Love's Labours Lost

Black Ram Theatre

Diss Corn Hall

(25 Aug 2010)

Love's Labours Rocked, you could call this mix of Shakespeare and High School Musical.

Whereas the Branagh film used 1930s music, this production features pop songs from the 50s to Lady Gaga.

A haunting line like 'Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?' falls oddly at the high school prom.

You have to remind yourself that the popular blonde over there is the princess of France.

But, after the initial raising of eyebrows, it works well. The story of the young men who abjure women for three years of study, until these girls turn up, is timeless.

One critic called the play 'a feast of language'. The delete button accounts for chunks of it, with even the 'greasy Joan' epilogue being replaced by a Buddy-like finale.

But what remains, like Berowne's 'And I, forsooth, in love!' speech, is acted with relish.

The masquerade of Muscovites, even when acted in leather jackets and shades, has something about it.

With no programme available I could not identify the actors; but was impressed by their commitment, speaking and singing.

I could imagine William Shakespeare doing high fives in his grave.

 

HENRY V

Mouth To Mouth

Eye Castle

 

The campaign was as dubious as Afghanistan; but the rhetoric still thrills.

  When Henry V, stung by a gift of tennis balls, told the French that he was king and had dominion over their country, there was trouble.

  Director James Holloway used the Branagh film script version, deleting many pages of Shakespeare. Scarcely a speech remained unabbreviated.

  Eye Castle proved to be a highly atmospheric venue for a large, talented cast to show their mettle.

  The setting and the words of Bruce Cox's expressive Chorus helped to whirl us to Harfleur and Agincourt.

  The low-life characters, especially Bardolph (James Holloway) and Mistress Quickly (Amy Gibbons), were particularly good.

  The French language scenes, between the Dauphine (Juliet Redelsperger) and lady-in-waiting (Beth Keys-Holloway), and between the princess and English king, were charming.

  As the king, Tom Holloway was a good-looking, virile figure reminiscent of Anthony Sher. He rose to the challenge of the great speeches, rousing his army to valour.

  The 'balm, sceptre and ball' speech was delivered in a downpour on the second night, which is historically accurate.

  Now, as then, conditions were treacherous underfoot but the battle went on and the bodies lay long in the wet.

 

AN EVENING WITH JOE ORTON

Nudge Productions

Diss Corn Hall

 

Bird of paradise (his sister's description), rough trader, playwright - what would Diss make of Joe Orton?

  One of his comedies reduced Eye Theatre to silence; but he is still considered a major writer.

  Readings from his diaries could be described as prurient, outrageous, amoral, in the Orton world of bedsits and public lavs. But nobody walked out.

  His 1964 play The Ruffian on the Stair has the menace of Pinter and an affinity with the Theatre of the Absurd. The set, like a school one-acter, helped to recall those days.

  It is an immature play but typical of its time. Having heard the diary extracts, culminating in Orton's murder, you could detect a foreshadowing of the deed.

  A young man (Dan Walker) menaces a woman (Linda Hook) but bonds with her husband (Grant Bartlett).

  They become friendly and then quarrel, leading to the young man being murdered because of sexual jealousy.

  Nudge Productions, directed by Lee Johnson, are a company from the Lowestoft area and were on tour for the first time.

  Full marks for reviving the work of a noted rapscallion playwright.

 

Bentwater Roads

Eastern Angles

 

Even now the former Bentwaters airbase has an atmosphere.

  Motoring across its wide expanses, you feel like the Dambusters driving out to their Lancasters.

  If a crippled bomber finally made it back after all these years and landed there, you would not be surprised.

  The Hush House, where they used to test jet engines, has a tunnel straight out of Dr. Who.

  Inspirations like these led Tony Ramsay to write Bentwater Roads, performed there by Eastern Angles, directed by Ivan Cutting.

  The writer has a feeling for the accretions of time that still make you aware of pagan and medieval Suffolk. So his script moves between these periods, the Cold War and the present.

  A Chorus of local people appear eerily out of the time tunnel as though from pagan times. Medieval church builders take to the stage as naturally as US pilots.

  The concept and programme notes perhaps promise more than the show delivers. The significance of the time slip scenes is not always clear.

  The Chorus actors are underused and spend long periods standing or slumped looking woebegone.

  But the medieval scenes have a dramatic force, while the modern scenes are up-to-the-minute television. The Rendlesham UFO even gets an airing.

  The sense of site and region specific theatre works well, with Nadia Morgan, Pamela Buchner and Sally Ann Burnett standing out in the cast.

 

THE POOR SOLDIER

Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds

(Tues 29 June - Sat 3 July 2010)

The Broadway musical is said to be in a line of descent from this play by John O'Keefe.

Set at the end of the American War of Independence, it was said to be a favourite of George Washington's.

An Irish soldier comes home after the war to find his sweetheart being courted by others.

You have the prologue, the tricorn hats and breeches, the characters who seem to live only for pursuing a partner - all typical of the times.

But you also have a period orchestra made up of a cast who can not only act but sing and play music of the day.

The result is an extraordinary glimpse of theatre in those days and a rich piece of entertainment with a hint of The Beggar's Opera.

Dominic Gerrard, as Fitzroy, is a handsome figure, with an easy charm and stage command.

Sam O'Mahony Adams (no doubt about his ethnic qualifications) makes a bounding, slightly dangerous young Irishman.

Tarek Merchant, looking like Eric Idle in a fright wig, sends his French character up with relish, in the days when foreigners were fair game.

Director Colin Blumenau's policy of restoring the 18th century repertoire of neglected works has again found a little gem.

MASS IN C MINOR
Redgrave Church

In his programme notes Peter Creswell hoped that his concert would help to feel reverence to God, a sense of joy, mercy and peace.
  In case that makes it sound like a church service, his work is invariably tuneful, accessible, fluid and singable.
  I was not surprised when somebody told me that he likes Cole Porter and Noel Coward.
  Mr. Creswell was at the piano this time, giving an even greater impression of his talent and achievements, a man steeped in music.
  Some of the Redgrave Singers' choruses had a foot-tapping quality, while the Et Resurrexit seemed to explode with joy.
  We had the mellow enchantment of Rebecca Walker's cello, striking soloists and a conductor, Kenneth Ian Hytch, of whom all the choir spoke well.
  Mark Saberton was an unusually expressive bass among the soloists. When they sang in quartet there was a lovely fountain of sound.
  From the highs of Christian praise to the balm-like close, this was a concert that will stay in the memory.

 

La Vieille Ville
EyesWrite
Framlingham College

This musical, by Alan Huckle and Gwyn Guy, dispenses with French stereotypes and preconceptions.
  So no accordion music, no haw-he-haw accents, no echoes of Chevalier, Piaf, 'Allo 'Allo or Les Mis.
  The set, designed by Robin Franklin, certainly looks like a small French place. But Chris Strachan's creepily corrupt Mayor could be from some Essex new town.
  You can only admire the scale of the project - a musical created by local people, with a large cast from nearby groups, many songs, a band and an air of something done for pure enjoyment.
  Alan Huckle, in particular, deserves recognition for his work in local drama and the constant fertility of his ideas.
  La Vieille Ville (The Old Town) has catchy songs and a gentle plot about small town problems.
  Sometimes it comes over as up-market panto, particularly the 'dastardly plans' of the Mayor and his short-plank son.
  But the same son, played by Andy Rowland Hinton, shows a considerable singing voice in a number called What's The Matter With Me?
  As family entertainment the show, directed by Sue Franklin, cannot be faulted.

 

The Glass Menagerie

Open Space Theatre Company

Debenham Community Centre

(May 2010)

 

Director David Green features three of the cast of his production of Ibsen's Ghosts.

  This gives a strange impression that the Alving household had emigrated and turned up in Missouri.

  It is not an invidious comparison. Tennessee Williams' play is also about the spectres of the past, with the children as victims.

  The father's photograph, referred to in the play, is one of Williams himself. While he was nobody's idea of a dad, this may show the playwright as father of what we see.

  It could also make a point about the son as father of the man, in an autobiographical play narrated by the young Williams.

  The flakey claustrophobia of family life, set against personal aspirations, fuels the drama.

 A course at night school, or the possibilities of a gentleman caller, are part of the 1930s American Dream.

  Yves Green is tremendous as the mother, a grand actressy figure, bigger than her surroundings but constantly battling reality.

   She dresses up for the gentleman caller as though he was royalty rather than a warehouse clerk.

  Mike Davison gives a searing performance as the son battling the constraints of family life.

As the shy, disabled daughter Cathy Gill has a see-through anguish.

  The long and touching scene with the gentleman caller, where she briefly comes to life and confidence, is exquisitely acted by her and Darren France.

 

Cobbold's Tales

Wortham Church

(May 2010)

 

Local history has provided much entertainment in recent years.

  The Roydon Riots, Burston School Strike, Skelton, Betjeman, Paine - all have inspired plays and festivals.

  A revival of Wortham's production about their 19th century rector Richard Cobbold was most welcome.

  First seen in 2002, the show again brought together the talents of the village and surrounding area.

  Sue Heaser's script and lyrics depict the many facets of rural life, including both the tribulations  and joys.

  Peter Cresswell's music has elements of folk, Gilbert & Sullivan and show scores, giving a 19th century panto feel. He even doubles as a judge to transport one unfortunate man.

  The company were lucky to have media personality Martha Kearney as narrator.

  The cast, led by the strength and experience of Stephen Humfress and Jennifer Hewes (as Cobbold and his wife), Leslie Dumbell, Paul Hewes and George Ball, was marvellous.

  Eva Mason, who was a child in the original production, is now a young lady with an aura of promise.    

  Considering the 'squalor and hardship' mentioned in the script, the cast look surprisingly clean and happy, with children straight out of Kate Greenaway.

  Also, rather than the narrator saying that the rector gradually won the villagers' hearts, it would be cleverer to show scenes by which he did so.

  But these are small quibbles in a heart-warming evening.

 

The Long Way Home

Eastern Angles

Diss Corn Hall

(May 2010)

 

The immemorial art of story-telling is at the centre of this play by Charles Way.

  Set in Greece, against a blue diorama, a plain view of hills and a couple of poplar cut-outs, the spell soon takes hold.

  The use of puppets, as old as stories, also helps Naomi Jones' production to grip.

   Imagination and whatever props come to hand are used, so a tambourine becomes the moon.

  The inspiration was those elderly, black-clad, wise women who inhabit many European countries. Here an unlikely bonding with a feral boy sets the action in motion.

  Susan McGoun is more like a lively, senior WI member on her way to cut the wire at Greenham. But you cannot deny the energy and intensity of her performance.

