Lacking Bite

CARMILLA

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tuesday 8^th July, 2014

 

Based on a novel that predates Dracula, David Campton’s script has all the makings of a Hammer horror: the gothic 19^th century setting, the pretty young girl at risk, the dashing hero… The twist is that the monster is a striking, apparently young woman who feeds off the blood of the locals, with her sights set on the pretty young girl as a long-time companion.   Horror has always used the monster to symbolise the ‘other’ in society. Here it says that sex that is not procreative, is evil, and saps the strength of those who indulge, weakening them in body and mind until they die.

Ian Dickens has assembled a fine cast for this atmospheric tale. Christopher Hogben is the dashing, resolute Captain Field and I enjoyed James Percy’s brief turn as creepy servant Ivan, clicking the heels of his magnificent boots together. Peter Amory is a gruff Colonel Smithson, a sort of Von Trapp character in a bad mood, and Paul Lavers is effective as the ostensible man of reason, Doctor Spielsberg.  Karen Ford gives solid support as the governess and Melissa Clements’s Lucy is suitably lively and engaging – until the ‘illness’ begins to take its toll.

In the title role, Michelle Morris is good as the commanding vampire, with a strident tone and a bit of Jedi mind control power in her hand. I would have liked a bit more light and shade to her or, alternatively, a little bit more camp. The production could do with a lot more camp, in fact. It’s played just a little too straight – and it’s a difficult mood to create and sustain, but all too easy to puncture. A portrait is carried on to show the likeness between Carmilla and a woman who has been dead for centuries. It looks too much like a publicity headshot rather than an oil painting of the period. The destruction of Carmilla at the end – mostly in blackout – is laughable with (SPOILER ALERT) lights up to reveal a naked skeleton lying on a tomb.

Now, if the approach had been a little more light-hearted, including the audience in the asides for example, we would forgive any clumsiness or ineffectual special effects. When Hogben comes on, in disguise as a gypsy, the show really comes back from the dead. I think the whole show should have been done with this larger-than-life gusto – we would be more willing to go along for the ride. This is the spirit, I thought, and I loved Beppo the monke

At the time when the story first appeared, vampires were brand new as a genre of popular culture. Nowadays we are all over-familiar with the lore: the mysterious marks at the side of the neck, the preventative properties of garlic… that it is nigh on impossible to scare us.

The play is therefore riddled with dramatic irony rather than suspense. Our knowledge is vastly superior to any of the characters.

Also, I would have tackled the lighting design differently. What you don’t see is always scarier than what you do. More spots and candlelight would have raised the play’s game in the scary stakes. And I would have nixed the plodding tick-tock music that covers every scene transition.

A good-looking production in terms of costumes and set, Carmilla could have been an entertaining evening of comic-horror. As it stands at the moment, it’s rather bloodless and toothless.

 

Let’s Twist Again

DESIGN FOR MURDER

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Wednesday 18^th June, 2014

 

Donald F. East’s 1969 “murder thriller” is revived by director Ian Dickens as part of his summer season this year. The period setting is reproduced effectively by the detailed set and the Burt Bacharach tracks that cover the transitions – these are fun and light, in contrast with the treatment of the material. Dickens handles the dynamics of the scenes well (the play begins with a row between husband and wife) but the overall tone could do with leavening. The characters all have something repellent about them and elicit no sympathy whatsoever, discussing and indeed carrying out infidelity, blackmail and murder – their monstrousness could be offset by a lighter touch to bring out the dark humour of East’s script.

A bit heavy on the exposition in the early scenes, the plot zigzags from twist to turn, with the upper hand switching from character to character in an impressive and entertaining way, but again, the overwrought dialogue would be more palatable if the cast were to have more fun with it.

Paul Lavers is Clive, out of love with his second and much younger wife Moira (Carly Nickson), who at the outset is an annoying, whining, self-absorbed woman – you are soon hoping she will be the victim. Moira is having it off with Clive’s business partner Philip (Peter Amory) who is blackmailing Clive for control of their company.

Enter Bridget Lambert, purporting to be Clive’s first wife Jane, and the action really takes off. Lavers is good as sarcastic Clive and you warm to Nickson as Moira as her character gets in deeper and deeper with the shenanigans. Amory does a good turn as the gruff and vain Philip and there is strong support from Lambert as the conniving fourth wheel.  The play reveals itself to be almost as twisty-turny as something like Sleuth or Death Trap – the production just needs to lighten up and it would be a cracking black comedy.

