THE SECRET GARDEN
August 3, 2010
Heartbreak Productions, Kenilworth Castle, then touring until August 29, 2010
THE quintessential English summer’s evening: a picnic on the grass, a delightful open-air production, light showers in the interval…
The timing of the weather’s intervention could not have been more perfect. The darkening rainclouds glowered over act one of this charming performance of the Edwardian children’s classic, and night swooped in with the swifts over act two, but the only actual precipitation came in the 15-minute intermission, allowing the audience to rug up and shelter in true Brit style without disrupting the action.
All of which helped to heighten the camaraderie and shared enjoyment of this beautifully presented show, adapted in two hours by David Kerby Kendall for Heartbreak, who have become masters of this kind of thing over nearly two decades.
The Secret Garden is one of three Heartbreak shows touring this summer around venues as varied as castle ruins – such as Kenilworth – and school grounds.
With its hugely inventive set (Hilary Statts) and a cast of five having a ball playing dozens of characters with as many costume changes, accents and physical attributes as you can shake a stick at, the show faithfully retains the innocence of childhood and the wonder at the natural world that have helped to make the source material so loved by generations of young readers.
Director Marie McCarthy keeps the pace moving throughout the rather episodic unfolding of the tale, in which spoilt brat Mary Lennox is orphaned and shipped off to her uncle’s vast mansion, where her discovery of the titular garden leads to a change of heart and a new vision of life.
Sally Brooks is suitably vile and sweet as Mary, while her colleagues Joe Herzfeld, Abigail Gallagher, James Edwards and Andrew Cullum are tireless in their transformations and characterisations, with every theatrical trick in the book thrown in for added value and plenty of laughs. Even the audience get involved with hilarious results, some helping with sound effects, some adding lighting, some even participating in the on-stage action.
It’s all done with complete charm and joy and adds up to… well, the quintessential English summer’s evening. And who cares about a light shower anyway?
GUYS AND DOLLS
June 11, 2010
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until July 4, 2010
NOW in its fourth year of professional summer shows, the open air theatre in the magnificent grounds of Leicestershire’s Kilworth House Hotel is fast becoming a highlight of the season.
The superb facilities, attentive volunteers and a pleasant summer evening all make a significant contribution to the success of the venture, which is the brainchild of owners Celia and Richard Mackay and the product of a creative collaboration with director Mitch Sebastian and musical director Matthew Freeman, as in previous years.
This time out, they have opted for the Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls, based on the witty and wonderful New York stories of Damon Runyon, and the thorough exploitation of the theme even extends to gangster hats worn by the car-park attendants.
In the production, Sebastian has thought of everything. On a stylised card-deck and craps table set (Charles Cusick Smith and Phil R Daniels), the fast-paced action is played out by a huge cast of… well, guys and dolls, who are never lacking in enthusiasm and commitment. Oh, and there’s a fabulous cameo by an airplane.
The band – sadly hidden away inside a kind of canvas box – are as tight and top-quality as you could hope for, making every musical number fizz with energy, while Sebastian’s choreographic credentials are evident throughout, with dance steps accompanying every song, and quite a bit of the dialogue too.
There are some strong supporting performances, with the dolls turning in a couple of great numbers as the Hot Box cabaret showgirls and Ian Mowat’s Harry the Horse leading the well-judged cameos among the guys. Jamie Golding almost steals the entire show as Nicely-Nicely Johnson with his perfectly-voiced rendition of Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.
Among the principals, Sarah Ingram is the stand-out performer as the permanently engaged, never married Miss Adelaide. The voice, look and characterisation are spot on, and there’s some fine emotional heartstring-tugging in her two Laments.
Paul Baker is a wise-cracking, cheeky chappie of a Nathan Detroit, and if Paul Robinson and Lizzii Hills don’t quite hit the same levels as Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown, the momentum of the show is enough to carry it through and send the audience home smiling and tapping their feet.