  Similarly, Theo Devaney morphs quickly from a wild boy to a well-spoken sixth-former.

But, again, this is acting with passion and truth.

  James Bolt and Jumaan Short tell the story and play a clutch of volatile Greek characters.

This is another winner from Eastern Angles.

 

The Continental Quilt

Mere Players

Roydon Village Hall

(May 2010)

 

Joan Greening's farce is like the one parodied in Michael Frayn's Noises Off.

  You know the sort of thing: 'Alone together at last, darling. What can spoil our happiness now?'

  Or, in tabloid language, 'Love Nest Sex Romp Goes Pear-Shaped.'

  With more doors than character, this is end-of-the-pier entertainment.

  Someone mutters a remark, is asked to repeat it and pretends to have said something harmlessly similar. It is that kind of humour.

  Justly neglected as the play is, director Irene McManus and her cast give a good account of it.

  Sam Ward and Sebastian Clarke show all the transparent bluster of the two brothers trying to cope with a surfeit of women.

  Feistiness is all around, from Charlotte King, Celia Baker, April Hill and Mercedes Hood.

  Phillipa Jenkins and Gerald Prior make a believable mum and dad, she calling the shots.

  As the older, eccentric characters, Sheila Blackwell and Clive Sinfield steal the acting honours.

  The audience, maybe seeing it as an antidote to the election results, cheered at the end.

 

Up On The Roof

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

(May 2010)

Plays about what happened to a group of friends are not uncommon. Here a bunch of students meet to sing on the roof and vow to meet again in 10 years. Student days are an unrepeatable time of unfortunate friends, clothes and hairstyles. There is a sadness about it ending; but a hope that all this study will lead to something. The play, by Simon Moore and Jane Prowse, sees the characters go off to success, disillusion and finding themselves. Described as an uplifting comedy, it is a crowd-pleasing show, directed by Peter Rowe. The close harmony singing of 1970s hits is beautifully done and reflects the aspirations and tribulations of the characters. The group dynamic, with its humour and banter, is palpable. These really are a group of friends who become our friends during the evening. Their development also rings true, even the way the little, dungareed, northern muppet Angela (Gemma Wardle) becomes a star. She, Stephen Fletcher, Christopher Pizzey, Gavin Spokes and Georgina White provide an evening to be savoured until May 22.

 

Tis Pity She's A Whore

RoughCast Theatre Co

Hartismere High School

(April 2010)

 

 RoughCast Theatre Company gave us, in John Ford's 17th century play, a rare chance to see Jacobean revenge tragedy.

  Like the Gothic novel, the genre sprang up in an over-ripe flowering of blood-soaked dramas, with horrid laughter, a high body count and the tares of incest.

  In Mark Finbow's production, with the audience on either side of the action, the older characters are smartly suited, while the young are straight from high school.

   Ryan Hill and Alice Mottram, as the forbidden lovers, are as passionate as Romeo and Juliet.

   Most brothers and sisters would be at each other's throats. But here it seems natural that a good-looking boy and a coltish coquette should fall in love.

   Adrian McKeogh (Bergetto) and Ben Willmott (Poggio) provide nerdish humour among the stabbings.

   Amy Gibbons, as Hippolita, masters the high-flown style of anguish, lubricious revenge and harrowing death.

  With actors like Pat Quorn, Paul Baker, Pat Parris and Simon Evans, as well as director Mark Finbow and producer Emma Martin, this was a cast packed with talent and experience.

  The production gave you an urge to see more plays of that period, like The White Devil and The Revenger's Tragedy. 

 

Bach's B Minor Mass

Burgate Singers

(April 2010)

 

Composed near the end of his life, Bach's Mass was put together from previously written pieces.

  But it certainly gelled in the hands of Burgate Singers, back in their village church.

  The technical demands are considerable, with a string of gruelling choruses.

  A dancer friend who had heard the Mass several times had detected in these a rippling, dance element.

  While unaware of this, I could see it more in the physical exhortations of conductor Alain Judd. It is like sitting behind Marcel Marceau.

  He is strong on the sense of theatre in a Chorus, the power and passion, the thrilling effect of a Gloria or Hosannah.

  The Burgate Chamber Orchestra made a mellow, lambent contribution, with confident violins and each instrument taking its opportunities as they came. There ought to be a simile: as patient as a trumpeter.

  Among the soloists, alto Joanna Gamble had a warm liquidity in her voice. The Domine Deus duet, by soprano Fiona Hammacott and tenor Brian Parsons, exuded sweetness and charm.

  By the surging, emotional close you could understand why people of no religious persuasion are moved by this work.

 

 

Enjoy

Theatre Royal, Norwich

(March 2010)

 

Alan Bennett's Enjoy was one of his rare misfires when it first appeared 20 years ago. But it has been successfully retried and comes up freshly in a production by the Theatre Royal, Bath, directed by Christopher Luscombe. In 1980 it may have seemed like a throw-back to the Theatre of the Absurd and plays like A Resounding Tinkle. The elderly, Northern couple having a moan about life was hardly innovative theatre. You could almost hear Thora Hird saying the working class aphorisms. The programme notes said that the play prefigured the ASBO generation and New Labour jargon. I couldn't detect those; but could see a foretelling of proletarian culture becoming a heritage experience. When a supposedly council figure enters and silently observes, the play also foresees reality television. As that figure, a tall, young woman, turns out to be the couple's AC/DC son, you could also see Bennett himself studying his own family. Even then, the playwright had a cheeky way of seeing what he could get away with. So he would lull you into thinking he was a cuddly mix of John Betjeman and Winnie the Pooh. Then he would put in some 'language' or a scene, like near coitus on the floor, that makes you laugh uneasily. Alison Steadman and David Troughton, she as the Leeds Mum with a touch of romance still in her soul, he as the burly Dad in his braces, are terrific value. Compared to some other works, this is not vintage Bennett, but it is good to see it revived. Set and lighting design, by Janet Bird and Paul Pyant, perfectly re-create the pokey Northern house.       

 

 

ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

Black Ram Theatre

Diss Corn Hall

(March 2010)

 

The spun coin always falls the same way in Tom Stoppard's play.

  The odds are against the two attendant lords, who have been left out of film versions of Hamlet.

  Like them, we are all in the wings, knowing so little, while the big stuff goes on centre stage.

  Drawing on Shakespeare, Pirandello and Beckett, Stoppard's script is full of student philosophy ('Discuss') and is intensely theatrical.

  Director Ross McGregor throws on an outlandish gaggle of players, whose character, identity and gender are all fluid.

  Hamlet is a girl (Gillian Dean), as is the company boy (Rachel Fletcher-Hudson) with a haunted little face.

  The Player (Venetia Twigg) is female/male, black/white, a chorus girl and a ring master. Provocative, protean, thrillingly stagey and articulate, she lights up the dark wings of Elsinore.

  In their bowler hats, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern suggest Laurel and Hardy. Like them, they inhabit a young rather than adult world.

  Tom Hartill and Benjamin Blyth's verbal sallies are better than Wimbledon. The two actors hold us, laughing with them, beguiled by their talk, identifying with their insignificance.

  Their fate is already in the title and the spin of a coin. As in the best buddy movies, you feel that you have lost two friends.

 

84 CHARING CROSS ROAD

Open Space Theatre Co

Wingfield Barns

(March 2010)

 

English reticence is thawed by American breeziness in this correspondence by two characters who never meet.

  Helene Hanff's book, dramatised by James Roos-Evans, charts a friendship, amounting almost to love, between an American bookworm and a London bookseller.

    With the transatlantic correspondents a few feet from each other, and the audience almost within touching distance, David Green's production has a moving glow.

  As the lights go up the English characters look like waxworks in the drab post-war days.

  They are soon enlivened by the demands of Miss Hanff. Anne McClarnon's performance is bursting with vitality, an almost exotic figure to the shop staff.

  Alan Bolton, as the bookseller, responds to her warmly hectoring humour and unconventional charm.

  It is touching to see the staff, in ration-strapped England, opening food parcels from her. In these scenes the play seems to celebrate kindness and manners.

  The acting of Janet Koralambe, Jake Kubala and Ros Redelsperger recreates the feel of the times.  

  Claire Gallant stands out as a smart, sweet-natured, polite girl, of a type who died out in the 1950s.

 

NOISES OFF

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

(March 2010)

 

Michael Frayn's farce within a farce springs from theatrical experience.

 In those casting directory photos, actors always look so capable and confident.

 Given the uncertainties and pitfalls of the profession, you can only admire their pluck.

   Fame and fortune must seem about as unlikely as opening on Tuesday next and not making a hash of some unactable farrago.

  It is this world of ghastly rep that the play inhabits.

  The characters are all there - the harrassed little ASM (Victoria Yeates),  the eloquently sardonic, theatre-weary director (Jamie Newall), the bimbo in her underwear (Saskia Butler), the dotty housekeeper (Rosemary Ashe), the decrepit old pro (Col Farrell).

  Trousers drop, mayhem and anarchy reign as the farce goes wildly off the rails both on and off stage.

  There have been several fine plays about theatre, including A Chorus of Disapproval and Our Country's Good. But Noises Off, directed by Peter Rowe, is the funniest.

 

 

Jack the Ripper

Mere Players

Diss Corn Hall

(Jan 2010)

This show does for the Whitechapel murders what 'Allo, 'Allo did for the French Resistance.

The Ripper's victims - the drabbest, least desirable creatures - become fetching doxies.

The deeds that appalled the East End become a Cockney knees-up.

Part music hall, part Oliver or Les Mis, with a vein of fact, the show makes up in vivacity what it lacks in character and plot.

Mere Players are very watchable and sing with customary brio.

Director/choreographer Felicity Humfress and her company have created a bustling, colourful, crowd-pleasing show, with an importunate four-piece band.

Set and costumes are as good as ever, creating the atmosphere for what is a music hall version of grim events.

One Cockney wide-boy is much the same as another, but Pete Webb stands out, while Steve Humfress makes a charming MC.

Among the street women, Carrie Ward gives a starry performance and sings with moving power. If Jack cut her up he really was a maniac.

 

 

 

 

MANSFIELD PARK & RIDE

Eastern Angles

(Dec 09)

The popularity of Jane Austen adaptations has led to the inevitable rise of parodies.

With characters called Fanny and Knightly who go to balls, the possibilities for double-entendre are limitless.

The wet shirt scene from one adaptation, which never occurred to Miss Austen, also provides fruitful comedy as William Belchambers shows his torso.

