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 Singers

Diss 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

WARTS

Botesdale 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.