All Theatrical Roads lead to Cheltenham

I get around a bit on my theatrical travels. St Albans, Sidmouth, Eaton Bray? Been everywhere, man. Sometimes I even push out the boat to Luton but, given soaring petrol prices and pot holed roads, I ration my visits. That’s my excuse anyway. But the A5 to Dunstable and B653 to Wheathampstead are regularly worn in search of theatrical gems, adventurous soul that I am. Always worth it if I see a cracker (And Then There Were None, Calendar Girls) and even the lesser ones are rarely totally devoid of interest. Theatre is like that if it is in your blood. And it constantly surprises. High expectations are fulfilled or dashed in equal proportions and low expectations are sometimes pleasantly and wonderfully surpassed. And I reckon all, or most of them, have their directors scratching their heads in puzzlement. Something that seemed a whiz bang hit in rehearsals fails to leave the page in performance and the one they considered a complete turkey suddenly gels and flowers. If they are honest they, or the best of them, are never sure which way the play or musical will go until they flaunt it in front of an audience. Fate is so fickle.

It’s the same with horses. The best of them, those that are fit that is, will strut their own personal stage at my beloved Cheltenham in the second week of March. Some will live up to expectations, some will exceed them, and many others will leave their trainers scratching heads and forthcoming entries. But for four days the finest National Hunt horseflesh on the planet will clash swords in twenty seven of the finest races. To put it all into context NH horses are rated 0-175 and there will not be many with a rating under 130 running at Prestbury Park. And the latter only in the handicaps or novice events. In the top races 150 would probably put you in as a likely also ran. Kauto Star (retired) and Big Bucks (injured) are two goliaths who won’t be there but there are enough other super stars to compensate. Sprinter Sacre (rated 179) is no doubt the best of them and the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Wednesday is considered a shoe-in for this awesome beast. Quevega, Simonsig, and Hurricane Fly (Champion Hurdle favourite) are just a few of the other superstars who will get the pulse racing. Even if, at prohibitive odds, you ain’t backed them. In the latter Rock on Ruby may surprise again. For me, well I like bigger prices and hopefully a couple of the following may swell my personal satchel. Even if they don’t, like those actors or plays which don’t shine when they should, I shall still love them.

Haven’t a clue about Friday’s Gold Cup at the moment (it looks wide open, but don’t tell Sir Des Champs and Bobsworth) but reckon Kentford Grey Lady could give Quevega a shove in the Mares Hurdle and I like First Lieutenant (win) and Alberta’s Run (e/w) in the Ryanair Chase. Both races on the Thursday and old Bertie is my blog poster horse. 12 years old and won around £1,000,000. He owes nobody anything and this could be his last race. Certainly at Cheltenham. He needs good going. So if it rains he may put his feet up and watch it on the telly. I shall certainly be doing that. And if Empiracle (currently 8/1) wins the bumper on Wednesday I shall be counting my dosh and toasting a very nice Harpenden man who has backed it to win £5,000. I’ll only win about £50 but I shall be ecstatic for both of us. And if it loses I won’t care, at least for me if not him, as the adrenalin will pump in glorious anticipation. And that is what it is all about. Theatre and horseracing do that to you. And in March at Cheltenham the horse eclipses all. On four unrivalled days it is the nearest you will get to heaven whilst you still reside on earth. Those wonderful equine actors have brushed up their lines and honed their characters (hero or villain) in a script yet to be written for a play yet to unfold.  As some folks say, bring it on. Roy Hall

The Cheltenham National Hunt Festival  

Tues 12^th March – Fri 15^th March 2013

Channel Four

Steel Magnolias - Front Row Theatre Group

***

I have now seen Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s witty and sad play set in a Louisiana hairdressers, three times and each time have come away with one overriding thought. You don’t half feel sorry for the men. The odd good word is said in their defence but you could fit most of them on the back of a Thomas Jefferson commemorative stamp. Collectively the unseen male of the species, dead or alive, of Harling’s play are lazy, aggressive, stupid or self centred. Usually all four. Men, of course, are not like that. In rugby clubs and on football coaches, up and down the country, they spend most of their time and energies revering the beauty and wisdom of ladies in delicate and literate tones. No, I don’t believe it either.

