January Blues

   

I hate January. The days are short and dull, and the cold nights crank up the gas bills. The media is obsessed by looking back to the past or, even worse, studying the navel of the many things to come. And 2012 gives them a plethora of opportunities. On top of the usual prediction circus we now get endless hypes for our Olympic or Diamond Jubilee year. I can just about cope with Mo Farrah or Miss Adlington but any more in depth studies on our cyclists and rowers and I shall throw a few whisky glasses at the radio. As for Liz, I shall enjoy her celebrations but I am getting fed up with them being rammed down my throat. Worst of all, Christmas being wrapped and stored for another year, my beloved horseracing stars put their equine feet up.

It’s all the fault of Cheltenham. That four days in March in the Cotswolds is our annual Olympics and any jumping gee gee with half a chance on the sacred turf of Prestbury Park is swathed in cotton wool and pampered better then any pop star. You can’t blame the connections. Most of the twenty odd races would headline a normal Saturday afternoon. And the best, Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Arkle, Queen Mother, World Hurdle, are the stuff of dreams. You can keep the Derby and the Arc. Cheltenham in March is what it is all about. So for the likes of Kauto Star, Big Bucks, Masterminded, Long Run, Hurricane Fly and others it is endless days at Champneys or wherever they keep them. We get a brief flurry on Trials Day at the end of the month but for most of January racing is the bread and butter affair of the Market Rasens and Huntingdons. Snobs that they are most nags rated 150 or better wouldn’t be seen dead at such racecourses.

I am therefore relying on local theatrical stars to give the next few weeks a bit of a lift. I don’t do Gang Shows so will give Harpenden’s sixty third a swerve and if I am missing a treat I apologise. Welwyn’s Barn Theatre and St Alban’s Company of Ten rarely figure on my radar so I have no idea what they are doing. I should get out more as on my occasional sorties in their direction I have usually been impressed. Looking forward to Wheathampstead’s ‘Time of My Life’, an Ayckbourn I have never seen, but that is in the remote mists of Mid February so hardly qualifies as an antidote to January blues. Nevertheless I hope it is good because at their best they seriously entertain. And they are overdue a good crit from me. Might even get me on their web page.

But to get the juices going I am having to rely on my old friends at Dunstable Rep. Their third production this season is Tennessee Williams ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’. Once you have attuned your ear to the southern drawl, and I don’t mean Watford, his plays can be compelling. Chris Lavin directs and I hope he does it justice. Following that Luton Light guest at the same theatre for Sondheim’s ‘A Little Night Music’. As my favourite theatre evening of all time was the National’s version of this with Judi Dench, Sian Phillips, and Patrica Hodge they are under no pressure. Unlike Kauto, Big Bucks, and Long Run. Last seen fanning themselves on some exotic and distant beach.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Dunstable Little Theatre Fri 20^th to Saturday 28^th January. No performance Wed 25th. 7.45pm Tickets £12 and £10

A Little Night Music – Dunstable Little Theatre Tues 31^st January to Saturday 4^th February. 7.45pm. (Sat matinee – 3.00pm) Tickets £12

Time of My Life – Wheathampstead Memorial Hall 16^th to 18^th February 8.00pm Tickets £8.

Cheltenham NH Festival – Tues 13^th to Friday 16^th March (Channel Four) Tickets priceless.

St Andrews Players - Christmas Is A Coming...............

...........and it has been for twenty seven years.

The St Andrews Players Christmas warm up in Luton has been doing its stuff, on and off, for twenty seven years and I reckon I have seen most of them. It isn’t great theatre, it isn’t meant to be, but that is hardly surprising. The players generally put it all together in a few days after their autumn production. But it is great entertainment and, more importantly, it’s our first real taste of the forthcoming festivities. It gives off a wholesome glow you could warm your feet on. I value such glows and in the one year I was deprived of their carols, festive songs, and readings, I stuck in my interfering oar. I face the household preparations of stuffing turkeys and hanging baubles much better if I have had my annual fix of ‘Follow the Star’ and ‘Sleigh Ride’. And it ain’t just me. Over the years I have dragged a variety of people along to it, old friends, new friends, neighbours and relatives. And they all come away with that warm glow of which I am so fond.