MY WONDERFUL DAY
October 26, 2009
Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until November 1, 2009, then New York
SEX, suppressed feelings, hidden agendas – the stock in trade of Alan Ayckbourn’s painfully comic plays are all here for the viewer’s consumption in the world premiere of his latest. The new twist is that it’s all seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl.
Winnie has been allowed by her mum Laverne to accompany her to her cleaning job at the home of businessman Kevin. She’s writing a school essay entitled My Wonderful Day, and decides to record the day she sees, as it unfolds.
In typical Ayckbourn fashion, this means the child is exposed variously to extra-marital shenanigans, ignominious failure and relationship strife, all the while taking assiduous notes for her school project.
Directed by Sir Alan himself, the central conceit works brilliantly. Laverne is hauled off to hospital part-way through proceedings to give birth to Laverne’s baby brother, leaving her in the decidedly dodgy care of Kevin, his business partner Josh and his coquettish PA Tiffany, until Kevin’s cuckolded wife Paula arrives to blow the whole day apart.
Throw in some meticulously planned gags and pay-offs, a wonderfully misdirective device in which it appears to everyone else that Winnie speaks only French, and some stunning performances, and this production – bound immediately for Broadway before a UK tour next year – rarely puts a foot wrong.
A grown-up Ayesha Antoine is outstanding as the diminutive Winnie, catching all the mannerisms and naivete of the nine-year-old with wide-eyed innocence and simplistically trusting openness. It’s a remarkable portrayal of a cuttingly astute role and centres the whole in-the-round production with real confidence.
Terence Booth is an appropriately unlikeable Kevin, Ruth Gibson delightfully shallow as Tiffany, and Paul Kemp a marvellous study in dimwitted inarticulacy as Josh. With additional strong support from Petra Letang as Laverne and Alexandra Mathie as Paula, it’s a recipe for laughs and aching discomfort.
It’s yet another skewering study of the English in all their repressed fake politeness. What the Americans will make of it is anyone’s guess.
THE OPERA SHOW
September 4, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until September 13, 2009
HAVING had a runaway success with Crazy For You earlier this summer, and with this latest Opera Show already a sell-out in the open-air hotel garden venue of Kilworth House Theatre, owners Celia and Richard Mackay have little to worry about on the commercial front.
Their own production company, To Be Productions, is staging this three-act entertainment under the direction of resident supremo Mitch Sebastian and musical director Matthew Freeman.
And with every visual, aural and technological trick in the book wrung from the evening’s extravaganza, there’s certainly plenty to warm up the otherwise autumnally chilly audiences.
For the purists, there’ll be plenty to moan about too, with pre-recorded click tracks supplementing the live eight-piece orchestra and some wacky costumes and scenery adding diversions or distractions, depending on your point of view. This is unashamedly opera for the YouTube generation.
Four soloists voice a wide array of operatic arias, from Purcell to Puccini, in three diverse acts nominally, if bemusingly, assembled under the headings Baroque Beginners, The Recording Revolutions and Electronic Evolution. Among these voices, soprano Anna-Clare Monk and tenor Amar Muchhala excel, with quality performances confidently on top of their material.
Alongside the singers, five dancers are given weird and occasionally completely impenetrable things to do to help things along. Of these, only the second act – in which a 1940s Madrid homestead is evoked to the strains of a simulated radio broadcast – really hangs together properly, although elsewhere the dressings and visual knick-knacks prove impressive at times.
There are some stunning moments, among them Dido’s Lament and Song to the Moon, but it’s interesting that the most powerful musically are those with the least visual accompaniment. It’s as if Sebastian can’t quite convince himself that the arias are enough in themselves, so the whole artists’ toolbox, from video projections to electric guitar solos, is splashed about on the Kilworth canvas with varying degrees of success.
A global tour of the show follows its premiere in the Leicestershire countryside. Goodness knows what the rest of the world will make of it.
CRAZY FOR YOU
June 11, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until July 5, 2009
IT’S impossible to review a production at Kilworth House Theatre without taking into account the extraordinary context.