Probably explains why I have no difficulty in believing that when women get together in the tonsorial equivalent of the confessional they can expand, in pithy and witty terms, on the husbands and sons and lovers in their life. Apart from anything else, in Steel Magnolias it creates a rich seam of comic lines against the backdrop of a sad and tragic central story. Over four scenes, over two years, customer Shelby marries, gets pregnant, has baby, gets ill, and dies. Solomon Grundy in dramatic, feminine, relief. On Richard Clark’s sparse but realistic set, converting a carport to a hairdressing salon, we follow a journey of two complex hairdressers, two cranky customers, and a mother and daughter united in the latter’s fateful journey. I would have liked a prominent and striking salon door to both welcome the customers and facilitate stronger entrances from the actors and I would have liked, personal nitpick, a telephone that rang realistically. Here we had a play in Eaton Bray and a phone ring from Whipsnade. Oh all right, I exaggerate, but you get my meaning. Good theatre should draw you in, generally this well acted play did, but little things can detract from that desired illusion of reality. I said I was nitpicking.

 

Having said all that I have few quibbles with the acting skills on show. Front Row Theatre Group may be a small village company but, on this showing, they have some serious actresses. Mandy Lindsay was a totally believable and wise cracking Truvy. ‘There ain’t such a thing as natural beauty’ was her mantra and she attacked her ladies and her lines with consummate aplomb. This lady only wrong footed once, and sinfully drew attention to it, but overall her performance was an absolute joy. Susan Young matched her all the way as Annelle, flowering from hesitant assistant to confident companion on her journey of damascene conversion. Never dropping her guard, this was a sensitive portrayal throughout. Clairee (Donna Hughes) and Ouiser (Barbara Morton) were chips off the same acerbic block and both played their characters to the full comic hilt. I shall never look at chaps into track lighting and called Steve in the same way again. Oh, read the script. Barbara Morton, beautifully and quirkily costumed, scored heavily in every scene she was in and both she and Miss Hughes hit the southern drawl lines with expertise and clarity. I am still laughing at tinselled ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs as Christmas decoration.

 

Just in case this is beginning to sound like a homely village piece I have to warn you that this blog ain’t like that. I don’t do rubber stamping of worthy theatrical causes. Ask Wheathampstead Players and Dunstable Rep if you don’t believe me. You have to earn your stars from me. And truth to tell I had problems with both the mother and the daughter. Bernadette Freed as M’Lynn initially lacked the ease of the others mentioned, in character development and line delivery, but magnificently came up trumps in her last scene. Her quiet retelling of her daughter’s final moments, a rejection of the kidney she had donated, followed by her anger and despair at the unfairness of life, was a compelling piece of acting. A difficult scene to play, and this was the best interpretation I have seen of it. More variety in her first half delivery and she would have been up there with the best of them on stage. She probably wasn’t helped by Sonia Dean’s portrayal of the ill fated daughter Shelby. This wasn’t a bad performance, in parts it was quite touching, but her diction was low key and her delivery and characterisation was hampered by the southern drawl accent. You felt for her passing but not as much as you should.

 

I hope that does not sound cruel. I hope not because overall I greatly admired this feminine ensemble. Eaton Bray are blessed to have such a good acting company in their small village. Director Christopher Lavin had clearly worked his actors very hard and he had a pretty good cast more than capable of realising his expectations. I intend to view them again in November, I travel adventurously wide in the cause of blogging, when they are doing Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular. The men in that, this time on stage, are a bunch of shits as well. Roy Hall

Wheathampstead DS - Calendar Girls

****

I must be a very strange man. Never quite understood why folks get so upset about nudity. Do it all the time when pruning the roses on a hot day. But not everyone has a streak of exhibitionism and, if you ain’t of that ilk, being naked can be daunting. Even in a good cause. So those Women’s Institute Ladies of Calendar Girls fame were pretty brave. They took their knickers off in memory of a nice man who loved sunflowers and died of cancer, and Tim Firth captures it all in his very funny and sad play of the same name. The performers who evoke that spirit on stage are theatrical chips from the same Yorkshire block without the excuse of a charity cloak to hide  blushes. Fortunately the play is skewed to convincingly cover most of the undraping and in Wheathampstead Dramatic Society’s splendid production it was mainly emotions which were laid bare. The dirty mac brigade must have been bitterly disappointed.

I wasn’t. I loved director Julie Field’s slant on this piece which shamelessly played with your senses. One minute you were laughing your head off at pithy and acerbic lines, sharply delivered, and in the next, to evocative music, you were suppressing large gulps in your throat. There was hardly a moment in the evening when you did not feel totally involved with the people on stage. The major strength was those six ladies who shed their clothes to buy a memorial sofa. In an impeccable piece of casting the sextet combined beautifully to present magnificent individual flawed characters and collective northern grit. This was teamwork of the highest order. Jan Westgarth (Chris) expertly led the team and revealed a private ambitious agenda and Viv Fairley (Annie) matched her with a sensitive portrayal as the grieving widow. Their opening in Act Two, addressing the Women’s Institute Conference, beautifully combined helplessness and aggression. Sarah Brindley (Cora) was a feisty organist with a troubled domestic life, Mary Watkinson (Celia) was a Miss September woman revelling in the recognition of her obvious attributes, and Sheila Scull (Jessie) a sharp and outrageously funny retired school teacher. On this performance Miss Scull can teach timing to a grandfather clock. Almost eclipsing them all was Barbara Suggitt as the inhibited and prudish Ruth. It was long odds against her taking her kit off and when she did the audience cheered almost as loudly as they did when she told her philandering husband’s beautician lover (a very nice cameo from Hannah Reeve) to ‘fuck off’. But as harsh as that retort was it rang as sheer and heartfelt truth. And that is what I admired most in these ladies. There was not a caricature in sight. All were flesh and blood and flawed. Under the laughter and the tears you could almost smell the Yorkshire pudding.

