A Little Night Music - Luton Light

Stephen Sondheim’s ‘A Little Night Music’ is deep romantic drama heavily laced with elements of farce and that wonderful music that makes it, for me, a piece of compelling theatre. More a play with music as opposed to a musical, no dancing chorus here, which might explain why not many turned up on the first night of Luton Light’s run at Dunstable’s Little Theatre. Hopefully things will get better as the week progresses because Mathew Orr’s production contains some cracking performances. Richard Cowling leads and sings like an angel and Kate Brennan steals every scene she is in as an earthy maid. A bit slow on this first night and Lee Freeman’s orchestra occasionally overshadowed the singers but they will sort that out. I hope they do because backed by a superb quintet of a chorus this show, simply staged, has the makings of being a bit special.

Runs To Saturday 4^th February 7.45pm (Saturday Matinee 3.00pm) – Little Theatre, High Street, Dunstable.

Dunstable Rep - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

****

As there are a lot of confessions and revelations in the Rep’s latest production, speechifying my late mother would have called it, perhaps I should throw in a couple of my own. I have never seen Cat on Hot Tin Roof on the stage. Come to that I have never seen Streetcar or The Glass Menagerie either. I reckon it was all those Tennessee Williams’ films of the 50’s and 60’s that put me off. There were a lot around at the time and I saw or slept through most of them. The Night of the Iguana was this ungrateful teenager’s low point. So when I became a serious theatregoer Mr Williams would always come a long way below Rattigan and Chekhov in the fight for my precious pound. If Liz Taylor and Vivien Leigh can’t tick my boxes what hope is there for the rest of them.

I think you can guess what is coming. The Rep wheeled this one out as the third in their 2011/12 film season and not only was this ambitious choice enjoyable it was, by some way, the best so far. Plaza Suite had a couple of acting gems and A Christmas Carol stunning invention, but neither had the shape or coherence that director Chris Lavin brought to this one. The Mississippi Plantation family are a rum lot and you wouldn’t want to spend Christmas with them. Half an hour on a picnic outing and they would be at each other’s throats. The back story is megabucks Big Daddy dying of cancer but only he and his Big Mama wife don’t know this, but the main thrust is the squabbling family desperate to share or grab the spoils when he goes. And the focus of that thrust is younger son Brick, crippled in an accident, and his sexually frustrated wife Maggie.

The action all takes place in Brick and Maggie’s bedroom and it is designed in such a way that it becomes a thoroughfare for all the various characters. Clapham Junction was never so busy. The colourful backdrop was pleasing but the imaginary door and windows stretched ones theatrical imagination. Only the porch area where Brick, poignantly, talked to the moon truly worked. But that bedroom was crucial. Nobody had sex but they talked about it an awful lot. It’s that speechifying that mother used to go on about. Maggie (Liz Caswell superb as always), desperately desires to rekindle a sexual flame in her Brick. As she says, she could live with his rejection if he was a flabby slob of a husband, but the manifest presence of his flesh both frustrates and attracts. Brick (a magnificent portrayal from Dave Corbett) seeks solace in alcohol. He detests his wife but he detests himself more. The only state he can cope with is the oblivion of whisky.

The relationship of Maggie and Brick are crucial to this play. If she is the Cat then he is the Hot Tin Roof. All the other characters, important as they are, are mere satellites. The chemistry between them has to both gel and sear. Especially as there is an elephant in their bedroom in the shape of the unseen, long dead, Skipper. I hope the audience got this because, by God, he is important. Killed himself because of his attraction to Brick. Or so it seems. I was gripped. The fading sexual powers of this Maggie and the brooding, monosyllabic, presence of Brick were writ large in this production. Miss  Caswell and Mr Corbett truly clicked and I take my theatrical hat off to both of them.

