Tribute Band of Brothers

BLACKADDER GOES FORTH

The Bear Pit, Stratford upon Avon, Friday 2^nd November, 2018

 

I don’t enjoy tribute bands.  I don’t see the point of them – especially when the original act is still alive and kicking.  Similarly, I am puzzled when episodes from situation comedies are brought to the stage; they never work as well on the boards as they do in the medium for which they were intended.  And when you haven’t got the original cast for whom the roles were tailored, I question the whole enterprise.  You can’t hope to match the brilliance of the original so why try to emulate it?  Why not just bung the DVD on?

But here we are: three episodes of the fourth and final Blackadder series by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis.  Half a box set.  The characters are fully formed – there is no scope for development in a sit-com – so with each half-hour piece, we hit the ground running with little in the way of exposition.  The sit of the com is self-contained and self-perpetuating.

Paul Tomlinson’s Captain Blackadder has the sneering, sardonic tones down pat as he dishes out sarcasm, hyperbole and absurdist similes, but he is disadvantaged by not having a funny face.  Rowan Atkinson’s facial expressions go a long way in selling the often-verbose lines; Tomlinson, sorry to say, is too good-looking!

Nathan Brown’s youthful Baldrick channels Tony Robinson rather well and his comic timing is excellent.  Roger Ganner’s bleating General Melchett is perfectly monstrous in his pigheadedness (bringing to mind the stubbornness of a Brexiteer, wilfully disregarding disaster), he’s an excellent foil for Richard Ball’s nervous wet lettuce Darling.  There are amusing turns from Justin Osborne, enjoying himself as the dastardly Baron von Richtofen, and from director David Mears who goes ‘over the top’ as the bombastic, bullying braggart Lord Flasheart.  How much are they imitating the original cast?  How much is advisable?  Audiences expect the familiar intonations and appearances, I suppose – which is why tribute acts have little to do with creativity and originality.  Tonight, the cast member who seems to make the part his own is Thomas Hodge as posh thicko Lieutenant George.

Mears does well to translate the action to the stage (although sit-coms are somewhat stagey in themselves) making efficient use of a changeable set, built by Martin Tottle and Chris Jackson.  The final images, when the series came to a definite and irrevocable end, made for one of the most powerful scenes of television ever, and Mears makes a good fist of emulating them.  It’s a wrenching change of tone, a sobering moment and a reminder that those who died in this stupid and futile war were more than statistics from a century ago; they were real people, with hopes and dreams, a sense of humour, fears and friendships…  And this is the point of this production and what makes it, in the end, a fine and fitting tribute.

Thomas Hodge, Paul Tomlinson and Nathan Brown (Photo: Sam Allard)

Come Die With Me

DINNER

Bear Pit Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, Saturday 17^th June, 2017

 

One of the many commendable things about the Bear Pit Theatre Company is they are not shy of staging productions of works that provide challenges for cast and audience members alike.  Ostensibly, Moira Buffini’s 2002 play takes us to somewhere similar to Ayckbourn country, with its premise of a middle-class dinner party attended by monstrous people.  Buffini is less subtle than Ayckbourn; here the savagery is not beneath the surface, the savagery is the surface.  Also, while Ayckbourn’s middle-class monsters are often likable or at least amusing, Buffini doesn’t bother trying to endear us to any of hers.  They’re a pretty rotten bunch and that’s all there is to it.  That’s not to say they’re not fun, and the roles are gifts for the actors.

Our hostess is Paige (an enjoyably arch Charlotte Froud).  She has hired a man off the internet to act as waiter for the evening.  The dinner party is in honour of the success of her husband’s book, success that Paige begrudges.  The book, Beyond Belief, sounds like a dreadful tome bursting with self-help psycho-babble.  Husband Lars (a strong and convincing Tony Homer) behaves like a spoiled brat and moody teen from the off.  He is also pompous and condescending in his bitterness, most of which he directs at his wife.

The sparks fly between Froud and Homer as this embattled couple, although we never really get to the bottom of why they are at loggerheads.  Could it be Lars’s reacquaintance with old flame from college, hippie throwback Wynne (Penelope Sandle-Keynes in a hilarious, detailed characterisation)?  There are cheap laughs at Wynne’s vegetarianism but otherwise Buffini serves up a buffet of barbs that are generally as sharp as poisoned darts.