It has gone through a few changes. In the early days we used to sit around tables and sup wine and dive into nibbles in a church hall. Nowadays it all takes place in the church and we sit in pews. I worried at first that it might lose its easy charm and become too similar to the many church events that take place in December. I love a carol service as much as the next man but I like the St Andrews Players difference. There is something a bit special about singing ‘Hark the Herald’ and then sitting back as the performers stuff Santa and his ilk up a chimney. And what we like most, and there were a lot of us last Saturday night, is the things that rarely change. Nothing pleases like an old pair of comfy slippers and the familiar and oft repeated will generally score over the new. Oh all right, I admit that the wassailing song does nothing for me but then some folks, weird as they are, don’t like Sleigh Ride. There is no accounting for taste. But we love the Silent Nights and the Bleak Midwinters, the Dreaming of a White Christmas and the one that tells you all to Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas. Whoever gets the nod to sing that one, and they are usually good, I get very emotional. And critics being emotional are about as rare as a nine pound note. And we pew sitters all love doing our bit for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Personally I prefer being a lord a leaping to a turtle dove as you don’t have to get up so much. But we all, young and old, jump up and down with innocent abandon. You don’t generally get much of that in Luton.

Like all such events it has its serious side. It gives players who rarely get a chance to lead in major productions the opportunity to have their own five minutes, and it often showcases a new young talent yet to tread the boards in earnest. The critic in me, the unemotional one undisturbed by warm glows, has honed in on more than one teenage stunner over the years. I suppose I should rephrase that but I think you get my drift. And that drift is that this annual event, twenty seven years strong, with its silly five minute pantomimes and a chairman who always misses the entrance of Father Christmas is an occasion I unashamedly pin my colours to. The Mills Family, and there are a lot of them, do themselves and us proud. I reckon there were over two hundred warm glows around Denbigh last weekend, many hugging old friends. Early frosts and economic glooms got short shrift. Long may Christmas is a Coming survive. There are probably, in small villages and humble towns, hundreds of such events all over the country. They are the unrecorded tiny blessings of a celebrity obsessed and media driven culture. And if they are half as entertaining as our St Andrews offering then Christmas will be good. Even if you don’t like Sleigh Ride.

Roy Hall

A Christmas Carol - Dunstable Rep

****

So the second nag in my Rep theatre handicap stakes has left the stable and strutted around the paddock. The first, Plaza Suite, fluffed the first few fences but ultimately showed a bit of group class. This one, A Christmas Carol, promised a lot from its classy breeding. By Alistair Brown, out of Charles Dickens, and ridden by Phil Baker. It has Gold Cups written all over it. So why did I leave this adaptation by John Mortimer of Rumpole fame with my gob less than totally smacked? At the risk of extending the tortuous horseracing analogy way beyond its usefulness I reckon, for all its obvious merits, this equine star was carrying just a bit too much weight. And weight, as all handicappers know, can stop trains.

Mr Brown had staged it with all his usual panache and flair. Stairs and a balcony allowed colourful Dickensian characters to frame the action and his beloved central turning circle and atmospheric smoke and lighting did the rest. And he had more ideas for trickery than you could shake a stick at. Some worked beautifully, actor’s voices ringing bells, imaginary door knocks, and performers playing the parts of furniture and, in one case, an overfed turkey. But with such an imagination it is easy to take your eye off the ball. His Want and Ignorance children were so wholesome and well scrubbed they could have come straight from an advert for Pears soap. The Fezziwigg party lacked the gaiety and colour needed to contrast the prevailing gloom. And, worst of all, Scrooge’s witness of his own tombstone lacked the harrowing vision needed to cut the heart. No fault of the actor, Phil Baker was superb in the role, but he was ill served by our muted and cursory glance at a weak depiction of his end. The culmination of the story of his life went out with a whimper rather than a bang.

None of this would have mattered if the general thrust of the piece had been totally sound. After all you can’t like all the cherries on the cake. But telling the tale through actor’s narration presents its own problems. We get all the gaps filled in and, with a story so familiar, it can seem a bit repetitive and slow. It worked with the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby by David Edgar and could have done so here if only the best actor’s voices were used. But it was all spread too thinly and much as I liked the presentation I was not blind, or deaf, to this inherent fault.

So where does that leave the actors who filled the parts in a clever and always entertaining production which fell just short of its imaginative directors concept? I have already said that Phil Baker’s Scrooge was superb. It was all that and much more. His classic and incisive voice, touched by a smidgeon of Irish brogue, wrenched every inch of the variety of emotions that all Scrooges must go through. He was hardly ever off stage and his performance never flagged. And in playing to his own shadow, The Spirit of Christmas yet to Come, he and Mr Brown combined with a piece of theatricality which was awesome in its inventiveness. Ralph Gough was a beautifully humble Bob Cratchit and Joe Butcher, heralded by effective red lighting, a strong and homely Christmas Present. More wool than a flock of Welsh sheep, but highly engaging. The Cratchit’s Christmas dinner scene ticked all my emotional boxes and Lynette Driver played her fiddle with aplomb. And in a large cast I was particularly taken with newcomers Steve Loczy and Hayley Vaughn in a variety of roles. Mr Loczy had a voice so pleasing and strong I would have given him much more of the narration.