 

 

A Slow Death

LADIES IN RETIREMENT

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton,Tuesday 3rd June, 2014

 

Written in the 1940s and set in the 19th century, this play by Edward Percy and Reginald Denham tells of retired actress Leonora Fiske who shares her lonely marshland home with stony-faced housekeeper and confidante Ellen Creed (Erin Geraghty).  The pair are glamorous chalk and drab and dour cheese but they rub along together nicely enough until Ellen arranges for her two aged and emotionally immature sisters for an extended visit.  The old kooks are as tiresome to the audience as they are to Miss Fiske and so we understand why she wants rid of them and sharpish.   Familial devotion gets the better of the housekeeper’s loyalty and a murder is committed.  The second half of this over-long piece is concerned with bringing the murder to light.

It’s not without its moments.  There are some amusing lines of dialogue and some members of the audience gasped audibly a number of times.  It’s just that the play takes a long time to get where it’s going – and that’s not very far.

As faded chorine, Miss Fiske, Shirley Ann Field still cuts an elegant figure, speaking with her distinctive “lived-in” voice.  Being the start of the tour, I expect the lines will settle in and the whole thing will pick up its pace.  Erin Geraghty is suitably stern as the treacherous housekeeper, and Karen Ford and Sylvia Carson do a good job as the irritating old dears, little girls in old women’s bodies.

The show really comes to life whenever Lucy the maid (Melissa Clements) and cocky geezer Albert Feather (Christopher Hogben) are on stage.  These two bring energy to their characters and their scenes, lifting us out of the doldrums.

Gradually, the drama takes hold but director Ian Dickens needs to do something about the handling of the murder that ends the first half.  A quicker blackout would be more effective and I’m not sure about the pre-recorded, protracted scream as the curtain falls.  Also, it is laughably obvious that the cast are not actually playing the on-stage piano; if it were angled differently, this could be masked to avoid our cringes and derision.

Ian Marston’s set adds to the atmosphere and period feel but this slow-burner needs an accelerant to ignite our interest earlier on.  A big hit in its day, it may be time for Ladies in Retirement to be put out to grass. 

Pickwick From A Distance

THE PICKWICK PAPERS

Festival Theatre, Malvern, Wednesday 4^th December, 2013

An ambitious project: to bring Charles Dickens’s rambling, episodic novel (originally a serial) to the stage.  But it has been done magnificently with regard to Nicholas Nickleby, so why not give it a go?  Unfortunately, The Pickwick Papers lacks the scale and the scope of that other book and, most crucially, it lacks drama.  So, what we get with Nicola Boyce’s adaptation is a series of scenes of little consequence involving characters that veer towards caricature.

Ian Dickens (some relation?) directs a cast of faces familiar from his other productions and pretty much gives them an easy ride.  Rebecca Wheatley gives a star turn as Mrs Leo Hunter performing a poem set to music about an ‘expiring frog’ – this characterisation contrasts effectively with her other role as the shy Miss Wardle.  David Callister is enjoyable as conman Jingle, inhabiting the costume and the vernacular with ease.  Poppy Meadows is underused – very funny as Mrs Bardell.  Dean Gaffney is well within his comfort zone as affable manservant Sam Weller – a pity he doesn’t get to flex the comedic muscle we saw earlier this year in Murder in Play.  Daniel Robinson and Scott Grey are the effeminate, giggling, shrieking ninnies Mr Winkle and Mr Snodgrass – they get the best scene in terms of action when poor Winkle finds himself embroiled in a duel thanks to the misconduct of Callister’s Jingle.

On the whole, the cast is very good and looks good in the costumes.  I think part of the problem is the set.  Most of the action takes place on a rostrum but this is set so far upstage it adds further distance between the actors and the audience beyond that provided by the fourth wall.  It is very difficult for them to engage with us and us with them, being so far removed from each other – my seat was fifth row centre and I felt like I needed binoculars.  Often the stage is crowded with people with their backs to us, further shutting us out. A disembodied voice narrates passages to cover scene changes, keeping us at a distance yet again rather than addressing us directly.