In her own miniaturist way Austen was a shrewd comic observer. I would not think that she is turning too much in her grave at the thought of Brendan Murray’s script.

Sally-Ann Burnett commands proceedings as Mrs Bonnet, one of those mothers whose raison d’etre is to get her daughters married well. The actress also doubles as Beethoven. (Don’t ask.)

Sophie Steer, a handsome, elegant, young lady, really looks like an Austen heroine and gives credibility when the tone sometimes sinks.

It helps if you have a knowledge of the author’s works. But this show, at the Sir John Mills Theatre until January 9, will provide a refreshing change from panto.

 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Red Lion, Debenham

(Dec 09)

This is a minimalist, two-hand version of Dickens' beloved tale.

It lends itself to such a presentation because most of the scenes are between Scrooge and one other character or spirit.

When others are required, cuddly toys come in handy.

Mark Finbow's adaptation keeps closely to the original text. If there is any doubt about the durability of the Dickensian magic, you just had to watch the children's reactions.

Mark Finbow is a magnetic, volatile young actor, just setting out on a professional career. His Scrooge is funny, curmudgeonly and chilling all at once.

Joanna Davey, an actress with a built-in bounce, plays just about every other part, including all the spirits.

EyesWrite and The Keeper's Daughter presented this warmly applauded show, directed by Emma Martin.

You can see it at Needham Village Hall (Sat 19 Dec) ), Wingfield Barns (Sun 27 Dec), Eye Community Centre (Mon 28 Dec) and Stonham Aspel Primary School (Tues 29 Dec). Performances are at 4pm and 7pm.

 

 

Aladdin

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

(Dec 09)

 Like Christmas itself, pantos influences are many and varied.

 The Arabian Nights, old Peking, Greek and Victorian theatre, cross-dressing, local references and rock music all contribute to the bizarre mix.

  The stage festooned with musical instruments shows that this will be another rock, or 'wok', panto. The whole cast sing and play instruments well.

  As the noise gets louder, the energy more frenetic, the plot more lame-brained, the jokes more whiskered, the audience affection grows.

  East Anglia's own Julian Harries is a great dame, a kind of superannuated Bruce Forsyth, whoopingly camp and gorgeously arrayed.

  Johnson Willis' Abanazar really is scary, like a black-leathered revenant, a nightmare on Portman Road.

  I liked Shirley Darroch's green Scots Genie; and Francesca Loren makes an ingratiating monkey.

  You can see the pantomime at the New Wolsey Theatre until the end of January.

 

 

Music Hall

WARTS

Botesdale Village Hall

(Nov 09)

 

WARTS 25th anniversary show gave glimpses of working class culture when the people still went to the theatre.

  Now that they only go to the panto, it was touching to re-live the days of Ella Shields' Burlington Bertie and Florrie Forde's Oh, Oh Antonio. Carys Allen and Elly Chevous did them proud.

  The show, directed by Leslie Dumbell, with accompanist Peter Cresswell, had a grandiloquent MC in Tim Hall and featured World War 2 sketches and material right up to Victoria Wood.

  A sketch with Rob Johnson, as a German officer, teaching agents local dialect before being parachuted into Norfolk, had the audience shaking with laughter.

  Alison Dumbell, as a county Englishwoman urging the American troops to familiarise themselves with our Broads, had similar effects.

  The audience happily joined in with the old songs and in a rendition of T.S. Eliot’s Macavity by Graham Freeman.

  In their 25 years WARTS have performed everything from Shakespeare to Ayckbourn and deserve all the applause they get.

 

Playing With Fire

RoughCast Theatre Company

Redgrave Church

Redgrave Church has hosted many religious services and cultural events, but few featuring the Devil.

The Faustian pact was the theme of Jo Clifford's play. It was viewed in the church chancel by an audience mainly in the choir stalls.

Music and props provided atmosphere aplenty, although the dialogue was rather BBC children's series.

You could imagine the play as a school primer on alchemy and the turbulent 14th century.

A female alchemist would then have been regarded as a witch, though. Nor, despite Emma Martin's strident performance, could there have been a female Constable of France.

Sarah Gray and Peter Long, as the alchemical couple, made dramatic gold, despite having to talk like a soap couple who have won the Lottery.

A line like "We could put the money in the bank and live off the interest," hardly rings true in the 1300s.

Paul Baker's sepulchral devil had a novel entrance via the stove - a kind of diabolus ex machina.

The dialogue lifted to more of a Christopher Fry level in the second half. This gave chances to Keith Charman, as a humorously diffident French King, and Katie Bird as a pesky beggar.

Mark Burridge's production can next be seen locally at Hoxne on 27, 28 November.

 

 

Private Lives

Open Space Theatre Company

Hoxne Village Hall

 

Divorce, even among the upper crust, must have been scandalous in 1930.

  Now that broken marriages are commonplace, a couple striking up again while on honeymoon with new spouses seems contemporary.

  Noel Coward wrote fat parts for himself and Gertrude Lawrence; and this is probably the only play that is still associated with the original actors.

  However, generations of players have relished the roles of the couple who cannot live with or without each other.

  Sparks fly, especially in Act 2, which upset the Lord Chamberlain but still provides brilliantly engaging theatre in David Green's production.

  Grant Filshill's Elyot has a glacial, asexual charm that is pure Coward, with a great turn of epigrammatic insults.

  Sara Farrar, as Amanda, has an elegantly vampish way of moving that brings back an era. Her glamour, and short-fused chic are tremendously watchable.

  The other roles were always intended as foils for the principals. But Jane Cole and Steven Phipps keep their heads well above the surge, especially in their closing quarrel.

 

THE WINTER'S TALE

Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds (Oct 09)

Sicilia and Bohemia become mid 20th century Italy in this Schtanhaus/Headlong co-production.

The acting is very English, with a Leontes (Vince Leigh) who could be an under-pressure figure from a John Osborne play.

He, Polixenes (James Buller) and Hermione (Amanda Ryan) establish a believable situation where adult friendship could slip over into jealousy and recrimination.

Having the young Prince Mamillius and his sister Perdita played by the same actress (Bryony Hannah) works beautifully. She is a young enchantress and draws every eye in the theatre.

Camillo and Paulina, instead of being stodgy supporting roles, become 3D characters in the hands of Matthew Douglas and Golda Rosheuvel.

He has the strength of the indispensable courtier, while she has a touch of smouldering swagger, not to be messed with.

We miss out on the famous stage direction 'Exit pursued by a bear' but are treated to dancing that is strictly Mediterranean, under strings of 60w bulbs.

John Hodgkinson's rogue Autolycus is a decayed toff in his cups, certainly an original reading.

Amanda Ryan delivers Hermione's defence speech with searing passion; and the coming to life of her statue makes the hairs rise.

Noticing the crisp, pin sharp lighting design, with every character lit perfectly and every situation enhanced, I was not surprised to see James Farncombe's name in the programme.

Simon Godwin's full-of-beans production began at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton and was on tour from Taunton to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

A New World

Shakespeare's Globe

 

This is out of the East Anglian comfort zone but of interest to Tom Paine fans.

  Trevor Griffiths' script about the Rights of Man author was conceived for film, then radio and then the stage.

   With no finance available for the film, the stage gained a fervid new work. The Globe, with its historical aura of people's theatre, is the ideal venue.

  The Ben Franklin narrator role has been developed, with Keith Bartlett presiding like a silvery ghost.

  John Light is a dashing, passionate Paine. If a rather romantic figure, this Tom was written for Hollywood.

  Making the Norfolk staymaker acceptable, with an accent to match, was a problem.  A handsome chap with a Dorset burr probably seemed a better idea.

  The cast act from the heart and bring a breath of the turbulent 18th century with their music and singing. Even the costumes look grittily lived in.

  Trevor Griffiths has spent a large chunk of his life on this project; and his zeal shines through.

  He shows rather than telling, as in a scene where Paine's woman finds out that he is married.

  Tom responds with a speech using his beliefs from The Age of Reason but putting them in a human context. That is high quality writing.

 

It's A Wonderful Life

New Wolsey Theatre

Ipswich

 

From cornball 1940s film to feel-good musical proves a journey well worth the taking.

  From the moment when the angel (Joe Servi) - a winning mix of Huck Finn and Man Friday - sings in mid-air, the audience is hooked.

  The chorus has that drab, overdressed look of the period, in which women still looked feminine.

  The music is by Steve Brown, with the book and lyrics by him and Francis Matthews. It is a terrific score, with singing that is vibrant and arresting with the crackle of theatre.

  There are no passengers in an outstanding cast; and the children could not be bettered.

  The story shows a man going through a Scrooge-like psychoanalytical journey to confront his own life and values.

  Paul Thornley takes you with him all the way, through despair and tribulation to the realisation that life and people ain't so bad.

  Peter Rowe's production is an energetic, uplifting parable for the times and would grace the West End.

  From the audience reaction and word-of-mouth, packed houses are likely from now until October 3.

 

He's Much to Blame

Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds

 

With all the Paine festivities and a new book on Burns' subversive tendencies, it is obviously the year of the iconoclast.

  Thomas Holcroft, author of He's Much to Blame, knew Paine, Wollstonecraft, Godwin and Blake and helped to publish Rights of Man.

  His play re-appears via director Colin Blumenau's zeal for finding vintage works in the hidden cellars of 18th century drama.

  This one has all the familiar wooing, disguise, mistaken identity, inheritance etc but some serious undercurrents.

  It is greatly helped by Libby Watson's sets, incorporating 18th century cartoons and the classical perspectives of period design.

  As most people hate political correctness, we can join in the subversion by laughing at Tim Francis' German doctor.

  There are also many laughs from Paul Greenwood's Lord Vibrate, volatile in sheer dither, and from Maggie O' Brien as Lady Vibrate. She is a figure straight from a period cartoon - beauty-spotted, with a wig like an octopus.

  One flirtatious scene with Paul Chesterton (imagine Geraldine McEwan doing a paso doble with David Cameron) is as good as anything in the 18th century canon.

  We look forward to more from those neglected cellars of the 1700s.

  (Runs until Sept 19. The play is in repertoire with The Celebrated Mrs. Inchbald on Sept 7,11 & 18.)

 

The Importance of Being Oscar

Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds

(July 09)

 

Imagine the dandefied, 1890s figure of Oscar Wilde declaiming epigrams from a podium.

Well, it wasn't like that.

  You always think that you know what a solo performance will be like. But Alastair Whatley goes against the grain.

  He is discovered in a garret, but one that has rock music and a laptop computer. He is a young man in modern shirt-sleeves who talks about Wilde.