But I suppose my biggest grouse, plusses and minuses aside, was that this production lacked surprise. It ain’t easy with a story that is almost as famous as the Nativity, but it is an essential theatrical ingredient. We got that at the end with an all enveloping Christmas card scene of snowflakes and glitzy lighting. This was wonderful. Almost made me forget the faults. A bit like a favourite horse making a number of dodgy jumps and getting up on the line to the winning post at Kempton or Cheltenham. Dunstable Rep and their Christmas Carol this week, a mixture of dazzling concept and the occasional awkward execution, cantered and galloped in the same style. So I left the theatre mentally giving three stars to a show that potentially might have got four or five. I have the same problems with horses.

A Christmas Carol - Dunstable Rep

Second in the Rep's season of plays that have graced the silver screen. John Mortimer's adaptation of the Dickens' classic is brought to interesting life by an ensemble cast under the direction of Alistair Brown. Not flawless by any means but worth seeing for Phil Baker's superb portrayal of the irascible Scrooge. Good support from Ralph Gough, Steve Loczy, Joe Butcher, and Hayley Vaughn, and has an ending which eclipses all your favourite Christmas cards. Full review to follow next week.

Runs to Saturday 3rd December 2011

Absent Friends - Harpenden High Street Players

I gave up working for a living when I decided that there was more to life than spending six hours around a table debating the relative merits of computer systems I neither understood nor cared about. And I gave up writing theatrical reviews for the local paper when the fourth spear carrier’s distant aunts sent in vituperative letters lamenting little Johnny’s omission from my piece. Pressure, who wants it? Hence this private blog, where I can say or do what I want. Or so I thought.

A few folks who should know better have been lurking in Harpenden High Street and springing out to give me the odd mugging for not posting a piece on Absent Friends. Remember that? Directed by my wife for a society of which I am a member. Posted a preview (see below) and that was meant to be my last word on the subject. Saying anything the slightest bit complimentary and the boys of Wheathampstead Players and Dunstable Rep would be around with sharpened knives. Pen anything derogatory and whilst some would applaud my obvious honesty, not applicable to anything nice, that refined lot at the church players would pierce me with knitting needles and icy glances. Ever had an icy glance from Harpenden ladies of a certain age? It cuts deeper than any Wheathampstead knife.

So, on the basis if you can’t swim don’t jump into the water I decided to give this one a swerve. Pity really, as this play about a girl, Carol, who did something like that and inconveniently drowned I probably know better than anyone else who saw it. Hence the protests. I saw the original ‘in the round’ production at Scarborough in 1974, directed an amateur production of it in 1978, and both acted in and directed another production about ten years ago. I know my Ayckbourn and I know my Absent Friends. I may not be an expert but my ignorance is well founded.

With that sort of theatrical baggage it is hardly surprising that I both liked and disliked what I saw. I liked the staging, a good attempt at creating the original ‘in the round’ feel, and I liked the leading actor. Lewis Cox’s hapless Colin hit the other characters around the head with his absent and dead Carol with a relentless energy both funny and disturbing. One could not help thinking it should have been him who fell off the boat. We never saw Carol, just the five warring friends who, inadvisably, invited her bereaved to tea. It is a simple premise with oodles of Ayckbourn subtext and tension. The players gelled nicely and their performances were all watchable, if mixed in expertise and delivery. As, no doubt, will be the local knives.

Roy Hall

Cock - Royal Court on Radio Three

Cock – Radio Three (Sunday 20^th November)

I don’t get out like I used to and visiting London theatres has long been off my agenda. Used to do them all. The National, The Barbican, old favourites The Royal Court and The Old Vic, and, if pushed, the populist West End when something really appealed. Nowadays I confine my theatre going to local haunts. Dunstable Rep and the others may not have the magnificent ghosts of George Devine and Lilian Bayliss to sustain them but they will do for me. And thank God they exist because elderly theatre lovers are ill served by the multi channels of the modern media. You can find hundreds of reality and celebrity shows but you will search in vain for anything remotely resembling real theatre on all those digital channels.

It wasn’t always the case. I have some old Play and Players magazines from the 1960’s and they used to list the plays on TV for each month. Everything from Shakespeare to Shaw, Galsworthy and Ibsen, and, for modern tastes, a bit of Pinter and Stoppard. Fifteen or more on only four channels. Even as late as the 1990’s we got the odd Ayckbourn or a Philip King or a J B Priestley. Anyone remember the wonderful ‘When We Are Married’ with the drunken photographer of Bill Fraser? Not anymore. All gone. We may have umpteen TV channels but you can’t find a real play on any of them. Is it therefore surprising that all the exhortations I get to sign up to Virgin or Sky go straight into the rubbish bin. Old folks, especially old theatre lovers, are both marginalised and ignored.

