Under the Stars - Company of Ten (St. Albans)

***

You can’t help but feel sorry for the main characters in Richard Crane’s  Under the Stars. I mean, even the title on the programme doesn’t capitalise it. Flagging their unimportance I suppose. Understudies. The acting folks who sit in the dressing room, waiting and rehearsing, while the big stars strut their stuff on the stage. Warbling here are two ageing theatrical divas manfully spouting Helen of Troy through the tannoy. Extremely well done I have to say by Angela Stone and Norma Jenkins. Faces elegantly matched voices at their curtain call. But they are just the famous backdrop to dressing room traumas of the unwanted and unloved. Echoes of Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans they may be but the real stars of Company of Ten’s studio production are that dressing room intense and precious Stella and the cynical and world weary Regina. Understudies both, but as far removed from each other as their incessant backdrop Dames.

The weakness of Richard Crane’s play is that it does not involve you in any journeys of discovery. We know little more about the main characters at the end than we did at the beginning. Desperate actress Stella internalises with manic intensity and Regina knits. The situation, understudying the stars, is all. Brief codas of a life beyond the stage rarely intruded for too long. I think the Stella character had an illegitimate child but it was never so important as an unfinished costume or a reconsidered inflection. A shallow picture of a shallow character given comic potential by her world weary and prosaic foil. If Stella screams for stardom and recognition, Regina merely wishes for a quiet life of teabags and tuna rolls and much of the play is their constant and disparate theatrical banter.

That I enjoyed the evening so much is purely down to the performances. Suzie Major was a magnificent Stella. Rich in vocal delivery and physical dexterity she was very much the greyhound in the traps bursting for her moment of fame on the track. You knew she wouldn’t get it, never more so than when Dianne Pickard’s equally magnificent Known Actress flaunted her bit, you just wondered when the truth would hit her. Probably at the moment when she, along with most of the audience, suppressed their desire to add in their own throttle to Miss Pickard’s throat. A director’s ‘name’ to replace a wobbly star is the knife that cuts all understudies hearts. Except those that serenely knit.

Katherine Barry and that knitting did not try to match Ms Major in the acting stakes. Her Regina, twenty five years an understudy to the same star, was very much the calming water to Stella’s theatrical fizz. Comic lines abounded, all delivered with deadpan sincerity, and if Ms Barry didn’t flesh out her Regina too much she was nevertheless very good. And, at the end, every inch the Greek heroine.

It was all a bit episodic and I would have liked some music to relieve the numerous scenes but on the small, realistic, studio set I could not help but admire the performances. Brian Stewart worked his cast well, I was going to say knitted but we have had enough of that, and gave us well crafted support from revolting impresario leather boy P.Q. (Philip Reardon) and harassed trainee director Charles (Andrew Baird). Mr Baird’s natural and easy style as the theatre work boy was a constant delight.

So a first blog from me for Company of Ten. Time they got tainted with my intrusive brush. Suspect it won’t be the last as from past experience I knew this was a classy company. With this slight but interesting play they proved it with consummate acting style. Not bad for understudies.

The Talented, The Lost, and The Drowsy

April has been a funny old month for me. Horseracing has eclipsed theatre, too little in the straight drama stakes, and the bloody and incessant rain has thwarted even my feeble attempts at gardening. Hosepipe ban? Mine’s stuck under ten feet of water and likely to remain there for the summer. Drama groups should get topical and put on Somerset Maugham’s Rain or Ayckbourn’s Way Upstream. Or better still, Noye’s Fludde, the 15^th Century Mystery play. Google it. I did. As it is, my local lots have been rehearsing in the rain and saving all for, hopefully, the sunny month of May.

First under orders is Company of Ten’s Under the Stars, a play about those poor souls who learn all the lines but never get to strut the stage. Understudies. I saw it many years ago in Luton and was underwhelmed. An ordinary play that needs strong acting to grip. This classy St Albans group might just pull it off. Tried to see it on Tuesday night but the studio was sold out. Good for straight theatre, not good for me. Will go later in the week. If it doesn’t rain.

Don’t have much choice with Dunstable Rep’s fifth offering off their 2011/12 film season. Made a rash promise to review them all. So if you see a boat floating up the A5 it is probably mine. Should be worth the effort. The Talented Mr Ripley comes from the pen of Patricia Highsmith of Strangers on a Train fame. On paper it has an excellent director, Alan Clarke, and a first rate cast headed by Justin Doherty. But as with the gee gees, form in the book is never guaranteed.  Fingers crossed this heady murderous mix translates to the stage.