Also, the running time is not borne out by the content.  The story, such as it is, is too flimsy to sustain interest for almost three hours.  I found my mind wandering, unable to focus on some of the verbiage – Pickwick, nicely played by John D Collins – is a garrulous old thing but the script is in need of editing.

What should be a delightful, diverting way to pass an evening, becomes something of an endurance test.  It’s like trying to have a five-course meal in a sweet-shop: delightful at first but ultimately unsatisfying and lacking in nutrients.

 

Chilling on a Summer Night

A MURDER HAS BEEN ARRANGED

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tuesday 16^th July, 2013

 

The Ian Dickens Summer Season draws to a close with this fourth offering, an effective chiller from 1930 by Emlyn Williams.   It plays out like a murder mystery, typical of that genre, but there is a supernatural element to proceedings that turn it into a ghost story towards the end.

The plot concerns an unusual party that takes place on stage of an empty theatre, rented for the occasion of Lord Jasper’s 50^th birthday.  According to the terms of a will, if he can survive until 11 pm, he stands to inherit a couple of million quid.  Lord Jasper is something of an expert in all things occult and the theatre is reputed to have its own ghostly apparitions – hence his choice of location.  Also in the running is Jasper’s only surviving relative, a mystery man who will inherit if the old boy doesn’t make it to midnight…

It’s a creaky old plot but once it’s up and running you go along for the ride, thanks to the performances by a strong ensemble of players.  Paul Lavers is dashing and flamboyant as genial eccentric Sir Jasper with Nicola Weeks very good as his young bride.  It seems to me Weeks is more suited to these period roles than some of the more contemporary comedies I’ve seen her in.  The bride’s mother is the marvellous Anita Harris, looking glamorous and elegant, balancing superciliousness and desperation, as she tries to protect her daughter’s interests.  Also in the mix is handsome young hero Jimmy North (the likeable Mark Martin) who worms his way into the party – as a character, he fizzles out in that he is not part of bringing the murderer to light, but that’s all part of how Emlyn Williams plays with the genre.  I was impressed by Karen Ford as Mrs Wragg, a character part of strung-together colloquialisms, managing to keep on the right side of gor-blimey; she adds a touch of levity to proceedings and also helps to build the spooky atmosphere.  Poppy Meadows adds to the tension as jumpy Miss Groze, although we discover the reason for her nervousness is nothing to do with the theatre ghost…

Of course, the mysterious relative shows up.  Oliver Mellor dominates his scenes as Maurice Mullins, whose camp, extrovert exterior masks a Machiavellian heart, playing him with energy but keeping the melodramatic elements of the role toned down somewhat.  Any pretence at a whodunit is swept away and the play shifts gear.  Supernatural elements are brought to bear to expose the killer – like Banquo’s ghost at the dinner table.  Directors Ian Dickens and David North crank the tension slowly and play the dramatic irony to the utmost but the first appearance of the ‘Woman’ (Melissa Thomas) could do with being a touch more unworldly.  Good use is made of silence (when the audience is not coughing itself inside out, that is!) and Steve Chambers’s sound design adds to the sense of foreboding very effectively.

It’s an old-fashioned piece, a little longwinded in places, but it’s handled well and bears up in this day and age when we are more accustomed to flashier special effects and faster-moving stories.

Old Trouble

THE TROUBLE WITH OLD LOVERS

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tuesday 9^th July, 2013

 

Tom (Peter Amory) is shopping at home for garden furniture when wife Alice (Nicola Bryant) comes home from a wedding she attended without him.   She has unwittingly invited a couple over for dinner the following evening and, to make matters worse, the couple are both former lovers of Tom and Alice… And to make matters even worse, the couple announce they are bringing along a fifth wheel, a woman they met at the wedding.

Cue some middle class panic.  Wouldn’t you know it: the woman turns out to be Tom’s mistress from three years ago?!

