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

March in the Cotswolds

When I go to heaven, or wherever they send me, I shall thank those folks in charge for a number of things. I shall thank them for flowers, whisky, close friends, cheese in all its infinite varieties, Sunsets and Sidmouth. And my wife, of course, and my sprawling family in Leicestershire. All so important. But I shall also thank them for four days in March. It means little in the great scheme of things, who really cares if one four legged animal can beat another, but horseracing has always been a glorious irrelevancy. And Prestbury Park, Cheltenham in the Cotswolds, is the most glorious of them all. I love theatre, it is an abiding passion, but I love horseracing more. I once shocked my wife when, asked to choose between the two, I opted for the horses. My logic was that I could combine both loves. Theatre is theatre. Horseracing is both. Drama and tragedy and, occasionally, a swagger to the payout window.

And Cheltenham in March is the top of this particular tree by miles. It is Christmas and Easter, National Theatre and Oscars, Olympics and Cup finals. All rolled into one. Twenty seven races over four days and all of the cream of racing are there. Big owners and trainers dream of riches, the small fry just shake their heads in disbelief at merely having a horse considered talented enough to run on that (cliché) hallowed turf. To have a small stable nag good enough to grace Cheltenham in March is a bit like having Giggleswick Town in the last sixteen of the FA Cup. You probably ain’t going to win but, by God, it will be fun. And that tantalising fun arrived, for me, today. My annual posh and expensive book which analyses the best of those twenty seven races in depth. If the clever minds which dissect the respective merits of Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle contenders were in banks or the treasury I reckon that this afflicted country would be in a better shape. Well, maybe no. But it would be a lot more fun.

I used to go every year. Mainly because of my job but, in retirement, for the unalloyed pleasure. These days I prefer to spend the morning pouring over the form and chatting to my brother. Decisions made I trot off to the bookies and then curl up with Channel Four. I get everything. Stimulation, social interaction, healthy walks, and financial calculation. And pure theatre. I can’t understand why HMG don’t make it compulsory. It ticks all the oldie boxes in our fight against senile dementia. Must be the numerous fags and alcohol, not too much of the latter, which links political with incorrect. Can’t have pensioners enjoying themselves. They should be worrying about their rubbish bins and sundry wars.

I have always been of the view that life is so much more bearable if you can switch off and bury yourself in what might win the 3.30 at Kempton Park. Cheltenham, in March, is that prosaic activity writ large. It gets so much publicity it is almost respectable. The big boys look nailed on this year given the lack of new kids on the block. Hurricane Fly in the Champion Hurdle, Sizing Europe in the Queen Mother, Big Bucks in the World Hurdle, and Long Run in the Gold Cup. The accumulator is about 20/1 if you fancy a punt. Oscar Whisky might give BB a race in the World Hurdle, Big Zeb is a place for the QM, and Kauto Star, twice a winner, will evoke many tears if he gets the biggest one on Friday. But, bar falls, little else will match them.

Being greedy I have backed Wierd Al at 20/1 for the Gold Cup on Friday and not ready to dismiss Minsk in the Triumph on the same day. Might be a backable price. But win or lose, and the numerous handicaps wait my studying, I shall love it. I pay my ticket and get four days of fantastic theatre. And unlike visits to Stratford or the Barbican I sometimes get my money back. That never happens in the West End, even with the biggest turkeys. Horses are not actors. They occasionally pay the gas bill. The long march starts here.

Cheltenham National Hunt Festival - Tues 13th Mar to Fri 16th Mar (Channel Four)

Wheathampstead Dramatic Society - Time of My Life (Review)

***

I tell you, its bloody hard writing a blog about Wheathampstead’s latest. Trouble is, outline too much and you finishing up thinking it would be simpler to post a copy of the script. I have tried three times so far and it would be a damn sight easier nailing blancmange to the wall. (You can tell I am stymied when I start swearing). So let’s cut to the chase. Ayckbourn. Alan. 1990’s play. So-so. Somewhere between Relatively Speaking (super) and Henceforward (pooper). Restaurant, birthday dinner, dysfunctional family, nutty waiters. Lots. Three acting areas. Central one, all takes place in the present. Side ones, number one son propels his life forward and number two son propels his life backwards. Comic. Sad. Episodic. Got it. If not, buy the script. I’m going back to the blancmange.

Director Julie Field created a nice ambience for this dull, suburban, restaurant somewhere in the unspecified north. Clever use of subdued music suggested a much better party going on elsewhere. Hardly surprising. The one onstage carried enough emotional baggage to sink half a dozen cruise ships. The central area, pay attention, is in the here and now and Laura’s birthday party is winding down. When the kids and their partners have gone she and her businessman husband linger with late night brandies and some dubiously foreign muck served up by one of Jonathan Field’s splendid waiters. Think this one was the boss. In vino veritas and there was a lot of that here. Laura hates number one son (Glyn), wants to smack his wife in the mouth, and adores number two son (Adam). For good measure she hates grandchildren unless they are on TV and confesses to bonking her husband’s dead brother. He wasn’t dead at the time, it was many years before, but you get my drift. Too much exposition was an inherent weakness of this play but it did not detract from Jan Westgarth’s splendid portrayal of the bitter Laura. This was a woman who wanted to kick life in the balls. Her scenes would have had greater punch if husband Gerry (Len Skilton) had been a little less ponderous and deliberate but this actress was always watchable. I reckon I have seen her onstage before. If not, it is my loss.

Interleaved with all this was the forward life of despised number one son Glyn and his neurotic wife Stephanie (sad scenes) and the backwards life of loved and wayward Adam and his weird, hairdresser, girlfriend Maureen (comic scenes). All a bit formulaic with a suggestion that Ayckbourn was writing to order for the sea paddler tourists of Scarborough but rich in dramatic possibilities. Simon Chivers' Glyn, a selfish bastard, played with a straight bat which would have benefited from a little light and shade but his performance was always watchable. As his wife Stephanie, moving from pregnancy to separation and then divorce, Karen Prior struggled. She impressed in a lovely scene when a bemused waiter plied her distraught character with sundry sweet courses but overall her delivery of lines was flat and unimaginative. She could learn from Sara Payne’s comic performance as the second son’s gauche girlfriend. Her Maureen was simply wonderful. Outrageous hair, socially unacceptable accent and costumes, and a bemused innocence which enchanted throughout. Telling us that her bookshelves only contained three books merely confirmed what we already knew. Steve Leadbetter’s unconventional  Adam was a good foil without ever matching the freshness that Miss Payne brought to her lines.

But overall it was an interesting evening. The weakness of the play was that in this Essa de Calvi restaurant, narrative and conflict mainly slept in separate beds. The brandy fuelled dad is dead, killed in a car crash after the party, and ma is collecting dogs and other unseemly habits. So we are told. Personally I prefer to wallow in my Ayckbourn characters verbally beating the hell out of each other as I discover the truth of their relationships in realistic strife. Time of My Life has a much more restricting format and needs consummate playing from all on stage. Wheathampstead almost got there with spot on performances from Jan Westgarth and Sara Payne, and Jonathan Field’s dexterous playing of a variety of odd ball waiters. He linked the scenes with skilful aplomb. It just needed a smidgeon of stronger support. Bit like that metaphorical blancmange on my wall.