Old favourites Wheathampstead also get in on the act with their production of Simon Mendes da Costa’s Losing Louis. Spawned at Hampstead Theatre Club this hilarious comedy (it says so on the poster) was a big success both here and abroad. Judging by the plot, angst ridden family and long buried secrets, this could be a reprise of their last production. That was Ayckbourn, this is a writer compared to him. So should be fun. I always enjoy going down the B653 to the Memorial Hall stagings. And if they block that route because of something I have said, I shall find another one. We critics are nothing if not resourceful.

Rounding off the month is Luton’s  St Andrews Players with their 60^th anniversary production at the Library Theatre. The fringe musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone was fettered with awards and was a Broadway smash but, sadly, flopped in London. Critics loved it but audiences stayed away. Too original was the cry. So in recreating this show about a theatre geek who brings to life his favourite 1920’s musical (fictional) the players are being brave. I hope it pays off. Especially as the woman who shares my bed is directing it. Now that should get tongues wagging.

So there you have it. St Albans, Dunstable, Wheathampstead, Luton. Will there be no end to my worldly travels? Of course not. Unless it rains.

Under the Stars – St Albans Company of Ten (27^th April to 5^th May – 8.00pm)   Tel 01727 857861

The Talented Mr Ripley – Dunstable Rep (11^th May to 19^th May – 7.45pm)         Tel 07940 105864

Losing Louis – Wheathampstead DS (17^th May to 19^th May – 8.00pm)                  Tel 01582 834669

The Drowsy Chaperone – St Andrews Players (30^th May to 2^nd June - 7.45pm)   Tel 07778 241457

It's still a Grand National

Not sure I should get involved in this one. After all, this is mainly a theatre blog. But the horses often intrude. And no way more than with my ugly mug sharing a treasured moment with one of Jonjo O’Neill’s superstars. You don’t get much closer to racing at the highest level than that. Besides, as I have said many times, there is more drama in horseracing than in half a dozen productions at Stratford. Tragedy and triumph run side by side in a quicksilver fashion that even Olivier and Gielgud at their best would find bewildering.

Last Saturday’s Grand National had it all. Gold Cup winner ditching his jockey during the parade, fun with an elastic tape for the start of the world’s highest profile race, the closest ever finish, only a nose separated the first two, and a female jockey getting into the first three. Too much drama, old boy. Go away and revise the script. I wish we could because the biggest drama was the death of two beloved horses. According to Pete, small owner and unfashionable trainer, is what racing is all about. Bred for fun and winner of lots of handicaps. Super jumper, cruelly brought down when going well. That was bad enough but then we had Synchronised. Remember him? The Gold Cup winner who played up at the start. Ditched the world’s best jockey at Bechers and, five fences later, fell again. Fatally.

Ten million folks watched it on the BBC and umpteen million others saw it all over the world. Forget the result. Two horses died. High profile ones. The race is too dangerous. Stop it. Ban it. We may tune in for the excitement. But we don’t want too much. Fences too difficult, race too long, runners too many. Distil it all and you finish up with a two runner race on the flat over half a mile. That is the illogical conclusion. Horses die in the paddock, horses die when put out to grass, horses die when being trained. They also die at Plumpton and Towcester. It is the downside of racing. Nobody likes it but if you love racing, as I do, you have to accept it. Training and racing horses has its risks. If society is not prepared to take that risk then the sport is dead.

I sincerely mean that last statement because the serious antis won’t stop at the Grand National. Its high media profile, daunting fences, and large field is merely the beginning. Get that knocked off the agenda and a five runner novice chase at  Wetherby won’t be far behind. Cruelly, the death of the Gold Cup winner played into their hands. They couldn’t buy such publicity. For many years, because of my job, I regularly went to the Cheltenham Festival. Sixty thousand people poured through the gates for a day of excitement and pleasure. About fifteen regularly stood outside holding up their condemning placards. With the death of Synchronised those fifteen voices are getting worryingly louder. And they know it.

I don’t do show jumping. It has no appeal to me. Hickstead and Burleigh are foreign countries. A few years ago we regularly heard about fatalities at their events. Mainly riders, more newsworthy, but no doubt horses as well. I didn’t call for it to be banned. I know nothing about their sport. And neither do the once a year punters and viewers who tune in to our most high profile race. So leave us alone. The logic of your argument, as someone better than me said, is that the only horses we will ever get to see is in a zoo.