In the hands of a master of exposing middle class absurdity and pricking middle class aspirations and preoccupations like Alan Ayckbourn, this play could have got off to a cracking start, but unfortunately Angela Huth’s script begins slowly and doesn’t get out of first gear for far too long.  We are given two lengthy and verbose scenes before the dinner guests even arrive.  The dinner party happens off-stage, while we’re having an interval, and over coffee, the play changes tack as the truth comes out.  Tom’s former mistress, Mary (Shona Lindsay) pours scorn on them all, a glamorous spectre at the feast, shit-stirring in a rather condescending manner.  Oddly, Tom and Alice seem to take it on the chin and it falls to insufferable buffoon (what did Alice used to see in him?) Edward (Simon Linnell) to speak out and assert his point of view.  Finally, Alice speaks her mind before sending Mistress Mary on her way – Nicola Bryant caps off a very likeable performance with this dignified rebuttal of Mary’s claims.  In fact, Bryant gets all the funniest lines and there are not enough of them.  Shona Lindsay cuts an elegant figure as a woman in red and I felt sorry for Joanna Waters’s Laura, the dowdiest of the female characters who doesn’t get to glam up for dinner.  Linnell’s characterisation seems to come from a much earlier era and somewhat out of place with the others, and Peter Amory makes a bluff old barrister, complacent and verging on curmudgeonly but it is difficult to see the passionate figure Mary claims he is.

The trouble with The Trouble With Old Lovers, old love, is the pace.  It needs to get going far sooner – director Ian Dickens could cut whole swathes of the first two scenes; it would be more effective if we were unaware of Tom’s recent affair so Mary’s arrival would be more of a shock for us as well as for him.  There needs to be more contrast in tone.  The comedy needs to be emphasised so that the change to drama is more defined.  If the first act is sub-Ayckbourn, the second is sub-Ibsen.  Everything is suddenly dripping with significance and heavy-handed symbolism (literally heavy-handed: Tom breaks Alice’s spectacles).  At the end, Alice is the only one I care about – if the first act had been better structured, I might have taken to some of the others as well.

Off the Boil

STEAMING

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tuesday 2^nd July 2013

 Nell Dunn’s play is doing the rounds in Ian Dickens’s revival and while the all-female cast quite happily and valiantly bare all, this story of a Turkish room in an East End public baths is showing its age.  In the thirty years that have passed since its original production, we have become more accustomed to hearing women speak frankly about their lives and sex and so on (e.g. The Vagina Monologues) that nowadays Steaming seems a bit tepid.

Every week a diverse group of women gather at the baths for respite from the hassles and stresses of their lives.  The steam room is their refuge and the treatment a metaphor for cleansing themselves of the toxic influence of men.  They pose the eternal question, “ Why are all men shits?” and, interestingly, acknowledge that women have to take some of the blame for the way they bring up their sons… It’s feminism but not a polemical piece – it is largely presented as a comedy where the personal is political.  Largely.  The script is uneven and patchy, clunkily changing gear like a learner driver.

The sessions are run by Violet (Kim Taylforth) who acts as a sort of den mother for her clients.  Jane (Michelle Morris) introduces her recently single posh friend Nancy (Katherine Heath) to the place and the people – instant recipe for culture clashes.  Nancy sets to ‘correcting’ the pronunciation of barmaid Josie (Rachel Stanley), who beneath her brash and coarse exterior is victim to an abusive (inexplicably German) boyfriend.  Old Mrs Meadows (Patricia Franklin) brings her mentally ill daughter Dawn (Rebecca Wheatley) every week as a break from their grim existence in a dilapidated house – the inference is that their lives have fallen into neglect and decay since she became widowed.  The cast are more than competent.  Franklin and Wheatley form a comic duo along the lines of George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men, although some of the laughs, at the expense of mental illness, don’t sit comfortably today.  The mouthpiece of the play and the character whose ‘journey’ is the most defined is Josie – she gets all the choice lines and the more explicit speeches; the others don’t really match her in terms of spirit but that’s a problem with the writing rather than the performances.  The problem is we don’t really bond with these characters.  We learn about their situations through lengthy exposition – we are at a remove from them all along the line.

The baths are threatened with closure.  They are to be replaced by a library.  How times have changed!  These days, they would be closed and the library along with them.  And, in the second half, the play reveals its continuing relevance at last.  The women campaign to save their precious resource, by challenging the myths perpetrated to justify the cuts.  They fight back with facts and figures to blow the council’s argument out of the water.  Josie speaks out for ordinary people, the old and the vulnerable: public services are a necessity.  Thirty years on she should be leading the Labour party and fighting the self-serving coalition’s cuts, and we should be behind her.