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t find something to quibble about. The doc is giving me tablets for it. The episodic scenes were not always seamlessly linked and, on a composite set of church hall and fields, actors were often unimaginatively grouped. But frankly I did not care. I was captivated by the play and the highly crafted performances. In a cast in which there was not a serious weak link Jonathan Field also stood out for his loathsome tacky TV director and, especially, Robin Langer for his sensitive and well judged dying John. His last wheelchair scene almost broke your heart. He loved those sunflowers and he loved life. I reckon he would have liked what those women did in his memory. They scattered his beloved seeds and delivered a clever and poignant end. Lovely play, beautifully done. I left applauding those skilful and courageous ladies and a resolve to buy some sunflowers. Hides a lot more than roses on a naturist summer day. Roy Hall

Calendar Girls (Wheathampstead) - Preview

Wheathampstead Dramatic Society has turned out an absolute cracker with their latest production. Tim Firth’s Calendar Girls, the tale of those famous Women’s Institute Nudies, is rich in laughter and pathos and director Julie Field extracts every ounce of a variety of emotions. Jan Westgarth (Chris) and Viv Fairley (Annie) head an almost impeccable cast in a production which ticked most of my theatrical boxes. Strip off your clothes and put a sunflower in your hair. It just might get you a ticket for the last night.

Last performance Saturday 16^th February at 8.00pm.

Full review to follow

Key for Two - Dunstable Rep

**

I seem to remember reading somewhere, many years ago, that comedy was abnormal folks in normal situations and farce was precisely the reverse. The folks were straight, the situation crazy. I can go along with that. Lazy beast that I am, I like my theatrical reference points. Certainly suits this one. John Chapman and Dave Freeman’s Key for Two had its fair share of normal people, even if an obsession with fish and eggs ranked almost as high as extra marital bonking. But playing away from home carries lots of baggage and the best farces pile on absurdities with devastating effect. You laugh your socks off and go home wondering what all the fuss was about. With this latest from Dunstable Rep I went home thinking these were actually quite nice people who had just got in a bit of a tangle. The socks stayed firmly on in mayhem more suggested than realised.

Trouble is in such situations you are never quite sure where to lay the blame. Honesty or ignorance compels me to say I don’t know if it was the script or production. I liked the set, good and solid suburban house, and I liked the ludicrous premise. When unwelcome wives intrude, pretend it is a nursing home. A rich seam for numerous visual and verbal jokes. Hardly thinking man’s theatre but should be very jolly. But some characters were shoe horned in from abroad for no serious narrative reason and drinking habits dominated throughout. If the cast had given it energy it may not have mattered but, nice as they were, they and their equally nice director (this is a blog so I am allowed to be personal) rarely injected even a smidgeon of quicksilver pace. And in farce that is just about as vital as thwarted sexual couplings.

Clare Tozer Roodt did a competent job as a woman who collected other people’s husbands to pay the bills. Nothing wrong with that, have you seen the price of gas? But skilled as it was, her Harriet never really left the page. Julie Foster, playing one of those shoe horned foils, had much more fun. As long lost friend Anne she too readily embraced the shenanigans but, in the second half, did a nice turn as a most inappropriate nurse. Alan Goss showed fine comic timing as a philandering husband slowly losing the plot and the use of his legs and Philip Davis, rich in Grimsby fish, gently delivered the unlikely second lover. But it was all a bit too predictable and it took the introduction of wives Magda, a delightfully confused Jenny Dean, and Mildred, the quintessential fishwife of Penny Scales, to give it a short and much needed lift. Barry Pain completed the septet as a drunken husband come vet and if he didn’t impress I blame the script rather than his performance. Drunks are a sod to play at the best of times. When you have no particular reason for being there it is even worse.

