some in the audience inappropriately chortled, that something theatrically precious was being damaged. Wheathampstead Players should not have staged it. They should have found something more suitable for the poor young girl directing it. With some bizarre casting she never stood a chance of pulling it off. Bear with me and I will tell you why. Either that or sod off and make some custard.

The good bits first. The characters in Priestley’s play are very nice 1930’s folk who formally dress for dinner, even in private. Ladies in posh frocks, men in evening dress, cocktails and canapés. It is an age long gone but always pleasing to see recreated on stage. And Wheathampstead Players did that bit well. No farty updating here on a modern council estate with girls in dungarees and men in jeans. You could, given the narrative premise, but thankfully they resisted and retained that old world charm. Smug, self satisfied, successful folk, indulging in an evening soiree. Nothing could be nicer. What makes Priestley’s famous first ‘time play’ grip is the stripping of the cosy veneer following a casual remark regarding a musical box. By the end of the play these nice people are as snarling snakes writhing in the bottom of some dark emotional pit. I will not regale you with the details but it is all very clever, especially the end when all returns to cosy normality, and endlessly fascinates lovers of pure theatre. Are we all like that when the guard is carelessly down? Do we all have dangerous conversational corners? Say what you like about old John Boynton but he could certainly construct a play.

So you may ask, assuming you are still awake, where did it all go wrong? Casting folks, nothing more, nothing less. Jonathan Field made for a fine, straight laced, Robert Caplan and Steve Leadbetter scored quite a few acting points for the more worldly wise Charles Stanton. But much else displeased and disappointed. Irene Morris, fine actress, was scuppered by her discombobulated hair and Julie Field, fine director, portrayed an inappropriate heaviness to hostess Freda. Lines which should have been as sharp as mustard merely dropped as leaden weights. The Whitehouse pair, supposedly bright young things Betty and Gordon, were simply much too old to convince. I felt sorry for the two actors concerned. I have seen them both to better effect so will refrain from damning them here. Viv Fairley made for a convincing, if slightly muted Miss Mockridge, and her and Messrs Field and Leadbetter scored the only brownie points I am offering. But overall this was a theatrical Dangerous Corner that should have been sensibly swerved. Roy Hall

 

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