Not as sentimental as the more recent Calendar Girls, Steaming is well-presented and performed but three decades on, appears to have gone off the boil.

 

A Season Has Been Arranged

SUMMER PLAY SEASON LAUNCH 2013

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Thursday 30^th May, 2013

 

It has become something of an annual tradition for the Grand to house a month’s worth of plays from Ian Dickens Plays, four weeks of varied fare including, of course, the obligatory murder mystery!  The season kicks off on Tuesday 25^th June with Simon Brett’s comedy Murder In Play (which I caught in Malvern last night – read my review here).

Before the launch began, I had a chat with the actor Dean Gaffney.

Dean Gaffney

Congratulations; it’s a very funny show.

DG. Thank you very much.

I’ve seen you in a few things; I think the last one was in Derby…

DG. Ah, yes…

I saw it before the fateful night (In January Dean’s car got up close and personal with the central reservation of the A38) So are you all recovered from that now?

DG. Yes, I mean at the time it was – something like that happens and you think, Am I going to work again?  The nicest thing, as you can probably tell, now is the scar has healed quite a lot and it’s only been four months – so I’m very lucky to be here.

Because I wondered, Has he read my review?  Is that what’s driven him off the road?

DG. Ah, funny!

Did you approach Murder in Play differently to the previous one?

DG.  The previous one is an Agatha Christie so it’s very stylised; it’s very stuck in the 1920s and 30s, and it has to be… you know.  So many people love Agatha Christie – which I found when I did an Agatha Christie about four years ago.

I saw that one as well. The Uninvited Guest?

DG. The Unexpected Guest.  That was a different character – that was someone who had learning difficulties.  The thing about Agatha Christie is that they all come in their droves to see it.  Everyone loves a murder mystery and no one does it better than Agatha Christie.

There is a line in the play, isn’t there, he (Director Boris) says touring audiences will come to see anything with ‘murder’ in the title.

DG. That’s right.  And I think with this one, you’ve got the play-within-the-play, very stylised back in the 1920s, but when you come back into real time, it’s nice to be a bit more casual, a bit more, you know, not so R.P.  So yes, it’s a very different play.  I have a lot more lines in this one I have to say but there’s more … you can relax a little bit more.  Because it’s a comedy as well, I enjoy it more.  I loved doing the Agatha Christie but there’d be times when you’ll be doing a scene and you’ll go, I’ve got another hour and a half!  But the good thing about the comedy is it just flows.

Yeah, you’ve got to keep the pace up otherwise it will fall flat.  I enjoyed your twitch, your tic.

DG. Thank you.

Is there something you really want to do? A role you’d like to tackle?

DG. That’s a good question.  I did a play about four years ago that Alastair McGowan wrote called Timing and that was in the King’s Head in London – it’s a pub theatre but it’s a very prestigious one and there was only 30 to 40 seats so they’re literally on top of you.  So that was interesting, but I’d love to do something like James Corden did, Two Guv’nors.  I’d love to do something where people walk away from the theatre and go, Wow! That’s different than what that person’s been known for.  And I think the hardest thing about the business is you only get that when they know you can do it.  You can only prove that you can do it when you get it.  It’s that thing when someone who’s say, homeless, can’t get a job because they haven’t got an address but how can they get an address if they haven’t got a job?  Sometimes you’re stuck in a rut there but the more that you do things – plays like this, plays that people get to see – slowly but surely, hopefully, that door will open. 

I was thinking about people who like to do Shakespeare, to be taken seriously, to prove that they’ve got the chops to do it.  Have you ever had any kind of leanings towards that?

DG. I love things when they’re modern, i.e. on film – what Baz Luhrmann does with Romeo and Juliet.  I love stuff that’s brought into this era and I think James McAvoy did something recently that’s a bit trendier, and I think if it was something like that, I’d love to do it.  It think if it was straight Shakespeare it would frighten me a bit, and I think that’s when people know whether you’re bloody good or not.  I think you have to have confidence in yourself but I wouldn’t want to be hung out there like that.

You’ve already done some Beckett, haven’t you?

DG. I did Waiting For Godot. It was my first job – with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and that was good because I was fourteen; I didn’t know what acting was, Jesus!  I was barely out of nappies!  But to learn the craft from two legends like that!  My first job in the West End of London!

Looks great on the C.V.!