  We hear about a trip to America, with Oscar giving lectures to uncomprehending miners.

  The attic suddenly becomes a character as we hear a dramatic precis of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  Naturally we hear the famous 'handbag' scene, with Alastair Whatley playing both Jack and Lady Bracknell.

  Things get darker after the interval, during which the trial is presumed to have taken place.

 De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol came from this period.

  As well as a remarkable performance, this would be an inspired piece of teaching.

   The rise and fall of a media star, inhumanity, Victorian mores and values, the penal system, just how badly someone could be treated for things now acceptable - students would learn hugely from it.

 

The Merry Wives of Windsor

WARTS

Redgrave Church

(June 09)

 

In my time I have seen Chaucer set in a vicarage garden, Macbeth set in South America; and Cleopatra dressed as Stan Laurel and riding a bike.

  So a traditional production, like this one, was a welcome rarity.

  A simplistic Shakespearian set, live folky music from Sue and Adrian Carlton, and authentic costumes were reassuring.

  The original text, in colloquial Elizabethan prose, almost needs sub-titles. But director Tim Hall had done some acceptable translation.

  The merry wives, Sue Johnson and Lynn Wilson, looked terrific in costume and acted with inventive sparkle.

  Falstaff, resurrected supposedly because the Queen wanted to see him in love, is not the Sir John of old.

  One critic called him 'pseudo-Falstaff', as he is a much subdued figure. But Leslie Dumbell, looking like an outsized gnome, still got good comic mileage out of him.

  All around there was confident, mature acting: from Paddy Richards (Mistress Quickly), a Dot Cotton of her day; and Rob Johnson's splendidly OTT French Dr. Caius.

  Also from John Tate's Slender, as much of a lemon as his foppish, pale yellow costume. And from Laurie Dickson and Derek Mitchell, both commanding the stage as merchants Page and Ford.

  Younger cast members also acquitted themselves well, notably Robert Hume as Fenton.

  This was yet another high quality cultural event at Redgrave Church.

 

The Massacre

Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds

(June 09)

Elizabeth Inchbald was writing at the same time as Paine, Godwin, Holcroft and Wollstonecraft.

But the Bury St. Edmunds playwright had to wait 200 years for her European premiere.

Her play fits perfectly into the Age of Reason; but, being a woman and a Catholic, she struggled to make her voice heard.

Director Colin Blumenau and his company have done much to restore and enhance Inchbald's reputation.

Here a multi-cultural cast, under the whirring fan of some tropical trouble spot, act out an unchanging scenario of inhumanity.

There is a Greek air, in the way that offstage brutalities are described rather than seen. Otherwise, you would think that the script had been written this week rather than in 1792.

Students from Essex University provide a companion piece called The Requiem, written by Jonathan Lichtenstein.

The acting is more light-weight; but the underlying tone, in a colonial setting, is just as powerful.

 

James Prosper Goody:

Visions of An Old Campaigner

New Buckenham Village Hall (June 09)

 

JPG is an old Norfolk 'booy' who muses aloud on life, the Almighty and the universe.

 He, or at least Nick Murray Brown who plays him, is also an accomplished musician on keyboard, accordion and harmonica.

  Mr. Murray Brown has obviously studied old booys and creates a character who reminds you of people you know. Think of a more scatalogical version of local entertainer Ray Hubbard.

  Sometimes cheekily ribald (three people walked out), he talks of country matters, from fancying a girl at confirmation class onwards.

  He ruminates on the mechanics of the immaculate conception and on what God has been doing to occupy himself since the creation.

  A camp theatre director is bitingly impersonated, as is a Hell-fire Southern preacher.

The songs are unclassifiably original.

  In the story of the old booy's life Murray Brown shows the troubled, baffled dignity of older people when they reflect on a chequered past.

    Part monologue, part concert, with chameleon acting skills, this is an evening of great brilliance.

 

Three Men In A Boat

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (May 09)

Stripey blazers, straw boaters, lazy days on the river in the 1880s - this is a chaps' world.

They are the kind of chaps, moreover, who have scarcely matured beyond prep school. Women's pretty little heads are as absent as ever in literature of the time.

At least one critic of Jerome K. Jerome's book thought it was 'vulgar'. He must have been referring to all the bad language, like calling someone a 'bally nincompoop'.

The number of small craft registered on the Thames rose by 50 per cent in the following year; and the public have loved the story ever since.

This production, from the Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds, directed by Abigail Anderson and scripted by Daniel O'Brien, is a harmless winner.

It is quite silly, often jolly silly and frequently very silly indeed. There are telling contributions from Montmorency the dog, played by the actors or a long-eared cap.

You could see the three chaps as upper-crust Victorian wasters. "I like work," says the Jerome character. "I can sit and look at it for hours."

But the charm of the actors - Alexander Caine, William Kenning and Simon Yadoo - sees them through.

Ditties of the period, especially the heart-tugging Love's Old Sweet Song, add to the pleasures.

 

Ghosts

Open Space Theatre Company

St. Edmunds Hall, Hoxne  (May 09)

 

Ibsen's work has been dismissed as 'goblins, gloom and grisly diseases.'

He is also regarded as the founder of modern drama.

  Ghosts is about the sins of the fathers but also how the deadly hand of the past grips within a narrow, parochial society.

  In David Green's production everyone looks right: Mrs. Alving, elegant in black silk; Pastor Manders, resembling Ibsen himself; Oswald, blonde and gaunt.

  Try on some 19th century clothing. See how you feel in a long, dark, restricting gown or a three-piece suit with tails and a wing-collared shirt.

  In drama, as in life at the time, there is a tension between decorum and propriety on one hand and people's natural urges on the other.

  This is the confined world that the actors bring eloquently to life.

  As Mrs. Alving, Yves Green has a natural dignity, with an ability to indicate the pain of her younger self. There were dramatic moments when she resembled Sarah Bernhardt.

  Paul Baker, as Pastor Manders, also has a dignity which keeps you guessing whether he is a good man or a shyster.

  Mike Davison manages to give Oswald the look and manner of someone who will soon be departing either this life or sanity.

  Cathy Gill's Regine is a decent girl with a faintly troubled air and stirrings of romance. As a servant she changes almost imperceptibly according to who she is talking to.

  This was a classy rendering of what has been called the first great tragedy written about middle class people in plain, everyday prose.

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Mere Players

Roydon Village Hall (May 09)

 

It might seem like mocking the Bedlamites; but plays, like this one and the Marat/Sade, set in 'asylums' provide gripping theatre.

  Director Felicity Humfress has drawn amazingly well observed performances from a large cast.

  Even those 'incurables', who just stand there, are painfully accurate at every moment. They have that haunted, hunted look of mental illness.

  Into this dead place comes McMurphy, the demon mutineer, played with such winning swagger by Steve Humfress.

  He soon locks horns with the iron-drawered Nurse Ratched. She rules the place with a laser smile from her office eyrie. It is a testament to Laura Green's performance that by the end we, too, wanted to strangle her.

  Pete Webb's Billy, the one who 'should be out in a convertible cruising for babes', is a brilliant study of a craven, mother-dominated youth.

  Robert Burton does good work as the intelligent loser, Dale Harding. Louise Cresswell and Carrie Ward also shine as the two strumpets who enliven the midnight party.

  It is both a disturbing and a funny play. The scene where the inmates noisily watch the baseball World Series on a blank TV screen is hilarious.

  All in all, it was a triumph of ensemble acting.

 

Chimps

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (May 09)

 

Plays about salesmen can be harrowing. Think of Death of A Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross.

  Their sinister powers of manipulation, successes and failures can provide crackling theatre.

  Anyone who has tried the profession will know the endless rebuffs, the occasional success in gulling the innocent, the melancholy at 4pm on an unsuccessful day.

  Simon Block's play shows a post-college couple, with a baby on the way, being assailed by two salesmen to buy wall treatment.

  The young man (Ben Lambert) is an illustrator with a less than realistic view of life. His partner (Jenny Platt) is tougher and less gullible.

  Nick Wilton, round and ingratiating, with clothes from a 1950s gents' outfitter, and Vinta Morgan, flash and panther-like, are the salesmen.

  There are echoes of Pinter in the menace and humour of their methods. 'Spalling brought down the walls of Jericho,' says one. 'You ask anyone in the building trade.'

  I think that the playwright is showing a parallel between the illustrator and the salesmen. The young, creative dreamer is in the same business. Their work promises much and delivers little when trying to pitch to the public who do not want to know.

  The play is unrelentingly well acted and can be seen until 16 May.

 

 

Waiting for Godot

Theatre Royal, Norwich

(April 09)

 

Time was when the only sounds at the end of Beckett's play were those of disgruntled patrons leaving in noisy disgust. Now it gets an ovation.

  Hated by early audiences, used to middlebrow theatre, it spoke clearly to the San Quentin convicts in a famous production.

  Waiting for Godot has worn well through its timelessness and the way it defies rigid interpretation.

  Although, as one critic said, nothing happens twice, it is surprisingly gripping. You have the music hall patter, the shafts of lyricism, the biblical references and bleak view of life.

  There is an element of childhood in the two tramps, who do not work, or have relationships or responsibilities.

  The fooling and delight in language is boyish, with characters who are no more adult than the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

  Rather than the usual empty stage, the set has an urban Gothic look, the kind of derelict part of a city where down-and-outs and hopeless youths congregate.

  Disaffected teenagers, if they were ever persuaded through the theatre doors, would probably relate to this play.

  Sean Mathias's production has the bonus of a cast from the higher reaches of the profession - McKellen, Stewart, Callow, Pickup.

  Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart might have spent a lifetime together working the halls. Simon Callow (Pozzo) and Ronald Pickup (Lucky) pass through like storybook figures who have become grotesque.

  It is a play whose influence can be seen in the hitmen of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and the hapless attendant lords of Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

  As Ionesco's Fire Chief says, when asked the meaning of The Bald Prima Donna, 'It's for you to discover it.'  

 

 

Lord of the Flies

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (March 09)

 

William Golding's 1954 novel drew on castaway stories and the tradition, like H.G. Wells and John Wyndham, of dark forces threatening English propriety.

  As in Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills, Golding also explodes the myth of innocent childhood.

  The Pilot Theatre Company, with York Theatre Royal, are obviously young men, rather than boys. Young men are natural barbarians, so you miss the shock of lads in piped blazers becoming savages. But the production gains in expressive power.

  The set is just a fragment of a crashed aircraft. As in the novel, we never know what has happened. But the 1950s had enough atomic fears, commie paranoia and horror films to fill in the gaps.