But in all good productions there is always a lot more going on than you think. A major plus for me was the easy and natural style in which Mr Lavin created his surrounding pictures of plantation family life. Characters, children and adults, crossed the set in realistic style and the life beyond the bedroom of Brick and Maggie was an ever present and crucial picture. It is merely a detail but get it right, as Mr Lavin did, and it adds so much to an evening. Charles Plester gave solid support as a Big Daddy consumed by his own perceived importance, Anne Davis, Big Mama in a pretty party dress, beautifully evoked the love that was missing in most of the other characters and Ben Jaggers was a believable older brother. I like him best when he took off his jacket but, being a lawyer with an eye to a fortune, that is hardly surprising. But other than the two bedroom inhabitants the performances that squeezed every inch from their turns were Jenna Ryder-Oliver’s sister in law Mae and Richard Garrett’s Reverend Tooker. Miss Ryder-Oliver shed kids like shelling peas, three very good ones on stage, and as a weapon with which to beat the barren Maggie they were formidable and vicious. The Rev Tooker found this family life all a bit too much and his uncomfortable character exited beautifully.

But in truth there was not a weak performance in a play in which I suspect most of the Rep actors have not been further into the deepest south than Cornwall. Richard Foster’s clouds pleased more than Graham Elliott’s late thunderstorm but that is probably because I am an expert on the latter. I loathe storms and know every nuance of their creation. This one did not convince. But practically everything else in Mr Lavin’s production did. An ambitious production, thoroughly enjoyable, and much better than Iguana and those other films of my teenage years. I clearly used to sleep through speechifying. Last week, the Rep kept me awake.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Dunstable Rep

I enjoyed this production. I am long enough in the tooth to know that taking on the deep south of Tennessee Williams ain't easy. Chekhov with cowboy boots. But overall they pulled it off. Dave Corbett topped anything he has ever done as the complex Brick, and Liz Caswell's Maggie was as watchable as ever. Strong support throughout and director Chris Lavin painted some nice dramatic pictures of a family in turmoil. I shall nit pick on some staging bits, it's my blog, but overall I give this Cat on a Hot Tin Roof four stars. Ten quid well spent.

Finishes tonight - full review to follow

The Lost Salford Sioux - Radio Three

Sunday 15th January (8.30pm)

There aren’t many better things to do on a cold Sunday evening than to curl up in front of the fire, glass in hand, and listen to Radio Three’s Sunday drama. The one this week, The Lost Salford Sioux by Anjum Malik, had unsurprisingly slipped under my theatrical radar so I switched on in total ignorance. I settle down well prepared for a Pinter or a Stoppard, but Salford and long dead Indians have never been on my reading list. They ought to be because once I had attuned my ear and garnered the plot, the play totally absorbed.

That plot is pretty important. Apparently, and the folks of Salford know this, a performer with Buffalo Bill’s Circus died during the troupes visit to this country in 1887 and is buried somewhere in the town. Probably a car park, although this may be dramatic licence. He went by the delightful name of Surrounded by the Enemy, super ghostly portrayal by Anthony Forrest, and the drama’s main thrust is his desire to have his bones resettled and his spirit released. The young woman he chooses for his haunting task is well selected. Alison is doing a PhD in death rituals around the world and her and her Nan seem obsessed with untimely and early demise. Coming to terms with loss, and Alison lost her mother when she was a baby, is a strong theme throughout the ninety minutes. Both Lorraine Cheshire and Sue Jenkins turned in easy on the ear and completely believable performances. The way Ms Jenkins described the relationship and sudden loss of her young husband, Alison’s granddad, was simple and effective. For good measure the haunted and troubled heroine gets a job with the local undertakers. I told you this play was about death. The dialogue here was particularly sharp and spare and, at times, also funny. Death may be distressing but it is also a business and Darren Kuppan (Charlie) and Roger Morlidge (Stanley) had their feet firmly on the ground. They believed in death, not sure they believed in ghosts, especially when Alison starts digging up the car park.

At the beginning I was totally confused, lots of sound effects and evocative music, but by the end I was totally gripped. When Surrounded by the Enemy’s long buried bones were released into the local river I could see all the pictures and feel all the conflicting emotions. This lost soul, literally, would finally find peace. In death that is all most of us, those taken and those left behind, can hope for. Beautifully directed by Polly Thomas this play was curiously uplifting. We are all going to die. Sitting by the fire, whisky glass in hand, The Lost Salford Sioux made that fact almost pleasurable. Takes Radio Three and its Sunday night dramas to do that.

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.