Digging for Victory

FANTASTIC MR FOX

Crescent Theatre, Birmingham, Sunday 8^th December, 2013

 

This year’s family fun for the festive season at the Crescent is David Wood’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s well-loved story, Fantastic Mr Fox – which makes for a fun bedtime read but is a bit thin when it comes to material for the stage.  In a nutshell: the eponymous Mr Fox provides for his family by stealing from three local farmers and businessmen, who take objection to the thieving and take direct action to destroy the fox, his family, and their habitat.  Mr Fox proves how fantastic he is by tunnelling away, leading his family and other woodland critters, to a network of tunnels right underneath the shops and stores of the farmers.  They need never show their furry faces above ground again.

This story of good and evil has a lot in common with Robin Hood – the fantastic Mr F uses his cunning to ensure survival.  And there are themes of destruction of the environment in the pursuit of misguided capitalistic concerns (badger cull, anyone?) and the exploitation of some animals at the expense of others.  Killing foxes is bad, says the play, and I’m predisposed to agree.  Man is the enemy of nature.

As the three baddies, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, Joshua Norris, Sophie Hamilton-Foad and Sam Malley, striding around on stilts so they tower over the animal cast, are clearly enjoying themselves, although of the three (and the entire cast) Malley demonstrates most commitment to larger-than-life characterisation.  Others show flashes of Malley’s energy but need to be more focussed in their delivery.  Marvellous Michael Jenkins makes what he can of the one-dimensional title role, moving with grace and control, and urgency when the need arises.  Jade Marshall sings well as Mrs Fox and there is some likable support (and narration) from Bob Martin’s Mr Badger.

Jennet Marshall’s are colourful, anthropomorphising the animals with half-masks, bushy tails and human garments.  The set is little more than painted flats, advertising fried chicken and cider, so we look to the action to give us atmosphere and mood.  Moments of comic business, such as hitting each other in the face with shovels, need sharpening up and brief intervals of the cast scurrying around to jolly music need focussing if we are to appreciate them fully.

I question the American accents – director Barry Dudley has them all speak with Southern drawls for no apparent reason.  Keeping the characters English might have, however subliminally, enabled the audience to make connections with what’s going on in the country today.

Class Acts

THE HISTORY BOYS

Crescent Theatre, Birmingham, Sunday 8^th September, 2013

 

Alan Bennett’s widely acclaimed play, examining approaches to and effects of education, is presented in this excellent production by Birmingham’s little gem of a theatre.  The house was full for this performance and I believe everyone went away happy and perhaps even edified a little.

The Headmaster of this fictional school is all too recognisable from life, fixated as he is by league tables and his obsession with being able to quantify everything.  He recruits Irwin, a supply teacher to help prepare a bunch of high fliers for their Oxbridge entrance exam.  Irwin’s methods are at odds with those of General Studies teacher, Hector, who sees education as enrichment for life rather than a means to jump over prescribed hurdles. The boys themselves come to appreciate the contrast in their deliveries, on their way to becoming rounded individuals and/or members of the academic elite.

Bennett treats us to comedy high and low.  One scene, in schoolboy French, is particularly funny, as the boys enact a transaction in a brothel.  Other moments are more subtle; and among the humour there are also moments of pathos.  Of all the boys Michael Jenkins shines as sensitive, lovelorn Posner, in a detailed and layered performance.  Jenkins’s singing voice is a particular asset for this production.  This is a young man with a future in musical theatre or there is no justice in the world.   Other standouts are David Harvey as Scripps, whose narration is assured and philosophical.  I also liked Scott Richards’s Lockwood and Gwill Milton’s Timms.  Robert Dean grows into the cockiness of school stud Dakin but needs to be more at home in himself from the outset, and Dominic Thompson needs to slow down his delivery of Rudge’s punchlines at times in order to maximise their effect.

Alan Marshall is a wonderful Hector, warm and funny, he holds the audience in his thrall as much as his charges.  The fact that his approach to education (along with his groping of the boys on his motorcycle) is damaging to the young men is treated largely as an undercurrent, balanced against preparation for exams as too limiting a function of the education system.

As young Irwin, Mark Payne is equally good, dazzling in the classroom, nervous and out of his depth outside of lessons. Annie Harris gives solid support as Mrs Lintott, who gets the choicest words to shout out in the staff room, and Brian Wilson is suitably uptight as the results-driven Headmaster.

There are a few moments when the energy of some scenes seems to drop but for the most part, director Ian Robert Moule gets the tone just right.  Keith Harris’s multi-levelled set allows for swift and efficient transitions, accompanied by bursts of 80s hits to remind us we are looking back, just as the boys are looking back in their history classes.

Set in the 1980s, the play is still all too relevant today, considering we have a Minister for Education who seems to equate memory with achievement.  Sad to relate, only one point made seems to have been overridden: there are now female historians on the telly – Bennett did not foresee the advent of Mary Beard.

Something Appealing

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM

Crescent Theatre, Birmingham, Thursday 30^th May, 2013

 

The plays of ancient Roman Plautus are a cornerstone of Western comedic tradition.  The works have influenced Shakespeare, among others, and more recently have been rediscovered and re-imagined by 20^th century writers and dramatists.  In England, we got Up Pompeii with the wonderful Frankie Howerd as the wily slave protagonist.  In the States, composer Stephen Sondheim created the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which although not as riddled with innuendo as its British counterpart, has its fair share of bawdy humour and suggestive jokes.

Tiffany Cawthorne and Keith Harris (not that Keith Harris) direct this colourful and lively production with a hard-working cast that for the most part hits all the right notes.  The show begins with its most well-known number Comedy Tonight! and a sequence of organised chaos as the chorus prepare for the show proper to begin.

Pat Brown and Jo Thackwray’s costume designs are perfect – so is the bright and beautiful set (Phil Parsons and Keith Harris – again, not that Keith Harris). 

Nick Owen is wily slave Pseudolus, desperate to buy his freedom.  In collusion with his master’s son, Hero (Michael Jenkins) he contrives to get the boy the girl of his dreams in exchange for his emancipation.  Owen is thoroughly in charge of all the machinations and consequences, establishing an easy rapport with the audience with his asides, managing to be camp without being effeminate (that is left to the eunuchs!).  Jenkins is adorable as naive young Hero, pulling off with ease some of Sondheim’s not-so-easy solos.

The object of Hero’s infatuation is airhead courtesan Philia – a consistently funny turn from Laura Poyner, with a beautiful singing voice.  She and Jenkins are wholly credible as the young lovers, despite the training she has received that makes her react like a fembot to, um… stimuli.

There is strong support from Toby Davis as Lycus, the proprietor of the house of ill repute, and Dave Rodgers as dirty old man Senex, although perhaps this latter could do with being a little louder in some scenes.  Senex’s wife Domina is a Christine Hamilton of a woman, a self-assured battleaxe played with aplomb by Annie Harris.  Butch braggart Captain Miles Gloriosus is a delight of a characterisation by Tom Fitzpatrick, but the out-and-out star turn comes from James David Knapp as hysterical slave Hysterium.  He makes a strong impression from the start and, as the character becomes embroiled in the increasingly farcical twists and turns of the plot, gets better and better.  It’s a nuanced yet broad performance, perfectly pitched for this type of material.

The action becomes more and more convoluted before descending into moments of pure farce with the cast running on and off in all directions.  It’s a difficult scene but the company keep the energy levels high.  Never less than amusing, and very often laugh-out-loud funny this is an excellent night out, thanks to the strength of the material and the calibre of the company.

Roman Romance: Hero (Michael Jenkins) getting to grips with Philia (Laura Poyner)