  It is an extraordinary production, adapted by Nigel Williams, directed by Marcus Romer, and acted at incandescent heat by a cast of eight.

  The way they discard the veneer of civilisation and revert to the instincts of the jungle is a jolting reminder of how close we are to the breakdown of society.

 

A Chorus of Disapproval

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (Feb 09)

 

The Beggar's Opera parodied 18th century opera and society. Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval does the same for amateur theatre and the materialistic1980s.

  The group that presents John Gay's ballad opera are so recognisable in the way that drama tends to bring out the best and worst in people.

  Egos, rivalries, quarrels, affairs, the way in which the nice, innocent people cause the most trouble - it is all there.

  So too are the characters: the fawn and grey couple, played by Miranda Bell and Roger Delves-Broughton, who talk as though joined at the hip, the ingenuous newcomer who causes mayhem, the vainglorious Welsh director.

  In that role, Sion Tudor Owen excels, histrionic, almost deranged, a figure who would not be welcome in a china shop.

  Julian Harries, an actor well known the length and breadth of the A12, exudes boyish innocence even as his character wreaks havoc.

  This co-production with the Mercury Theatre, Colchester runs until 28 February and will brighten your day.

 

Dick Whittington & His Cat

Pulham Players

(Jan 09)

 

With the weather freezing and the credit crunching, Pulham's spirits were kept up by this fun panto.

  A production, by Peter Lavin, that must have kept the mob cap industry solvent, had a great feeling for theatrical tradition.

  One scene, through gauze, was like looking back into the 18th century, while the pale pastel costumes (by Yvonne Goldsmith and her team) recalled Dangerous Liaisons.

  Music hall routines, ancient jokes, slapstick, mixed genders, with a Dame (Jason Calvert) looking like a guardsman as Bo Peep, plus pop songs and modern references - it was all there.

  They had a young wizard of a musical director in Jon Chambers, although the singing was rather average.

  Clare Layock, who took over the part at short notice, made a leggily handsome Dick, while Darryl Parr deserves the meaty chunks award for feline prowess.

  It was good to see two mature ladies, Polly Clements and Lynda Pilch, doing so well in the 'broker's men' parts, here a nautical captain and mate.

  There was a terrific King Rat from Jodie Goldsmith, looking like a sexy Richard III with a tail, and an angelic fairy from Gina Goldsmith.

  Lots of kids and energy gave the citizens of Pulham a night out to beat the winter and financial blues.

 

David

Redgrave Church

(Dec 08)

 

Giant killer, slayer of ten thousands, psalmist, serial husband, wife stealer - the biblical David was quite a fellow.

  Composer-conducter Peter Cresswell was inspired as a boy by the Bathsheba episode, one of the king's feet-of-clay moments.

  But the whole thing is full of story elements - a giant, battles, a witch, raising the dead, jealousy, passion, male bonding.

  Possibly the first oratorio ever premiered in East Anglia takes these elements, characters and the psalms to produce a very special evening.

  There are traces of Gilbert and Sullivan in some of the choruses, so grandly sung by Redgrave Singers, in the military band music and a jaunty clarinet solo by Sara Whymark.

  Julie Roberts sings a moving new treatment of the 23rd Psalm. Joanne Hewes' solo as Jonathan is especially vibrant, complete with a closing E flat above top C.

  As Goliath Paul Hewes' derisory laugh, needing David like a hole in the head, is a memorable moment. So is the duet between David (Gavin Horsley) and Bathsheba (Julie Roberts).

  It is a complex story, with a background of slaughter. The love of David and Bathsheba only comes about because he sent her husband to get killed in the front line.

  Peter Cresswell's work brings out much of that complexity and, without being overly reverential, creates music worthy of the great stories and themes of the Bible.

 

Samson

Burgate SingersDiss Corn Hall

(Dec 08)

Conflict and revenge on the Gaza strip - so what's new?

Handel's oratorio, based on the Book of Judges and Milton's Samson Agonistes, is an interpolated scene between the hero's capture and spectacular death.

Samson, his hair cut, blind, in chains and (in Milton) married to Dalila (his spelling), is understandably feeling a bit down.

Much of the load, not to mention the temple, falls on tenor Brian Parsons who can convey both the demise of a muscular man and the feelings he still holds.

His singing recalls a line from earlier in the biblical story: 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness.'

Alan Weyman imbues the part of Samson's father with considerable feeling; Ruth Kerr has some thrilling moments as Dalila; and counter tenor William Missin's voice has a timeless melancholy.

If bass voices were weapons in battle, Richard Fallas as the Philistine giant would be unassailable.

All is held together and brought often to exciting heights by conductor Alain Judd, the Burgate Scala Chamber Orchestra and Burgate Singers.

 

 A Christmas Carol

WARTSBotesdale Village Hall

(Dec 08)

The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's production of A Christmas Carol - to give it its full title.

From Festive Favourites to King Lear - the local drama groups have been busy lately.

As a Dickens lover and both Cratchit and Scrooge in my time, I wince at most adaptations. But this one, born at the Edinburgh Fringe, has to be enjoyed on its own dotty terms.

Although it maligns amateur theatre, which is largely turkey-free, it provides undemanding entertainment.

More demands are made on the cast, who play a fictitious group, ill-favoured in numbers and talent, attempting Dickens' classic story.

Sue Johnson rules the evening as one of those gorgon presidents, arrogant and tactless.

Carys Allen, the first female Scrooge I have seen, is fun to watch.

Lynn Wilson, whose character is in no physical shape to play anything, has the comically uneasy look of someone wishing she was somewhere else.

Keith Charman and Erica Stanway, in a flurry of roles, add to the fun in Paddy Richards' much-enjoyed production.

 

 

One Glass Wall

Eye Community Centre(Nov 08)

Open Space Theatre Company's debut play, by Polish-Irish writer Danusia Iwaszko, is a three-hander of family life.

The first scene, in David Greens' production, takes place on a car journey in a Morris Minor. The dialogue is lively, happy and painful, with quarrels always ready to start.

The actors all play out of their age group. So, instead of a child with her parents, it sometimes seems like a teenager with her grandparents.

The acting is top notch - Alan Bolton as the expostulating martinet husband, Yves Green as the wife with a dignified Irish innocence and Meryl Keeble as the pesky daughter, ageing from eight to 16.

I was not so sure about the play. An attempt, maybe, to write something in the manner of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, sometimes comes over as autobiographical soap.

When the wife dashes a table top of objects to the ground, it is a dramatic moment. But nothing in the writing has led up to that. Similarly, when she secretly tries on a pretty dress, it says little because she looked chic enough in the first scene.

Take out any episode, like the mother treating the child's nits, and you realise its irrelevance.

But the audience would have gone away with memories of Meryl Keeble's growing up traumas, Yves Green's indomitable spirit and Alan Bolton's wide-eyed recollections of wartime horrors.

 

 

Murder in the Cathedral

Redgrave Church

(Nov 08)

Verse drama last had a vogue after the war, before John Osborne & Company put paid to it.

But the plays of Eliot and Fry still crop up, especially in the amateur repertoire.

Eliot's slant is not so much the friendship of Henry II and Becket 'sundered by the rival claims of Caesar and God' (in Tynan's phrase) but a play about faith and temptation.

Director Duncan Livingstone puts his actors in a mixture of costumes, from Puritan to blue jeans. One tempter (Felicity Humfress) is a 1930s society woman, while another (Clive Sinfield) might have commanded the army at Blenheim.

One of the great successes of the production is the Chorus of the women of Canterbury. Claire Eason, Lesley Harding, Sue Sadiwskyj, Erica Stanway and Lynn Wilson show an extraordinary cohesion and confidence in each other.

Steve Humfress is not an obvious candidate for archbishop - more of a parish priest who has done a bit of commercial travelling. But he rises to the challenge of the Christmas Day sermon, when his face becomes youthful in delivering the message.

Richard Morgan, as both tempter and knight, has voice and presence and the ability to lift each of his scenes.

When the knights (Clive Sinfield, Felicity Humfress, Alastair Moire and Richard Morgan), dressed as soldiers from different eras, try to justify their actions to the audience, they do it with commendable 'bull'. They might have slaughtered Becket; but they did it in a caring way.

This was a production well worth the trip along the lanes to Redgrave.

 

Far From the Madding Crowd

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

(Oct 08)

 

Thomas Hardy's novel was far from the realities of 19th century life; but still tells a colourful, melodramatic tale.

  Wilful heroine Bathsheba and her suitors - the dependable Oak, the staid Boldwood and the hell-raising Sergeant Troy - take naturally to the stage.

  Adaptations of novels do not always work. I have an aversion to hearing someone reciting chunks of the text or stepping out of character to tell you the plot.

  But here the book has, wisely, been thrown at the wall in Mark Healey's adaptation. Hardy loved the theatre and his characters and situations dramatise well.

  The big set pieces are there - the storm, Troy being apparently jilted at the altar, his heart-winning swordplay with Bathsheba, the gallery of rustics, the Christmas party that ends in murder.

  Libby Watson's set is based on the gracefully gnarled beams of an old barn. The use, at times, of stylised dance movement helps to give the fatalistic feel of the novel.

  And what a good cast  English Touring Theatre present, under Kate Saxon's direction.

  Rebecca O'Mara's Bathsheba, Phil Cheadle's Gabriel Oak, Stephen Billington's Boldwood and Adam Croasdell's Troy would all, I am sure, have delighted Hardy himself.

   And those rustics - Jan Coggan, Joseph Poorgrass, Laban Tall, Fanny Robin - live again at the hands of a committed ensemble of actors.

 

Chaplin

Wymondham Leisure Centre

(Oct 08)

Not everyone spoke well of Charlie Chaplin. His liking for young girls was well documented. Olivier thought he was a phoney, while Kenneth Tynan noted his use of big words from a thesaurus to increase his self-importance.

  But Chaplin was probably the most famous man in the world in his heyday and is still, along with Laurel and Hardy, a household word and an iconic figure. Considering that they were in silent films nearly a century ago, their enduring charm is extraordinary.

  Pip Utton's one-man show depicts the aged Chaplin, with cardigan and stick, looking back on his life. He knows that what we want to see is the little man in the bowler and the toothbrush moustache. So gradually he transforms himself back into that image.

  We hear of Chaplin's humble background and the orphanage Christmas Day when he was given just an orange but thought it so beautiful that he could not eat it but took it to bed with him.

  We hear his defence of his love life (he married Oona when she was 18 and he in his fifties) - that girls threw themselves at the rich and famous.

