As one door closes…

DUPLICITY FOR BEGINNERS

Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 16^thFebruary 2024

Following the rip-roaring success of last year’s The Caper Trail, writer Ben Mills-Wood has revised one of his earlier works to create this new full-length farce.  Farce is one of the most difficult genres to get right.  Luckily, Mills-Wood is something of a dab hand and is fast becoming the Jewellery Quarter’s very own Ray Cooney.

Rich bitch Maria and her new age nonsense-spouting lover, Flo, check into their hotel room, thereby triggering an unlikely series of events and improbable situations.  We quickly learn she has a husband, and Flo is a fraud.  Of course, the husband turns up.  And so does a sultry chambermaid with her own agenda.  And the bell boy is not all he seems…  In fact, everyone is up to something.  High jinks and hilarity ensue.

As Maria, Annie Swift brings a touch of class and a nice comedic style.  Jason Adam brings physical humour and amusing expressions as Sebastian the bell boy/waiter, while Alan Groucott as David the husband is an old-school sit-com authority figure, sexually frustrated and conniving.  Oliver Jones’s Flo is more than a handsome himbo.  In fact, Jones is developing a reputation as one for getting his kit off on-stage, like Birmingham’s very own Robin Askwith.  He spends a lot of time in this play with his trousers around his ankles.  It’s an excellent ensemble, to be sure, but stealing the show is Haina Al-Saud’s Norma the chambermaid, pouting and posing seductively with every line.  It’s a perfectly ridiculous portrayal, the delightful cherry on this highly amusing cake.

Director Simon Ravenhill gets the tone exactly right for this kind of thing, managing the action with an assured hand.  All the necessary ingredients are here: doors that open to admit someone the instant someone leaving closes a door behind them; there are misunderstandings, lies and evasions, secrets coming to light, surprises and revelations.  One of the characters is a hypnotist, another has an extreme reaction to avocados… There’s plenty of comic business to keep the actors busy.

The writing is tight, ticking all the boxes and keeping the convoluted complications coming.  Most impressively, Mills-Wood wraps it all up with a neat and satisfying resolution.

A farce needs to run like well-oiled clockwork.  Here, the pace flags a little now and then.  Like the machinations of the plot, the characters need to be more tightly wound.  Some moments could do with more frenetic energy and a greater sense of urgency.  Everyone should be out of breath by the end: the actors from running around and the audience from laughter.

That said, this is an excellent laugh.  Duplicity for beginners?  Hardly.  By all accounts, this lot are experts.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The farce is strong with this one. Oliver Jones as Flo (Photo: Mark Webster)

Gruesome Twosome

DOUBLE BILL: The Speckled Band/The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 27^th October 2023

A pairing of two-handers, an opportunity to compare and contrast, to trace the development of the whodunit… Also a chance to have a bloody good night out.

First up is  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band, featuring the world’s most famous fictional detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes, portrayed here by James Nicholas, who has also penned this adaptation.  Playing Doctor Watson (and everyone else in the story) is the consistently excellent Darren Haywood.  Haywood drops into characters without even dropping a hat, conjuring up women instantaneously – the surprise shocks laughter from the audience – and donning a top hat and booming voice to embody the forceful Doctor Grimesby Roylott.  It’s like watching a virtuoso fiddle.  Watson’s narration draws us along with Holmes into the mystery: a young lady dies in a locked room.  Even though I know who dun it, the storytelling is exquisite and I can’t wait to see how it is played out.  Nicholas and Haywood portray the prickly Holmes/Watson dynamic like old hands, capturing the eccentricity and sometimes coldness of the former, and the warmth and humour of the latter.  Inevitably, it’s a wordy piece but Oliver Hume’s direction keeps things moving, drawing on the charisma of his brace of actors and the intrigue of the story to keep us hooked.

Next is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is generally credited as the first detective story.  We have Poe to thank for the genre, which had a bloody birth in the form of this mystery.  Importantly, the story gives us the detective as lead character: we meet C. August Dupin, a smug know-it-all.  It’s easy to see him as a prototype for Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.  Dupin (every time I hear his name I want to add du vin, du Boursin) is played by Darren Haywood, mercifully without an Inspector Clouseau accent!  This time it falls to James Nicholas to provide the rest of the characters, and he does so in a dazzling display of his versatility as an actor.  Writer-director Mark Webster’s adaptation doesn’t stint on gory details, nor on comic relief to keep things palatable.  Animated projections on a screen at the back depict illustrations in a book, stylised representations of the grisly crime scene – it’s left to our imaginations to picture things in detail.  The turning pages remind us of the genre’s literary origins.

Both stories play out on the same set (by Webster and Ben Mills-Wood), a clutter of wooden crates and period objects.  Simon Ravenhill, Haina Al-Saud, and Nasrin Khanjari have provided period costumes, which play a big part in creating a sense of the time, and assisting the actors to portray a variety of characters quickly and succinctly.  Nathan Bower’s lighting changes and sound design conjure up locations and atmosphere expertly.  The intimate space of the Blue Orange begins to feel like a locked room itself…

It’s a thoroughly entertaining evening, performed to the hilt by two of the Blue Orange’s star players.  You can almost hear the cogs turning in the heads of fellow audience members as they try to solve the cases for themselves.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

James Nicholas (right) looking concerned about the flamboyance of Darren Haywood’s bow-tie

Practice Makes Imperfect

A LIFE LESS LIVED

Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Saturday 22^nd April 2023

The simple set-up for this one-act comedy is the theatre we’re sitting in.  We are to witness the final rehearsal of a one-man show.  Trouble is, the actor and the director disagree about whether this is the dress rehearsal or the tech run.  And that’s not the only bone of contention between them.  The actor is underprepared, more preoccupied with a missing bar of chocolate and a banana gone AWOL than learning his lines.  The director is abrupt and pompous, unable to get the best from his performer.  Completing the trio is tech guy Ben, highly strung and under stress to meet the director’s demands. 