DG. Yeah!  To walk around in the middle of that! Obviously I still had my mum and dad with me, but at that age to be working professionally in the West End!

Do you still get called ‘Robbie’?

DG. God, yeah.  The thing about EastEnders is that it’s such a powerful show.  People always say to me, Ooh, do you get recognised in Sainsbury’s? And it’s like you get recognised everywhere!  It’s just part of being in that show.  And I think, yes of course, it dwindles, but I think that show’s so powerful even in 20 years if we were sat here, you’d still be asking the same question, because you’ll never lose it.  There’s certain characters that I might say to you and you’d go, Who are they? But there are certain characters within EastEnders that you’ll never forget.

It’s like Katy Manning’s character in the play.  She’s got this past in a soap that she keeps on about.

DG. Exactly!  That’s the thing about this: people like yourself and actors or people in the business come and see it and they get it.  Some people might go, Why is this old man talking about Richard Burton? In our profession, that’s exactly what the older generation do.

I also managed to grab a few moments with Dean’s former EastEnders colleague Gemma Bissix, also known for her role as glamorous villain Claire in Hollyoaks.

Gemma Bissix

GB. I think I’ve seen you before.

Have you?

GB. Here, a couple of years ago, at a thing like this.

(I didn’t disillusion her but it must have been some other hunk).

I saw the play last night.  Congratulations, it’s very funny!

GB. Thank you!

And well done – it falls to you to turn detective and deliver great swathes of explanation – especially in the second half.

GB. Yes, it’s unusual for a character like mine to have that function.  Usually it’s a Miss Marple or a policeman.

I thought it’s a bit of shame that you don’t get to have as much fun with your characterisation as some of the others do, because you have to play it straight, so that we get all the information we need.

GB.  Yes.  I’m kind of – I’m kind of the cement that holds it together.

This isn’t the first season of this type you’ve been involved with.

GB.  No, I was in  Dry Rot as the maid – and it was such a – it was so nice to play something that was desexualised, you know, because Hollyoaks is so glam, very kind of slinky dresses –

Lipstick and heels!

GB. Absolutely! And to actually play that, to desexualise it completely, and people laugh at you, I find it great.

It shows that sometimes the old plays, they still work.

GB. Oh, absolutely.

You don’t have to be all experimental and controversial.

GB. I think sometimes what an audience needs is that slapstick stuff, they want that, and the farcical kind of thing, and that’s what I think Murder in Play does, even though as you’ve said it’s a Noises Off kind of feel, it’s got that farcical kind of thing to it, hasn’t it?  When they’re coming in and out of the doors…

You’ve got to keep the balloon in the air, haven’t you?

GB. David Callister who plays the director and Richard Tate who plays Harrison, they’ve got such a great double act going on, and it’s not something you might expect from this play at the start but they are – that’s what works, and everybody empathises with different characters – That’s what I love about this play – just silly things – but that’s what I think the audience want nowadays; they just want light relief.  Unless you want to go and see a serious piece like the Agatha Christie that we did – but I think lots of people just want – they come out in the evening – not so far as pantomime season is panto and that’s for adults and children but I do think there is such a big market for farce now because people just want to come and be entertained.

And it’s also thrilling to see something that’s so skilful being pulled off because if farce doesn’t work, there’s nothing worse.

GB. It’s terrible! Oh my goodness!

You’ve got to have the timing.

GB. Or then it’s not funny. Absolutely.

Both actors were then called up to the stage along with Murder In Play co-star Katy Manning and director and producer of the season, Ian Dickens.  The good people of Wolverhampton were not shy in asking pertinent and searching questions.

Question Time. Katy Manning, Ian Dickens, Gemma Bissix, Dean Gaffney

Ian Dickens is clearly passionate about his company’s work and spoke frankly and with good humour about the issues raised.  Here is just a sample from that Q&A session.

Q. How do you feel when a theatre is half full – or half empty?

ID. Sad – it means I’m not earning as much!  I work on audience figures of about 40 -50 % capacity in order to bring shows in on budget.  We need to improve the culture in this society of young people coming into the theatre.

KM. Back in the 70s places like this were absolutely packed.

She went on to suggest that people bring youngsters to the theatre as birthday or Christmas presents.

GB. It’s about educating young people, to get them away from reality programmes.