Opened in 2007 in the grounds of a luxury country house hotel, the venue is a well-appointed, beautifully designed open-air theatre nestled among the trees in a woody glade. However, although the auditorium is covered only by a vaulted, tent-like canopy and the lack of walls allows a chill breeze to blow through, the term “open-air” implies a temporariness that really doesn’t apply to this wonderful whim of the property’s owner, Celia Mackay.
With a necessarily short season limited by the weather, she has put together programmes that have so far included star circuit names such as Ken Dodd and Elkie Brooks, with a full in-house production at the heart of the schedule. And in two short years, it’s really made its mark.
This summer, the glade is jumping to the sounds of George and Ira Gershwin and the posthumously manufactured show Crazy For You, which started life almost 80 years ago as Girl Crazy. Reinvented for Broadway in 1992 with a witty new book by Ken Ludwig, it’s crammed with endlessly hummable tunes and a rollercoaster fun ride of a story about a wealthy New Yorker sent to Nevada to close a crumbling hick theatre.
Kilworth House has formed a partnership entitled To Be Productions, using the considerable talents of West End director Mitch Sebastian, and he helms this show with style and bags of energy. With a 12-piece pit band at his disposal, musical director Matthew Freeman wrings a dazzling soundscape out of the thumping score, and the entire creative team – sound, lights, set and costume – come up trumps with a production that looks every bit the professional barnstormer.
Among the huge cast, there are charming performances from the young leads, Cassidy Janson and Mark Stanford, but it’s among the character parts that the show-stealing turns lie in wait. Michael Howe is a finely comic New York impresario with a fondness for the bottle, Cameron Jack a twinklingly villainous baddie, and there’s a whole chorus line of cowboys and showgirls with enough song-and-dance talent to shake stages far more established than this one.
Celia Mackay’s stated aim is to create “a production which will send you home with a spring in your step”. Chilled bones notwithstanding, this vibrant, exciting, delightful show unquestionably fits that bill.
MARY STUART
May 25, 2009
Theatr Clwyd, Mold
CORRUPT politicians, anti-Establishment conspiracies and internal terrorist threats – no, not the latest David Hare at the National, but a brilliant new Mike Poulton translation of a 200-year-old history play.
Friedrich Schiller’s take on the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, is beautifully crafted as a poetic classic in this new version by Poulton, and is ravishingly rendered at Theatr Clwyd by resident artistic director Terry Hands.
With designer Max Jones, Hands presents a vast, open stage, skewed slightly and jutting powerfully out into the auditorium. In the first half the floor is virginal white, reinforcing the supposed innocence and naivete of England’s Queen Elizabeth; for the second, it becomes oppressively black as Elizabeth’s disingenuous scheming to bring about Mary’s death without attaching blame to herself draws the tragedy to its relentless climax.
The look and conceit of the production are faultless. But without its players they would be mere show.
Among a superb supporting cast, Vivienne Moore is a touching Hannah, companion and sometime nursemaid to Mary, and Owen Teale puts in a masterly performance of statesmanship and stature as Elizabeth’s chief adviser Lord Burghley.
But at the heart of this political drama is a personal vendetta between two queens – cousins who have never met leading nations at loggerheads – which ultimately amounts to a contest of pettiness over who’s the prettier. To carry off this multi-faceted, complex conflict takes actresses of depth, power and supreme technical control.
Marina Hands as Mary weaves a character of authority and vulnerability, whose railing against the injustices done to her is calmed with real credibility as she wins the moral battle, even as she loses her head.
But the towering performance of the night comes from Claire Price as Elizabeth, whose every moment on stage is as gripping, thrilling and mesmerising as the Virgin Queen’s presence must have demanded. Delivering Poulton’s magisterial language against Hands’s spare but stunning backdrop, Price marks herself out as one of the finest actresses of her generation.
Only Schiller can explain why the play is named after the other queen.