So I was seriously underwhelmed. I reckon it was because I was allowed to think too much, cue picking rarely fired, and in farce that is fatal. You should listen to the pictures not the words. And pictures were slow and words were heavy. Only my opinion of course and I shall give it a couple of stars because I reckon this cast were capable of better. Maybe, like snow covered cars on icy roads, I picked a slow night.  Roy Hall

Dunstable Rep - Key for Two (Preview)

John Chapman and Dave Freeman’s farcical comedy ‘Key for Two’ needs quicksilver pacing and gathering urgency to make its extra marital bonking plot truly work. Director Anne Davis serves up a competent cast for Dunstable Rep’s latest offering but controlled and serious portrayals meant early scenes verged on the tedious and later, well crafted, mayhem only briefly fired. On an excellent domestic set Alan Goss gave us touches of astute comic timing as one of the philandering husbands and Jenny Dean and Penny Scales turned in nice cameos as unwelcome wives. But the situation, led by Clare Tozer Roodt as a duplicitous mistress, never suggested a descent into welcome and pleasing chaos. And on my reflective, snow strewn, journey home I reckon it should have. Roy Hall

Full review to follow

Little Theatre, High Street South, Dunstable.

To Saturday 26^th January 2013

7.45pm

Tickets £9 - £13

Did I ever tell you I once met Superman?

Been around I have. Mainly because of my thirty six years in horseracing. Working for a chairman (Woodrow Wyatt) at the tote. A man who knew everyone. Explains why I once had lunch with Bernard Levin, twice met Prince Michael of Kent  – nice man who never forgot a face – and had tea at York races with Robin Cook. Leading labour politician for the ignorant. He wasn’t, but those who ain’t heard of him might be. I also avoided shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher at Ascot, delved fingers in chips with Lord George Wigg (Harold Wilson’s Postmaster General), and chatted with the Old Duke of Devonshire when he sold off some of his Canalettos. All true, as was my non horseracing brushes with the famous, most notably spending a day with Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough as he rehearsed a first production of Confusions, and a week with Bob Hoskins in a health farm. I didn’t go with him, merely met him there, but we had lots of fun. Great chap and not snobby. But eclipsing them all, and the only one that may one day impress my grandson, was that I once met Superman. Christopher Reeves. At Towcester racecourse. I adjudicated on a horseracing competition in which someone won a car. A prize of at least £10,000 and, for some reason, the powers that be thought I was the right chap to scrutinise it. Superman (Christopher Reeves) was the man who presented the prize. So I met him. So polite and unassuming. He queued up at a tote window to place a bet on one of the races and caused a stir  on both sides of the window. I felt very sad when I read of his horse riding accident which paralysed him. It could not have been too long after his visit to Towcester. That wasn’t mentioned in the paper. As another film actor would say, ‘Not a lot of people know that.’ They do now.

This leads me on to other things a lot of people don’t know, mainly what I have been doing or looking forward to over Christmas. But somehow ‘How I met Superman’ reads much better than ‘Roy Hall’s Christmas activities.’ If it doesn’t you must be a sad and nosey lot. I saw Harpenden High Street Players ‘Tons of Money’, good directorial debut from Lewis Cox and excellent performance from Nicola Preston, took in St Andrews latest ‘Christmas is a Coming’, and screamed like mad when my 20/1 shot, Captain Chris, nearly won the King George V1 Chase at Kempton Park on Boxing Day. Pity nobody told the favourite, Long Run, he couldn’t possibly get back up on the line after such a gruelling race. Juicy winnings snatched from my greedy grasp. On the telly I enjoyed a riveting drama on Joyce Hatto (google her) by Victoria Wood and revelled in the last episode of Homeland. Not usually into such things but this gripped throughout. Claire Danes was amazing in a cast which batted very long. And now, as the festive trimmings return to the loft and snow settles on pot holed streets and roads, I wallow in the Archers Radio Four tryst of Paul and Lillian (Matt will win out in my opinion) and anticipate future local theatrical offerings. None will excite like meeting Superman but, hopefully, the following old favourites will tickle a few of my jading senses.  Given a blog that my severest critic, her indoors, says is merely a filler those whisky laced senses clearly need uplifting. Perhaps I should call Superman. Happy New Year. Roy Hall

 

Key For Two – Dunstable Rep

 Fri 18^th January – Saturday 26^th January Little Theatre, High Street South

7.45pm

Calendar Girls – Wheathampstead Dramatic Society

Wednesday February 13th - Saturday February 17th

8.00pm
Tickets £8.00

01582 629594 for details

 

And further ahead

The Female of the Species – Dunstable Rep   Fri 15^th March – Saturday 23^rd March

An Ideal Husband – High Street Players (Harpenden)   Wednesday 10^th April – Friday 12^th April

Into The Woods – St Andrews Players Wednesday 22^nd May – Saturday 25^th May (St Andrews Church – Luton)