For anyone interested I backed the winner, Neptune Collanges, and coined a tidy sum. Did not stop me crying at the death of Synchronised and dear old Pete. I would give every penny back for that not to have happened. But I can just about live with the death of a horse, racing is after all the only reason they exist, not sure if I could cope with the death of racing. And that seems to be where we are going.

HLOS - A Grand Night for Singing

**

I sometimes think there are no depths to which I will not sink in a blatant attempt to boost my blog reading stats. It’s a well known fact, or ought to be, that I am not a big musical fan. And on my very short personal list of the best of them, you will search hard to find any by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Too comfy for my tastes. So two hours of their wall to wall lyrical songs, without even a hint of narrative, hardly suggests a ticket that I was going to get too excited about. But Harpenden Light Operatic Society has never had my interfering snout pushed into their musical trough and I thought it was about time. My blogging is local theatre and you don’t get more local than this. And besides I am long enough in the teeth to know that how you serve things up is all. I was once reluctantly dragged, kicking and screaming, to a St Alban’s production of Oliver and came out so gobsmacked by its inventiveness that I immediately booked to see it again. Critics are like that. Ever so fickle.

I can’t say I saw much of that directorial wizardry in A Grand Night for Singing. Sally Davis, director and choreographer, played it all with a pretty straight bat. The simple black and bare nightclub set heavily relied on lots of white lights and colourful ladies dresses to add the required zing. Any show needs a bit more than that to float my theatrical boat. This steady stream of pleasant songs, unimaginatively linked, contained no theatrical surprises.. Not engaged by a complete and all consuming experience, I sat back and cherry picked the pieces. Dick and Oscar would have done the same.

Thankfully there was enough good singing, both collectively and individually, to make my twelve quid money well spent. Twenty four if you include an impecunious companion. I may be a sniffy theatre buff, got pictures of Rattigan and Ibsen on one of my walls, but I know a good tune, well sung, when I fall over it. When the thirty odd performers combined in stirring renditions of A Grand Night for Singing, I Have Dreamed, and Some Enchanted Evening even this old cynic tingled. Those colourfully dressed gals and the black costumed waiter boys can certainly belt out a song when they get together. And stand-in Musical Director Graham Thomson belted it all out with them. I like this man. He enjoys what he does and my untrained musical ear pleasingly flaps at his baton waving.

Individually it gets a bit more tricky. This is where you find out, if you didn’t already know, where my critical faculties lie. I loved Mary Watkinson’s The Gentleman Is A Dope. Beautifully sung with an evocative and earthy tone which ticked all my boxes and I give similar brownie points to Liz Firmin’s intelligent and amusing rendition of It’s Me. Excellent singers both and with an inner depth of controlled acting, one sad, one comic, that my Ibsen portrait would appreciate. I also had a lot of time for Chris Eagles and Pete Town, flashy cummerbunds both, for all of what they did. Mr Eagles sang beautifully, especially We Kiss in a Shadow, and Mr Town both sang and danced his Honeybun with consummate style. A bit off a show off, but hey he has the talent so why not, and both these chaps showed they were not one offs with a superbly combined All At Once You Love Her.

It is interesting, to me at any rate, that most of the singled out songs are from shows I do not know. Ignorant beast. It may partly explain why I was not totally enamoured of If I Loved You (Claire Millens) or Maria (Adam Briffett). The former is one of the few R and H songs that I adore and the latter belongs to those bloody nuns. Both performers were up against my expectations. Not easy to compete with that. But elsewhere I got immense pleasure from Nova Horley and Brian Woods in Parent Medley, and each proved it was no fluke with their respective renditions of Something Wonderful and This Nearly Was Mine. Magnificent voices and stage presence from both of them. I can’t sing, and listening to these two, I  wished I could and was glad I can’t. Good singing gets you like that.

So it was a funny sort of evening for me. No, I did not get that theatrical buzz that I constantly seek and desire. Sally Davis needed to pull up those choreographical socks of imagination much firmer for that. The occasional try for comedy didn’t really work and only Ms Watkinson and Kay Ward (It Might As Well Be Spring) came anywhere near it. But Mr Thomson led his band with verve and the lighting boys, forgiving the odd missed spot, lit with sparkly style. And the gal’s costumes, colourful as a spring garden, were never less than satisfying. My impecunious companion (extra twelve quid) thought so. And she is harder to please than me. She don’t blog but, if she did, it would be a much more incisive read than this. Me? I only know Ibsen. Roy Hall

HLOS - A Grand Night for Singing (Preview)