  We also hear a rather barbed on-going dialogue between the older Chaplin and his younger tramp persona - one the prisoner of the other.

  The show features specially made film clips, in the silent style, in and out of which the actor moves, railing against the dying of the flickering light.

  Pip Utton's brilliance shows the man and the legend in all his talent, vanity and querulousness.

  

FallPlay

Sancroft Hall

Fressingfield

(Sept 08)

 That endangered species the one-act play has a new lease of life in the hands of EyesWrite and RoughCast.

  For the second year running they have produced a festival of new work, written, acted and directed by local people.

  Some of the pieces had a preoccupation with death. Some were just dialogues that could have been radio plays, without any theatricality.

  Michael Bradley's A Question of Identity, directed by Alan Huckle, enlivened the afternoon session, with a touch of Blithe Spirit in its ghostly characters.

  By far the most interesting and effective of the afternoon was A Long Look Back, written and directed by Will Drew-Batty, who also acted in it. Inspired by a stonemason character in Golding's novel The Spire, this piece was so different and thought-provoking that it stood out.

  The evening plays were generally more imaginative. Simon Evans, seen in the afternoon as an egotistical playwright in The Interview by Roger Curtis, was gripping as a nervy escapologist in Howard Takes the Stage by Sophie Green - a two-hander with Pat Quorn.

  Rob Backhouse and Claire Gallant made a very believable couple, he just back from the Great War, in Marching Home by Art Tanner, directed by Alan Huckle.

  If life in a library is anything like Maureen John's version (she works in one) in Girl With A Pink Earring, there is never a dull moment. Skye Robinson, always delightful, and Mary Thompson, who has something of the grand romantic manner of Miss Piggy, led the fun.

  But top marks go to How Many Strawberries Grow in the Sea? written and directed by Mark Finbow and acted by Alan Bolton and Mike Davison.

  Characters, dialogue, use of language, acting, direction, stagemanship, the pulsing dynamic of the whole thing put this father and son piece in a class of its own.

 

EDITH PIAF: A CELEBRATION OF A LEGEND

THEATRE ROYAL, BURY ST EDMUNDS

(July 08)

 

Marion Cotillard gave an astonishing portrayal of Edith Piaf in the film La Vie En Rose.

Anyone trying to top that would be decidely 'fou'.

  My family thought I was 'fou' when, at 20, I bought a Piaf LP. But they soon warmed to her. My Mum said you could still understand her without knowing the language.

  My neck hairs still rise when Piaf just says, "Par Michel Vaucair et Charles Dumont - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien."

  Tina May starts at a disadvantage, like a stage adaptation of a novel. Why not just read the novel?

  She is a glamorous woman with a fine voice and sings well in French, having studied at the Sorbonne.

  She has an accomplished trio - piano, double bass and accordion - with her, giving sometimes an air of modern jazz cabaret.

  She hits the circus gaiety of Milord, just before the interval. Strongly atmospheric songs like Padam, Padam, Les Amants D'un Jour and C'est A Hambourg have a Gallic abandon.

  And she ends, as all Piaf shows do, with Non, Je Ne (You Know What).

  It is all very professionally done and listenable. But, for the very smell of Paris, there is no substitute for the original.

 

We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea

Eastern Angles

(July 08)

The Dangerous Book For Boys meets Ripping Yarns in Arthur Ransome's stories, adapted here by Nick Wood.

When I read them I was always reminded of the first day of the holidays, with that sense of adventure, infinite time and possibility.

I remember how, in the last months of her life, my mother lit up when I referred to the first day of the holidays. So it has a universal appeal.

Add innocence, happy family life, an idealised world of capable children in shorts and short-back-and-sides, with music from old adventure films; and you have a potent, nostalgic mixture.

It is not a world that many of today's computerised children would recognise.

To me, sailing was like having to live in the hall of your house and sometimes being allowed out on the doorstep - not to mention lots of throwing up.

But, seeing the boat that makes up Rosie Alabaster's brilliant set, I was ready to give it another try.

The actors in Ivan Cutting's production - David Ashwood, Sarah Hunt, Laura Stevely and Duncan Barrett - are better than children could ever be in the parts.

As the quirky Roger, the loveable Titania, the noble, concerned Susan and the plucky John, they take you into the trials of their world, so that you feel you have come through with them.

I saw the show in a marquee on Ipswich Waterfront. Check the Eastern Angles website for touring dates and venues.

Two

Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds

(June 08)

 

Jim Cartwright's play depicts no more than an evening in a northern pub - a Mecca for the flotsam and jetsam of society.

  Hence, maybe, the use of one of those blizzard-effect lights seen in ballrooms.

  The landlord and his wife are almost at each other's throats, while rapidly serving drinks and crazed false bonhomie.

  The world and his wife come in to sup ale, to reveal loneliness, hardship, marital strife - and there seems to be no unhappy marriage like a Northern one.

  It is an evening of laughs and sudden descents into chilly drama, particularly a scene between a scared wife and her controlling husband from whom she has to get permission to go to the loo.

  The only characters who have an air of survival are the jokers, like the well-built couple who exist in a stream of mutual banter.

  The remarkable thing is that all the characters are played by two actors. Gina Isaac is a shapely, attractive woman who can change from a sharp-tongued Northern toughie to a wits-end, cowed wife in a moment.

  David Tarkenter can deal out publican charm and then change himself into a wide-boy, an old boy, a little boy, a nerd or a sinisterly cruel husband.

   He is particularly good at the way people can announce their whole character by the way they walk and comport themselves.

  As a play it is almost plotless, but a production of great brilliance by Colchester's Mercury Theatre, directed by Tim Treslove.

 

    

                     

Vincent in Brixton

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich
(22 Feb - 3 March 07)

 

What was the young Vincent Van Gogh like, how did he react to his time in England and what made him an artist?

Nicholas Wright’s play uses historical facts on which to graft an imaginative account of the painter’s young days.

Van Gogh, pronounced something like ‘Fun Hoch’ as in the Scottish ‘loch’, gets a mesmerising performance from Philip Cumbus. He gives the character a kind of volatile innocence, full of energy and romantic feelings, someone who was always going to be at odds with the world.

His love affair with his middle-aged landlady, leading to her re-awakening, has a modern feel to it, now that there is such a legion of single, older women seeking fulfilment.

In this role Francesca Ryan has a tough, confident dignity and a good sense of social position, playing a woman who is both a landlady and a teacher. Her melting and responding to her young lodger’s advances are achieved with touching skill.

I was not sure how well the 1870s were depicted. The set, designed by Richard Foxton, complete with range fire, is excellent. The lighting design, by James Farncombe (re-lit by Ben Payne), perfectly mimics daylight in a period house.

I am sure costumes and details like a cold-water kitchen tap and sink have been researched. But the production never quite suggests London just after Dickens died. It is as though director Peter Rowe told everyone to think Edwardian and it came over more Wells that Dickens.

Would a Victorian mother collude with her daughter’s naughty weekend, even lending her wedding ring, and then accept the subsequent pregnancy without batting an eyelid?

Those things apart, this is a quality production from Salisbury Playhouse, intelligent, entertaining and never losing its grip on you.

                      
                       The Churchfitters

                       Garboldisham Village Hall

 

                       Village hall activities used to be a by-word for parochial amateurishness. But not when you have an excellent hall like Garboldisham’s and world-class entertainment.

                        The band, who come from East Anglia but now live in France, are so good that they turned a packed audience into a hollering horde, unwilling to let them go.

                        Support artiste Liz Simcock had the audience joining in from her second number onwards. A personable lass, she sings songs grounded in real life – love, friends, shoes – but with an ethereal quality in her voice.

                        The Churchfitters feature an amazing range of acoustic instruments – fiddle, double bass, guitar, flute, banjo, dulcimer, mandolin, saxophone.

                        They also have the constantly surprising, diverse voice of Rosie Short. Watching and listening to her you feel that she gets extreme pleasure and deep fulfilment in performance.

                         The music is rich and strange, weird, melancholy, exuberant. Their act is full of energy, excitement and fun. Just listening to Rosie making the tin whistle talk, or her brother Chris pouring out wonderful sound on the acoustic fiddle, are worth the admission price.

                        This could become an annual visit by the band. If so, book now.

 

                         Hedda Gabler

                         RoughCast Theatre

                         Needham Village Hall & Touring

 

                        It is hard to understand what upset the Victorian critics so much about Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

                        But when it is billed as ‘a desperate housewife confronts sex in the city’ you can see how different it was to the melodramas of the day.

                        As in his production of Saved, David Green opens with a tableau of the whole cast. Here they harangue Hedda so that she begins at the end of her tether.

                       She has returned from a five month honeymoon with an academic who would have been happier with some bespectacled bluestocking.

                         It is to Grant Filshill’s credit that he makes a lively character out of a dull man who researches the domestic crafts of Brabant in the Middle Ages.

                        Sarah Farrar’s Hedda is a coiled spring, fighting 19^th century Norse propriety, the shackles of marriage, possible pregnancy, being saddled with a boring partner and her own machinations.

                        With a maleficent glance, a mouth that naturally pouts and a smile like sunlight glinting on a bayonet, she ignites this complex heroine.

                        Paul Baker’s Judge Brack has a touch of good old boy and a whiff of small town corruption.

                        Yves Green (Aunt Juliana), Sarah Gray (Mrs. Elvsted), Pat Parris (Berta) and Mark Burridge’s Lovborg, looking just like Ibsen’s arch-rival Strindberg, combine to re-create the intense domestic atmosphere that will end in tragedy.

 

 

                          My Friend M

                          The Life of Thomas Manning

                          by Mary Bellhouse

 

                       Thomas Manning had friends in high places – Charles Lamb, Napoleon, the Dalai Lama.

                       Son of the first of the Manning dynasty of Diss rectors and brother of the second, Thomas was the first Englishman to cross the Himalayas and meet the seven year old Dalai Lama in 1811.

                        Mary Bellhouse describes Manning’s life in her new book My Friend M, taking her title from the words of essayist Charles Lamb.

                        Thomas Manning was born at Broome in 1772 and later lived at Diss rectory, now Mere Manor, when his father became rector here.

                        Mary Bellhouse suggests that a school play on a Chinese theme, during his early education at Bury, may have fired his imagination for the Orient.

                         She also concludes each chapter with accounts of literary works of the day which may have influenced Manning. While this is conjectural it does give a flavour of the intellectual climate and shows what was known at the time.

                        Manning went to Cambridge and was an accomplished mathematician and linguist. Unable to pursue his Chinese interests in England, he went to Paris.

