This Night’s the Night!

TWELFTH NIGHT

mac, Birmingham, Saturday 12^th July, 2014

 

“If music be the food of love, play on,” Count Orsino utters the famous first line. The onstage band launches into Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug and suddenly Orsino’s white suit and black tie make sense. “That strain again,” he interrupts his rendition, “it has a dying fall.”

There, in a nutshell, you have the essence of this production. Pop music (and plenty of it) is blended with Shakespeare’s text. Sometimes the gear change jars but for the most part, the transitions are seamless – it’s almost as if Old Bill had wanted to write a modern jukebox musical all along.  Every song is a happy surprise, adding to the action rather than interrupting it. Nowhere else will you get Viola belting out Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and a petulant, strutting Malvolio with a humongous quiff giving us his best Morrissey.   I tremble to imagine the music clearance bill for this production.

Yes, Oddsocks is back. This is their 25^th anniversary tour and I’m proud to say I’ve been a devotee for most of that period. Director Andy Barrow never seems to be short on ideas and his Twelfth Night ranks up there with my favourites.

Rebecca Little is a hoot as a diminutive Viola, running around with a stepladder, in her presumed dead brother’s Robert Palmer suit. Much is made of the height difference between her and her ‘identical’ twin Sebastian – the magnificent Dom Gee-Burch who also gives us a Feste the Clown as a kind of Russell Brand figure.

The mighty Andrew McGillan’s Sir Toby Belch is an ageing rocker in patched denim, a hair band around his Hair Band wig. It’s a revelation of a characterisation. The drunkenness and hedonism are presented in a way that is entirely relatable to everyone in the audience; this has been Barrow’s approach for a quarter of a century: making Shakespeare accessible and above all enjoyable to people of all ages and academic achievement. Barrow is some sort of theatrical alchemist, mixing very British silliness with Shakespeare’s speech patterns and poetry. The text always survives the Barrow treatment and plenty of Shakespeare’s original jokes go down very well.

Louisa Farrant is a beautiful, gawky Olivia – Miranda Hart could learn a lot from her delivery. As always, Barrow has put together a cast of consummate comedy performers, and there is such warmth and goodwill generated by this excellent ensemble, it’s no wonder people keep coming back to Oddsocks for a fun night out.

Barrow himself is the prissy, sneering Malvolio, giving a master class in verbal and physical humour. His cross-gartered scene is, literally, a revelation.

Joseph Maudsley steals the show in my opinion doubling as a suave Orsino and a prattish Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Orsino’s barely repressed attraction to Viola in disguise as a man gives us the most hilarious running joke of the night – Little too, as Viola or as Maria a Cockney maid who would not be out of place drinking with Kat Slater in the Queen Vic, is another jewel in this production’s crown.

It’s a unique, fast and funny take on Shakespeare’s rather melancholic rom-com from a theatre company at the height of their game.

Arrive early if you can – at some venues there is an extra treat before the show begins: a set from Outsider (Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Lucy Varney), an upcoming and talented musical duo performing their own material, that eases us in rather nicely before the silliness explodes onto the stage.

 

Andy Barrow. Heaven knows he’s Malvolio now.

Back in the Hood

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton, Wednesday 21st November, 2012

Oddsocks Productions’ winter show this year is a new version of the outlaw legend, a story familiar from countless retellings, both played straight and in spoofs. All the familiar elements are here: the evil Sheriff, the Merry Men, Maid Marian, the archery contest… but given the Oddsocks treatment. The broad humour, wordplay, innuendo are all here with a lavish coating of slapstick and physical comedy. There is music of a folk nature (composed by Lucy Ward) and of course, a couple of puppets put in an appearance.

This was the first ever performance and at times this was more obvious than others. The set is ingenious, intricate and versatile but brings with it certain drawbacks, making some of the transitions less than slick. In time, these will speed up and, when the script is embedded and the quick changes better organised, the show will run like clockwork – although, to be perfectly honest, the delays, the missed cues and the wobbly walls add to the fun. Oddsocks can get away with it; their enthusiastic brand of knockabout silliness allows for the wheels to come off from time to time.

The cast of five play multiple roles, forming a likeable ensemble working their (odd) socks off to keep the balloon aloft. Kevin Kemp is the titular hero. This Robin is not an aristocrat gone wild but a man of the people. His nobility is of the down-to-earth, working man variety. Kemp is also hilarious as long-serving dungeon occupant Obadiah, complete with stretched limbs and silly beard. Maid Marian is played by Oddsocks newcomer, Louisa Farrant, a classy beauty not shy of plain-speaking and who plays a mean flute. Joseph Maudsley stalks around on stilts as a not-so Little John, and also has a bash at a Bishop. Andrew McGillan is Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, throwing himself around. They are all very, very funny so I won’t pick a favourite.

This hard-working, energetic and merry band is led by writer/director Andy Barrow as the evil Sheriff and Much the Miller’s Son in a ratty mullet. Barrow hams it up with relish and the script shows his mastery of humour in all its forms. This is good old British comedy, stemming from the likes of The Goons and Round the Horne but there are also hints of the Three Stooges in the slapstick and Abbot & Costello in the double talk. The man knows how to make you laugh.

This is Oddsocks’s most physical show to date. There is plenty of sword play and stage combat (choreographed by Amed Hashimi) that doesn’t repeat a gag, and there is a lot of coming and going to serve the contrivances of the story. I was struck by how political the show is. Robin Hood is a political figure, always has been, but here, with bang up-to-date topical jokes and obvious parallels to the rich who are getting rich off the backs of the poor, the play calls us to action. We all have to be Robin Hood if we are to overcome the exploitation we face. There is a lot about public officials serving the law rather than being above it. This colourful production (wonderful costumes by Mike Lees) shows us the issue can be as simple as black and white, right and wrong.

I am certain as the tour carries on, the organisation will improve and the performances will be slicker, and I really liked the darker moments when it all goes dramatic. Apart from one: the Sheriff’s first scene. He goes straight into his dramatic exposition and we sit there waiting for the chance to boo him as we have been warmed up to do in the prologue. An insult or even just a sneer to the audience as he walks on would allow us the opportunity. As it was, our boos were a long time coming, because we were focussed on the storytelling.

The moments of audience participation are good fun, and the volunteers rose to their scenes with aplomb. On the whole, I believe everyone had a good time. Even the briefly shambolic moments were enjoyable!

Would I like to revisit this production a few weeks down the line?

I Sherwood.