Harpenden Light Operatic Society played with a pretty straight, if colourful, bat in their compilation of songs from a variety of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Lots of lighting but little directorial imagination in the pseudo nightclub setting left all in the hands, or throats, of the singers. Thankfully they combined to stirring effect a number of times to partially satisfy even this old curmudgeon. The title number, A Grand Night for Singing, and Some Enchanted Evening were particularly uplifting. Individually you picked over the romantically rich and varied puddings as your fancy took you. Chris Eagles and Pete Town stood out amongst the black costumed waiters and Liz Firmin ticked all my acting appreciation boxes. I shall ponder over those that displeased but they don’t include the excellent singing of Nova Horley or Brian Woods, or the splendid Mary Watkinson. Overall a mixed bag which rarely hit the theatrical heights, but carried with musical aplomb by the ever reliable Graham Thomson. You don’t get drawn in to this type of theatre but, if you go, you can hum along to those colourful dresses. In a bleak world that can’t be bad.

HLOS - A Grand Night for Singing

Runs to Saturday 31^st March 2012 at Harpenden Hall (8.00pm).

Full review to follow

Blithe Spirit - Dunstable Rep

***

The horse I invested the Hall squillions on in the Cheltenham Gold Cup (see earlier blog) threw in the towel after a couple of fences. Backed into 8/1 from 20/1 it was clearly subsumed by expectations. Horses are like that. They don’t read the form book. Probably a good job as expectations and performance rarely marry on the turf. Especially at Cheltenham.

Maddeningly, but interestingly, theatre is sometimes the same. Since starting this blog Still Life has matched my expectations and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has exceeded them but a couple of others have fallen a tad short of the form book ratings. Blithe Spirit, the Rep’s March offering, fell into that latter category. In trainer speak it didn’t run up to expectations. It should have done. Anna Carter–Brown was a beautifully enunciated and ice cold Ruth Condomine and Matthew Flitton her clear and crisp husband Charles. They pleasingly echoed both the Coward style and those smug Leadbetter’s from The Good Life. Nothing wrong with that. Elvira, the ghost of the husband’s first wife, was a polished Kate Redding and, effortlessly stealing the evening, Angela Goss was a magnificently comic Madam Arcati.

So why did I not get that frothy zing that the evening should have given me? Madam Arcati splendidly conjures up the spirit of the first wife and the subsequent mayhem but she was doing it against a black walled set which spelt out glum despondency. Our Noel wouldn’t like it. You have to work hard in such a setting and, for all their skills, the Condomine’s sparkling and pithy wit seemed a little laboured. Little wonder that Mr Flitton injected a few intrusive comic poses.  I can see why director Joe Butcher put second wife Ruth in a black dress, a contrast for the ghostly white of Elvira, but it didn’t work. The overall effect, underpinned by mournful music and bland stage lighting, was pervading gloom. The actors fought against it, they were good enough, but it was a losing battle.

Oh all right I am being snotty. Alistair Brown and Sue Young gave classy support as the peripheral Bradman’s and Jenny Monaghan’s maid was an absolute delight. Her mannered walks were executed to perfection. But Blithe Spirit is not about them. It is about the Condomines, alive and dead, and the eccentric nutcase who conducts the séances. Arguably Miss Redding’s Elvira was a little too polished. A lighter mischievousness combining with a sharper razor from the Condomines would have heightened the sexual tension. But this is detail. This cast were up against it as soon as the curtain went up on the set. Bit like my horse in the Cheltenham Gold Cup when he saw the first fence.

Christine Hobart skilfully played that mournful music on her clarinet. Graham Chapell created some nice lighting moods even if I didn’t like the central stagey atmosphere of the living room. And whoever dressed Angela Goss deserves a medal. Shall share it between her and Christine Sinfield. And that is what I left this production remembering. Madam Arcati and her bags, her clothes, and her offstage bike. And Blithe Spirit is, or should be, much more than that.

Blithe Spirit - Dunstable Rep (Preview)

Angela Goss turns in a splendidly eccentric virtuouso performance in Joe Butcher's production of Noel Coward's spiritual comedy. But her Madam Arcati contains a pleasing fizz which only briefly flickered elsewhere. Stylish turns littered the stage but they rarely gelled in the manner required to bring the ultra light Coward wit to life. Anna Carter-Brown (Ruth) and Matthew Flitton (Charles) skilfully and waspishly sparred, and Jenny Monaghan's maid strutted the stage with comedic aplomb. But all suffered on a bleak set, unrealistically lit. I shall mull on it all. Not least that this Blithe Spirit, not bad by any means, was a little less than the sum of its individual parts.

Runs to Saturday 24th March 2012. (The Little Theatre - 7.45pm)

Full Review to Follow