                        There he was so highly regarded that, when war was declared between Britain and France, his exit visa was personally signed by Napoleon. He would later meet the exiled Emperor on Saint Helena.

                        Manning went to India, intending to go on to China but was thwarted by bureaucracy and lack of help from the British government.

                        So he set off across the Himalayas. His journal is not a classic of travel writing. There is little about awesome vistas but much about being cold, wet and flea-ridden. He was struck by the squalor of some Tibetan towns. Using his medical knowledge he was able to treat people as he journeyed to Lhasa.

                        After a shipwreck and other adventures Manning came back to live a quiet life in this country. His journal did not come to light until many years later.

                        Thomas Manning was one of those intrepid, eccentric Englishmen thrown up by the 19^th century; and Mary Bellhouse does him proud.

                        Copies of the book are not yet available in bookshops but can be ordered via Diss museum. (01379) 650618.

 

                         The Land

                         Tibenham Church

 

                         How many of you have read Vita Sackville-West’s poem The Land? Anybody heard of it? And yet, 80 years ago, it won the prestigious Hawthornden Prize. The poetess is more often associated with bohemian and sapphic life in Bloomsbury; but she was also an expert gardener. Maybe her love of the land was a reaction to the intellectual but shallow and amoral life she knew. You cannot imagine any of her contemporaries describing the cycle of the country year, the continuous epic of the soil or the country habit that had her by the heart. Tim Laycock and Sonia Ritter have taken the poem and created an evening of words and music well suited to an evening in a village church. Here is the cry of the snared rabbit and the bleat of the sickly lamb, the grind of the taciturn farm worker, flickering lamps, quagmire tracks, circling plovers and the power of being alone with earth and sky.  Beasts mate, sap rises, plants live in language and lore in the unwinding scroll of rural life. Like the best pastoral literature, the poem acknowledges that the countryside is no Arcadia but a tough place to be. Folky singing – the audience even joined in with To Be a Farmer’s Boy – plus an evocative accordion and the torrent of words and images from rural life create a gripping evening.  In reclaiming a neglected work they have spoken to the green soul and made a cry for the world we are losing.

 

Laurel and Hardy

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

 

Stan Laurel was the creative brains behind the partnership; and was regarded by Keaton as a greater talent than himself or Chaplin.

  This we learn from a hugely entertaining evening devoted to the comic pair who made the successful transition from silent films to talkies and are still household words. Even their silhouette is iconic.

  Tom McGrath's play has them coming back from the grave to tell their own story, of how the English Laurel (born in Ulverston, Cumbria) and American Hardy came to make the world laugh.

  Theirs, like many duos and buddy-movies, was a brotherly relationship, essentially childish in a world where they seemed not to have to earn a living or take part in adulthood.

  The splenetic, vain-glorious Hardy and the put-upon, ready-to-cry Laurel must remind many people of their brothers.

  We have a taste of vaudeville, with sentimental songs and slapstick which still gets laughs, even the whiskered wall-papering routine.

  And we have two very endearing performances from Ben Fox as Laurel and Christian Patterson as Hardy. They must have had as much fun performing as the audience had watching them.

  You would have to be dead not to come out beaming. (Ends 3 May)

 

 

An Evening with Harold Pinter

Mere Players

Roydon Village Hall

 

Pinter, despite his Nobel Prize, is not especially fashionable; so it is good to see revivals of his work.

  Pauses, menace, comedy - the old, dark magic is still discernible, under David Black's direction.

  It is odd to think that a critic once, when phoning in a Pinter review, could not make himself heard above the shouts of angry playgoers.

 In The Dumb Waiter the playwright uses the device, also seen in Beckett and Stoppard, of a pair of fall-guys threatened by off-stage forces.

  Steve Humfress and Sam Ward as the hapless duo could be Laurel and Hardy as gangsters. Their comic attempts to fulfil the dumb waiter's increasing demands are pure Theatre of the Absurd.

  Noel Coward, surprisingly, admired Pinter's exact use of language. This is seen in the hitmen's tetchy dialogue, so well delivered, and also in the second play.

  The Lover is a 'games people play in marriage' piece. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Killing of Sister George are in the same category.

  You could hear a vein of Coward in the sinister formalities, hiding a worm in the bud, of a couple who lead a strange sexual life.

  Pete Webb and Laura Green carry this one off with great aplomb, fast fading from one personality to another, as the characters' fantasies take them.

  The group has shone in musicals and safe classics; but shows a new maturity here when succeeding with less cautious material.

 

 

Alarms and Excursions

RoughCast Theatre Company

Hoxne Village Hall

 

One of Michael's Frayn's most popular plays is Noises Off, which could also be the title for this collection of his sketches.

  He shows how we are all summoned by bells and at the mercy of rogue technology. The internet does not feature; but he may have been writing before its stranglehold was complete.

  Characterisation is not his strong feature, as many of the parts could be interchangeable. But he may be saying that we are all rendered zombies by the noises off that control our lives.

  Telephones that are anything but communicative, smoke alarms that don't behave, auto-cues that give the wrong message - it is a world view as sinister as Harold Pinter's.

  This invasion of the gadgets and off-stage powers is funny but as hostile as anything that ever assailed Captain Kirk or Dr. Who.

  Ironically, it means that the off-stage sound engineers - Laurence Nunn, Mike Davidson and Joy Gilson - have a field day.

  Simon Evans directs and also acts in one of the plays. His Puckish personality and way of indicating by a glance what he is thinking, are always watchable.

  Pat Parris is memorable in the nightmare situation of a speaker with a malfunctioning auto-cue; and Skye Robinson shows that she is another Dawn French in the making.

  Rob Johnson, Pat Quorn, Mary Thompson,  Mike How, Keshar Whitelock and David Wood complete a fine cast who seem to be battling for all of us against noises off.

 

 

Beethoven Concert

Burgate Singers

Diss Corn Hall

 

Beethoven's Mass in C, Choral Fantasia and opera Fidelio all began life inauspiciously.

  The Mass was considered a failure, the Fantasia had a first night to forget, while the composer himself called the opera a 'shipwreck'.

Not that you would have known from this memorable evening with Burgate Singers, conducted by Alain Judd.

You cannot warm up on the touchline before coming on in a concert; but the singers have a way of hitting the mood from a standing start.

Here it was a note of supplication, in the Kyrie, before moving into strident praise in the Gloria, bringing warm tumbling sounds and heartfelt amens.

By the Credo they were cruising, in confident and expressive style.

The singing of the choir and soloists - Ruth Kerr, Margaret Marchetti, Benjie del Rosario and Gavin Horsley - in the Sanctus and Bendictus was some of the loveliest ever heard in this hall.

 Just when you thought it could not get any better, they produced two young magicians at the piano. In the Choral Fantasia, David Alexander and Danny Evans played with such burning energy that the audience was quite taken aback.

  The singers provided an exhilarating prefiguration to the Ode to Joy, bringing whoops of applause for both the pianists and vocals.

  The finale from Fidelio was sung by all with a glorious gusto, making you thankful for the rare chance to hear live opera, performed to such a standard.

 

Habeas Corpus

WARTS

Botesdale Village Hall

 

With characters like Felicity Rumpers and Canon Throbbing, this might be Carry On Up The 60s.

  But no, this is the work of Oxford don Alan Bennett - both a 'condition of England' playwright and a cheeky schoolboy, seeing how much he can get away with.

  Here he takes the trouserless world of Brian Rix, with a dash of panto in the lines, and sprinkles humorous aphorisms and parodies of literary style.

  There is even a hint of Brecht, in the way that the cleaner, Mrs. Swabb, acts as MC and the actors often address the audience.

  Carys Allen's cleaner is well observed. This is not an old drudge but quite an attractive woman, with her jewellery and knowing but untouchable manner.

  We also recognise a fierce old trout like Lynn Wilson's Lady Rumpers, back from abroad, trumpeting that the country has gone to the dogs.

  Tim Hall, as Dr. Wicksteed, reminds me of Simon Russell Beale, a burly but delicate actor, organ-toned, melancholy, delighting in the lines as both gentleman and lecher.

  Sue Johnson's hilarious antics as a blue-rinsed matron posing for photos like a foxy dolly, will be spoken of in the pot-houses of Botesdale for years.

  There is also amusing work by Emma Matthews as a chestily-challenged spinster, longing to enlarge her life.

  First performed in 1973, the play is Bennett's wry appraisal of the permissive society. Considering that the denouement is the old "He is your father!" chestnut, it may also be a comment on theatre at the time.

  However interpreted, Keith Charman's production is one to remember with a smile.

 

Thatcher: The Musical

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Looking back on the careers of presidents and premiers you often wonder how they were ever elected. Some of these are even allotted greatness. Cue Thatcher the Musical. With an ego the size of Lincolnshire, Margaret Hilda rules again in this Foresight Theatre/Warwick Arts Centre production. Not one but nine of her take the stage – Narrator Maggie, Young Maggie, Twin Set Maggie, Military Maggie, Britannia Maggie, Diva Maggie, Power Suit Maggie, Betrayed Maggie and Elderly Maggie. All the actresses are spot-on in their re-creations of her – the iron-drawered resolve, the dripping condescension, those semaphore conference waves, the vulture-like old-age. Each does a brilliant impersonation and then melts back into the troupe to sing and dance as one. When all nine appear, like the Bacchae, at the finale, it is truly a nightmare vision. Direction is by Naomi Cooke and Deb Barnard, with Kate Hale as dramaturg and songs by Jill Dowse.

 

The Glass Menagerie

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Y'all get down to the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, where the accents are as Southern as hominy and black-eyed peas. Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie explores the flaky world of close family life in the 1930s. Some day the prince comes but Cinders loses him again. At the head of this one-parent family is Amanda. In Kate Spiro's remarkable performance she is a luminous visionary within a world where a secretarial course or a gentleman caller are all her daughter can hope for. Amanda, with her lubricious monologues, is one of those pesky belles who resolutely refuse to fade. Kate Spiro gives a hint of what Broadway, with actresses like Laurette Taylor and Uta Hagen, must have been like. We will be lucky to see a better performance this year. In a strongly autobiographical play, Ilan Goodman gives an eerily good impression of what the young playwright must have been like. Nicola Miles-Wildin is also extraordinarily good and moving as the daughter, like a timid little koala bear. Her scene with the gentleman caller (Russell Simpson), where she glows like a turned-up lamp and is then cruelly snuffed out, is beautifully acted by both of them. Acting, direction by Peter Rowe, design by Dawn Allsopp and lighting design by James Farncombe are all top-drawer. A production not to be missed.