The play within this play is about going up gay in Huddersfield during the terrifying reign of the Yorkshire Ripper.  It all seems a bit familiar, and then I realise it’s a rehash of a piece from five years ago (He’d Murder Me), and I’m not experiencing déjà vu. Here, it’s presented for laughs, providing a rich vein of dark humour.

Playing the actor is Richard Buck, who is always worth watching.   Writer James Nicholas portrays Izzy Hands, the petulant director, waspish and not above picking pockets for bars of chocolate.  Ben Mills-Wood is the put-upon techie, stressed and sarcastic.  The energy between the three keeps the fur flying, but if I have one note to give it’s that it’s all a bit, well, one note.  There needs to be more variety in tone.  For example, Ben doesn’t need to rush all of his lines to show how stressed he is.

There are plenty of laughs, and the absurdity of their endeavour is evident.  Why are they getting so worked up about a piece they all think is a load of rubbish?  Much fun is had with inappropriate sound cues and the business of creating theatre, but for me the show lacks an overall sense of spontaneity.  The mishaps, the arguments and outbursts all feel a little too staged and practised.  Perhaps things will loosen up as the run continues.

If someone spends the best part of an hour telling you what they’re doing is crap, you begin to see their point.  Far better if Izzy is deluded in his pretensions, believing he’s creating great art, when we can clearly see it isn’t.  Then the joke would be on him.  

☆ ☆ ☆ and a half

James Nicholas, Richard Buck, and Ben Mills-Wood prepare to do battle

Thick as Thieves

THE CAPER TRAIL

Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Thursday 28th July 2022

This brand-new one act play, a neat little three-hander from Thirsty Theatre is showing as part of this year’s Birmingham Fest.  (It’s not all Commonwealth Games, you know).

It’s long past closing time in the museum and Carlton, the security guard, is doing his rounds.  Unbeknown to him, a notorious jewel thief has already infiltrated the building, with his sights set on the infamous Dark Ruby which bears a curse (“It sends people fucking mad” – according to Carlton).  Add to the mix an escaped convict in his underpants and the stage is set for a knockabout farce with some very funny moments.

As the hapless security man, Jason Adam quickly establishes himself as an audience favourite, while Oliver Jones’s Mason has an assured enough air to make his story of being a new starter testing the security arrangements sound plausible… Apparently, this is Ian Cooper’s acting debut, appearing as the convict in his underpants.  He displays superb comic acting and timing – as well as quite a lot of skin!  The three cast members play off each other well, lending support when a couple of lines aren’t quite there.

Writer-director Ben Mills-Wood has delivered a taut script, full of laughs, reversals, plot twists, and surprises.  Some of the reversals won’t bear close scrutiny, but while the action is flowing, we go along with it, because we’re having fun.  There are also some moments where the fourth wall gets cheekily demolished, heightening the artifice of this farcical frolic.  As a director, Mills-Wood makes judicious use of freeze-frames and blackouts to depict the cartoonish violence, along with comical sound effects. Stupid characters in clever situations make this show quite a gem.

All-in-all, a fine funny farce, although the comic business could do with tightening up here and there to give the production more polish, and to wring even more laughs out of the action.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Half-Farced

DUPLICITY FOR BEGINNERS

Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 23^rd July 2021

This new one-act play begins as an old-school farce.  Set in a room of the Hotel Royale, two men are inadvertently there to meet the same woman.  Somehow they manage to avoid each other at first, with plenty of well-timed comings and goings through the various entrances and exits.  And, being a farce, the trousers soon come off.

Things take a darker turn when the woman fails to turn up.  Now we are in clever thriller territory—think Sleuth or Deathtrap and nothing is as it first appeared.  Writer Ben Mills-Wood has created a tight and funny script, but I’m afraid his direction can’t quite bring his ideas to the stage. He comes pretty close, though.

There is much to enjoy here, not least the writing.  There’s Jason Adam’s affable comedic stylings as the cheeky concierge; David Sims as Harvey the husband is at his strongest when he loses his temper; and Oliver Jones as the lover balances exaggeration and nuance to give an effective performance.  There are delightful moments of frame-breaking, drawing attention to the artifice and contrivance of the piece.  But this kind of thing needs consistent energy.  Unfortunately, commitment to the action tends to be patchy as the cast’s confidence ebbs and flows.

To be fair, this is the first night, so you can forgive a few stumbles, a few dropped lines, and you can expect things to shape up for subsequent performances.  The pacing needs sharpening so that every convolution of the plot hits the spot and doesn’t slip between the cracks.  It should run like clockwork, but a few cogs need tightening.  Or, to change metaphors, this diamond in the rough requires some targeted polishing to make it the gem it has the potential to be.

***