Abi Deehan is laugh-out-loud funny as the blunt and outspoken Sian while Ben Coventry warms into his role as her husband Hal, providing some of the funniest moments of the night.

The dinner is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of young Mike, a stranger whose van has broken down in the fog.  Nathan Brown is instantly appealing as the cocky interloper who is not all that he claims – it’s a fine contrast with Richard Ball’s stony-faced menace of a Waiter.

Arguments boil over and fizzle out.  Rows build to crescendos and are followed by immediate silence.  This is always effective but it happens at least once too often as director Steve Farr helps his cast ride out the sometimes patchy quality of the script.  Farr injects some lovely touches of comic business and keeps the action far from static – always a danger when the set is dominated by table and chairs.

What’s it all in aid of?  There’s a lot of grandstanding, point-scoring and cod philosophical discourse.  The nature of life is bandied around between the courses of Paige’s ridiculously pretentious and ultimately inedible menu.  It turns out there is nothing like death to make you appreciate life.  The Waiter has other services to offer and the middle-class ritual of the dinner party becomes a darker and more arcane, more primal affair.

With Buffini serving up seafood and the C-word in generous measure,  this is perhaps not to everyone’s taste but there is a great deal to delight in the comic playing of this committed and capable cast.

Steam and Steaminess

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

The Bear Pit Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, Saturday 5^th December, 2015

 

Emma Rice’s glorious adaptation of the Noel Coward classic is brought to life by a small but versatile company of actors, directed with sophistication and style by Nicky Cox. In a railway café, a woman has something in her eye. A tall, handsome stranger, who happens to be a doctor, comes to her aid – and so begins a romance, an affair – scandalous, when Coward first wrote it, but he makes us egg them on. We want to see them together. Meanwhile, around them, minor characters of lower social standing are having flings of their own.   Not for them the soul-searching and the agonising; they just get on with it and, consequently, have a lot more fun!

Juliet Grundy is a treat as Mrs Bagot, running the café and trying to chivvy  her skivvy, Beryl (Charlotte Froud), putting on airs and graces one minute, and enjoying a bit of slap and tickle behind the counter the next. Steve Farr is her paramour, railway worker Albert, complete with Carry-On film chuckle. Farr is in especially fine singing voice and his comic timing is spot on. Also, Matthew Collins, as Albert’s younger colleague Stanley, impresses vocally and at the piano. Richard Ball makes more of an impact as a trouble-making squaddie than as cuckolded husband Fred – but I suppose that’s the point: Fred is so boring, it’s no wonder that his Mrs finds solace elsewhere.

The other man, Alec, is someone who declares his feelings rather than expressing them – perhaps he is the most dated character of the piece in this respect – but Tony Homer cuts through the British reserve and stiff upper lip and plays Alec with a good deal of truth. We see it in his eyes rather than feel it through his words.

As Laura, the wife, Natalie Danks-Smith is magnificent. You can see her heart breaking while she listens to a train taking away the man she loves, as annoying friend Dolly (Lindsey Allwork in a striking cameo) prattles on. It’s the emotional climax of the piece.

The show is a lot of fun, peppered with period songs and also original compositions from the Kneehigh production. The ensemble singing is lovely. The coarse humour of the working-class characters is sharply contrasted with the more tentative, well-mannered courtship of the protagonists. Nicky Cox marries naturalism with more stylised staging for humorous and romantic effect – an impressive feat in this intimate space. Bel Derrington’s set gives us the café, a railway bridge, and the Jessons’ home in one economic design – the piece keeps its theatricality to the fore and is all the more effective because of it.

The cast seemed to warm up as the play went on; like the trains, they pick up steam – the opening scenes could do with more ‘attack’ to match the energy of what follows, but on the whole, they create atmosphere without resorting to the exaggerated or clipped accents of that bygone age, and scenes in which eating takes place have to be choreographed as thoroughly as a dance.

Technically sophisticated, euphonious and hilarious, this is a Brief Encounter that tickles the funny bone as much as it touches the heart.