Thankfully radio hasn’t completely given up on us. Many are plays written for the medium, you get the odd gem at 2.15 in the afternoon on Radio Four, but every now and then an old fashioned theatre play turns up. Terence Rattigan’s centenary gave us a few on Saturday afternoons recently and, not so long ago, the same wavelength turned out a couple of Ayckbourns. It’s a long way from BBC2’s ‘Playhouse’ series which some time back, headed by a magnificent ‘A Doll’s House’, tantalisingly suggested that theatre in your home wasn’t dead, but it fed a dire need. But for those housebound folks still in need of the odd theatre fix the reliance, these days, is usually directed at Radio Three. And usually on Sunday night.

‘Art’, ‘Amy’s View’, ‘A Bequest to the Nation’, ‘The History Boys’, are just a few that I can remember. And last Sunday they gave us a real beauty. Royal Court production from the original cast of the English Stage Company. The play was called ‘Cock’ and the writer was Mike Bartlett. I knew little about either. I told you I don’t get out much these days. But for ninety minutes it absolutely gripped. Pure theatre and pure and beautifully incisive dialogue. A man tortured by his sexual identity plays off his gay lover against the woman he has recently had connections with. Literally. I do not know how they staged certain scenes on the stage but, on the radio, the pictures were graphically displayed. It was riveting. As it built to a dinner scene when both of the sexually confused man’s lovers thought he would betray the other I gasped at the suspense created. Ben Wishaw was superb as the tortured bisexual John and Andrew Scott and Katherine Parkinson spit out all their witty and acerbic lines with a precision and poetry which both heightened the tension and underlined the craft of Bartlett’s writing. I may have quibbled a bit at the introduction of a fourth character, the gay lover’s father, as on first hearing it added little to the tensions already created, but overall I say thank you.

Royal Court, English Stage Company, Radio Three? Knocks that Sky and Virgin lot into a cocked hat. But TV knows nothing about theatre. Their idea of drama is a bust up in the Queen Vic on Boxing Day or a penalty shoot out at Old Trafford. We disenfranchised oldies know different. ‘Cock’ was a bit of theatrical heaven in a home based media desert bestrewn with drivel. I am glad I caught it and sorry if you didn’t.

Roy Hall

Old Friends................Absent Friends

I love my horseracing and have recently been banging in a few juicy priced winners to enhance the fun. No begging letters please, I get enough of those from my wife. But my equine October highlight was meeting one of my heroes in the flesh. That’s him in the picture, the good looking one. Albertas  Run. Superstar gelding of Jonjo O’Neill.  Winner of 15 races, including a few top ones, and nearly £1,000,000 in prize money. Favourable circumstances conspired to get me a visit to Jackdaws Castle training stables in the Cotswolds on the day before Bertie won the Old Roan Chase at Aintree. I am sure it was the pat on the head I gave him. Either that or my hat. For those interested in such things I went with a close friend who was so taken by it all she promptly purchased one of his unraced companions. Whether it will be an Albertas Run (rated 170) or a Quixall Crossett (google him) only history will tell. Not that it matters. Both of them, and all the other darlings are heroes to someone. That’s why I love horseracing.

I also love theatre or I do when it is good. Among my favourite playwrights is Scarborough superstar Alan Ayckbourn (no raceform rating) and his best plays have a comic cruelty which is exquisite. I prefer his earlier stuff to the later ones and one of the former is the minor masterpiece Absent Friends. Five friends in fragile relationships arrange a tea party for a recently bereaved sixth. A simple premise but Ayckbourn conducts a writing masterclass in wringing every ounce of comedy and pathos from the situation. I love the play so much that I have directed it twice in the last thirty years. My wife, the one who writes the begging letters, is directing a new production of it in Harpenden at the end of the month and giving it an interesting theatrical twist. Aficionados of Ayckbourn in Scarborough will know that all his plays are performed ‘in the round’ but rarely get done like that on local circuits and certainly not in the West End. But this one gets that chairs on the floor treatment. I can’t review it for obvious reasons. But I can give it a preliminary pat on the head. And we all know what that did for Albertas Run. Go see it. I don’t think you will be disappointed.  Roy Hall

High Street Players

Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Frances Hall

Wed 23^rd – Fri 25^th November 2011 8.00pm

High Street Methodist Church, Harpenden

Tickets £8.00 (Tel 01582 763277)