ID. Musicals have made drama the poor relation.  What we have to establish is plays as part of a mix of what a theatre presents.

GB. Plays are considered sort of old-fashioned, because they’re not on television any more.

The discussion – and I hope it’s reported elsewhere – also considered topics such as the state of training of actors and how that has become a business, with the weaker students not being directed into careers more suited to their abilities.  There is a difference between wanting to be famous and doing the job for the love of doing it.

The live broadcasts to cinema from the National Theatre were also discussed, leading to consideration of what a national theatre should and shouldn’t be doing, in Ian Dickens’s view.

On the whole it was a fascinating and rewarding session, going beyond a publicity stunt to entice us back to see the season of plays.

For the record that season comprises:

Murder in Play by Simon Brett – hilarious play-within-a-play

June 25th – 29th

Steaming by Nell Dunn – famous all-female play set in a Turkish bath in London, with ‘some nudity’ starring Rebecca Wheatley and Kim Taylforth

July 2nd – 6th

The Trouble With Old Lovers by Angela Huth – Ian Dickens’s favourite of the bunch, a great observation of a couple who have each been a bit naughty in the past, starring Peter Amory and Nicola Bryant

July 9th – 13th

A Murder Has Been Arranged by Emlyn Williams – a ghost story set in a theatre starring Anita Harris and Oliver Mellor.

July 16th – 20th

The plays are visiting other theatres before and after their time in Wolverhampton.

The Wolverhampton season runs from Tuesday 25^th June until Saturday 20^th July.

Making A Killing

MURDER IN PLAY

Festival Theatre, Malvern, Wednesday 28^th May, 2013

 

Noises Off the famous farce-within-a-farce was blatantly the inspiration for Simon Brett’s murder-mystery-within-a-murder-mystery from 1993. It begins with a scene of excruciating dialogue and clunky accents and we fear we’re in for some am dram level old pot-boiler, but, we can relax: this is a rehearsal.  The real characters are a troupe of actors struggling through a run the night before their play is due to open. 

We have Alison Mead as stuffy ‘Lady Chomondley’ as performed by the ‘director’s’ snooty wife; Lord Rodney Pirbright (Dean Gaffney in a James Bond dinner jacket) as performed by Equity stickler ‘Tim’; Katy Manning plays a former soap legend reduced to mugging and girning as cook/housekeeper ‘Mrs Puttock’; Richard Tate in a ridiculous wig as villainous Mr Papadapoulous as portrayed by dotty old sot ‘Harrison Braithwaite’…

Poppy Meadows gives the greatest contrast between her two roles.  As ‘Virginia Chomondley’ she is all cut-glass and straight-necked, and then as actress ‘Ginette Vincent’ she is all ditzy and gor-blimey.  This helps us to keep clear about when they are ‘on’ and when they are ‘off’.

The rehearsal is interrupted by ‘director’ Boris Smolensky – David Callister, mangling vowels and strutting around despotically in pretentious cowboy boots.  It’s a masterly comic turn.  It’s pleasing to see many of the cast, who are old hands at the creaky murder mystery, sending up the genre so effectively. Katy Manning is enjoying herself as health-nut ‘Christa’, firing off bitchy remarks with relish.  Julia Main is hilarious as dopey stage manager Pat, and Dean Gaffney is a revelation, showing a flair for comic timing and face-pulling.  He seems more at ease in this type of thing and should do more comedy.

Richard Tate is the funniest by a country mile.  A veteran performer, he is a master of the silly accent and migrating limp when ‘in role’ but also delivers a fine characterisation as the absent-minded old lush.

It falls to Gemma Bissix as ‘Sophie Lawton’, whose sexy maid outfit hides an analytical mind.  She has great swathes of exposition and explanation to get through in order to reveal the killer – somebody has to do it!  It’s just a pity she doesn’t get to have as much fun with her characterisation as the rest of the cast do with theirs.

Real-life director Ian Dickens keeps it moving.  With farcical shows, you can’t let the balloon touch the ground.  I can’t help wondering how close his own working methods are to those utilised by the on-stage Boris…

A funny, clever script well-played, this production is doing the rounds as part of Ian Dickens Productions’ summer season. It is well worth an evening of anyone’s time.

Well hard. Dean Gaffney and Poppy Meadows.