 

Cuckoo Teapot

Eastern Angles

Eastern Angles are thankfully still with us, having gained a funding reprieve. The public and the famous - Sir Peter H, Griff RJ, Kevin C-H, Louis de B - spoke successfully up for them. Fielding one of their strongest ever casts, the company have come up with a gripping play, Cuckoo Teapot by Kate Griffin, about migrant East Anglian 'Norkies' who went to work in Burton-upon-Trent. Following in their footsteps, Eastern Angles were taking the play there in April; but I imagine that they would be made more welcome than their forebears. The workers' migration took place from the 1880s to the 1930s. Then, as now, lads and lasses struck up with each other, with the usual results. Who is related to whom and how, always makes good drama. An unresolved ending could even provide a sequel. A striking feature of Ivan Cutting's production is how well the actors now master the accent. I once described their efforts as 'Gower Street west country.' But now lines like 'He'as hair yairs agoo, afore he went hoom,' roll authentically off the tongue. The characters are three-dimensional ; and even their clothes look grimly lived-in. Any cast would be lucky to include Norfolk actor Graham Howes, with tremendous presence and a voice that seems to reverberate from the East Anglian earth. Tim Bell's clodhopping Norkie-boy Joseph is so real that you feel that you have bumped into him before at some small town market. Bryony Harding makes a canny and feisty bundle of love interest; and there is distinguished character work from Helen Grady and Jackie Redgewell as the older women, full of wisdom and experience. It is good to have the company still taking theatre to the nooks of East Anglia.

 

The Turn of the Screw

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Gothic literature had a belated flourish in the 1890s. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula date from that period. So do the closet Gothic stories The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Turn of the Screw, depicting worms in the Victorian bud. As Freud was in his heyday it is, perhaps, no surprise to find a doctor dangling a pendant in front of Henry James’ governess and the story all coming back to her now. The Turn of the Screw is adapted by Patrick Prior, directed by Jeff Teare and played by just three actors. The strength of the original is that is remains a mystery. It may be about homosexuality, the corruption of innocence, hysteria caused by sexual repression, or all of those. Certainly, when it is depicted on stage in almost monologue form by the governess, it comes over as sexual repression. A handsome, lonely young woman is appalled and fascinated by the idea of her predecessor’s relationship with Quint. We know that it was natural that an attractive lady and a hunky piece of a rough would get together. But it bothers the new governess. On stage the whole thing becomes more Gothic; but this is no bad thing. Much weight falls on the shoulders of Shereen Ibrahim as the governess. Only two years out of RADA she already has great ability. She looks perfectly in period, wears the clothes as though she really was a young woman in 1898 and wrenches the heart with anguish for the children in her care.

 

Bloodtide

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Despite their influence on Tolkien, Wagner and others, Norse and Icelandic sagas are little-known. They describe a world of farms and byres, black nights, sex, savagery and supernatural irruptions. Bloodtide written by Melvin Burgess for Pilot Theatre, is supposedly inspired by the Volsunga Saga. The programme tells us that this dates from 9000 AD. (I think that should be 900.) It also says that the author ‘takes the mythical Norse land of Ragnarok and gives it a modern twist’. Ragnarok, as I remember, was not a land but the Twilight of the Gods, the Norse Armageddon. We also have some Pseuds Corner stuff like this: ‘The story creates a dystopian world that reflects our post 9/11 society with its contradictions of increased interconnection versus further fragmentation.’ The saga is now set in an English urban, futuristic nightmare, making you wonder why. Some folk elements survive – a sword in the stone motif, a shape-changing cat, a man-eating pig and a cruelly crippled bride. Macbeth is quoted several times, perhaps as a half-way house of blood lust between then and now. By the end the body count resembles a Jacobean revenge tragedy. The action is played out on a steeply raked stage, which must have been hard on the hamstrings, with sewer-like tunnels and spiral staircases. But if you forget that this has anything to do with ancient sagas and ignore the guff about 9/11, it is quite powerful theatre. Director Marcus Romer’s young cast throw themselves into this tale of civil war, corruption and gangland revenge, backed by DVD projection and with a dramatic score by Sandy Nuttgens. Sarah Quintrell stands out as the teenage bride who comes via tribulation to power – a heroine of our time.

 

Suddenly Last Summer

Theatre Royal, Norwich

Christopher Oram’s set for Suddenly Last Summer resembles a gasometer, or a huge drum, or maybe it is an asylum with Bedlam noises coming from within. It opens up like the gates of Troy, with a great clamour, to reveal a Gothic, tendrilled interior in which Poe would have felt at home. Sheffield Theatres on Tour, directed by Michael Grandage, have pulled out all the stops in re-creating Tennessee Williams’ lush, over-ripe world of madness and being literally devoured by one’s own demons. The play runs for only an hour and a half, without an interval, and has the familiar Williams lengthy, overwrought monologues to which the other characters just have to listen. Diana Rigg gives a distinguished performance as Mrs. Venable, full of the wisdom and insight, but also the innocence, of age. Victoria Hamilton, one of the brightest talents around, gives a searing account of the deeply troubled Catharine Holly, aflame with recollections too awful to handle.

 

Mother Courage and Her Children

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Productions with all black casts can be a revelation. Remember The Mysteries. But how would they fare with Brechtian alienation, when their forte is passionate involvement? In the Nottingham Playhouse version of Mother Courage and Her Children the play has been translated and considerably adapted by Oladipo Agboluaje. Out goes the 30 Years War in favour of modern Africa where, the programme says, there are current conflicts in 14 nations. Modern references abound. You still have Mother Courage with her mobile NAAFI or PX and her three children, now with African names. The main characters – cook, chaplain, prostitute – are still there. The mute daughter still rouses the town with a drum. But there is not much Brecht. Josette Bushell-Mingo’s production has an air of improvisations on the themes of the play, something many companies do before they tackle the text. Carmen Munroe is a warm and amiable Courage; but the character is surely a tougher, more calculating old bird than that. The production, enjoyable in its own way, is not so much epic theatre as Bring On Da Funk.

 

Trap For A Lonely Man

Theatre Royal, Norwich

If Ian Dickens Productions Ltd has a constitution its aim is probably to present safe plays to conservative audiences around the country: Dial M For Murder, Run For Your Wife, The Ghost Train, Sailor Beware. Robert Thomas’ play Trap For A Lonely Man is such another, from the school of ‘convince the main protagonist that he/she is bonkers.’ The ingenuity comes first, two dimensional characters are draped on, television stars are cast with their particular soap in brackets after their name; and the audience flocks in. Although this play is set in France, it is presented as though it was Agatha Christie, without a hint of Frenchness beyond the names. Home Counties accents are used, with Geoffrey Davies’ Inspector sounding exactly like Cedric Hardwicke. The production also inhabits a time warp. Set in 1955, it gives no impression of that era. The Inspector wears a trilby and sensible coat; but his suit, shirt and tie are present day. As the characters are tin-types your sympathies tend to be with the cleverness rather than the people. Peter Amory from Emmerdale (good to see him on his feet again) puts a lot of energy into the main part; but has little more than bewildered anger to act. Geoffrey Davies, Michael Tudor Barnes and Sally Ann Matthews bring all their experience and style to the proceedings. The audience lapped it up and laughed when someone was shot.

 

The Business of Murder,

Diss Corn Hall

Beware the mild-mannered men in murder mysteries. This was certainly the case in this Bury Theatre Royal play by Richard Harris, directed by Sue Rosser.

Hundreds of people were auditioned for the three roles; and Scots actor Ian Cairns got what you might call a part to kill for.

Nerdy and nervously obsessive, ordinary, average, nondescript, the worm turns with a vengeance.

Falsely accused of murdering his family; and given a hard time by the police; he devises a sublime revenge on the policeman and the cop’s lover who dramatized the case for television.

It takes a considerable actor to be so creepy in sheer ordinariness. Ian Cairns is riveting in his understatement and clear speaking.

This was the company’s 15th venue out of 22 in a month; and half the problem is mastering all the different acoustics, which he does best of the three actors.

Clive Bennett contributes a roguish, London-style Superintendent, one of those loose-tied characters almost indistinguishable from villains.

(Did detectives still wear hats in 1981 in anything but plays? It is in the script, so it is not the actor’s choice.)

Amy Rhiannon Worth completes the trio and makes the most of the seesaw of emotions she has to go through.

The production was going on to Mildenhall, Whepstead, Haverhill, Brandon, Barrow, Debenham and Bury.

 

Blues for Mr. Charlie

Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Enslaved, lynched, segregated, beaten up, raped, assassinated – it was no fun being black. If you were gay as well (when that was still a crime), like James Baldwin, life must have seemed somewhat unfair. His 1964 play Blues for Mr. Charlie is very much of its time. What might have been explosive then is of period interest now. You are given both sides of the argument; but end up rooting for neither. Perhaps there are just too many characters. The black characters are just uptight about their colour and treatment and are differentiated less than the white people. The trial scene has been likened to Kafka. I thought it had a cartoon quality, although that may be intentional. The judge does little more than bang his gavel and tell people that they may step down. The feeling is that Baldwin was a writer rather than a playwright. So you get clichéd scenes and characters and then a sudden piece of arresting writing, like a white lawyer’s description of his former love for a black girl. Rolf Saxon is very good in this scene, as is Ruth Grey, his client’s wife. Barnaby Kay as the client is a young version of a good ol’ boy. All these are like Tennessee Williams characters and played wonderfully well. Meridian Henry rises to Martin Luther King heights in his funeral oration; and Sharon Duncan-Brewster makes special each scene in which she appears.

 

My Boy Jack

Theatre Royal, Norwich

I was not sure about My Boy Jack. We know that Rudyard Kipling, for what he considered the best reasons, encouraged his myopic son to be an officer in the Great War. The boy survived for about two weeks before going missing and then being presumed dead. The family was understandably upset. And that is what you get. David Haig, who also wrote the play, looks like Kipling. Was he really a rather bland, matey figure? Belinda Lang achieves some trumpeting Katharine Hepburn effects as his wife; and shows that she is more than a sitcom actress. Ben Silverstone is touching as the still teenaged son, although pictures I have seen of John Kipling show a more mature looking figure. It is all very nicely done, so that it seems churlish to question it. But it has an air of dramatic re-construction, possibly with the screen in mind, rather than a play. The scene where an Irish soldier, in an often impenetrable accent, describes at great length what became of the young officer is like a piece of lesser Tennessee Williams, with good actors just having to stand and listen. Kipling must have been almost destroyed by his son’s death; but the play never really deals with this.