Review: Dolly, Lakeside Arts Centre...plus other bits

The sleepy village of Roslin, just south of Edinburgh, had coped without any Dollies yet suddenly finds itself with two: one Scotland’s only Dolly Parton tribute act and the other the world’s only living clone! This is the territory of playwright Andy Barrett’s latest offering which charms its way through two hours of Country classics and complex science. Country mad Bettina dreams of a real band, a get-away from karaoke down the Oak, and sees the arrival of PR whizz Leo as her ticket. Convinced that becoming a Dolly Parton tribute act is the way to go, Bettina begins to gain bookings and acclaim until another arrives on the scene but this Dolly is more woolly than western.

It’s a show with a lot of heart but the scripting in the first half felt light and laden with dialogue that didn’t ring true and was over expository. This said there are some great jokes including when John Elkington’s Neil remarks that much of his best work was ‘done with pig semen’ but some parts are little laboured, especially between Christopher Redmond’s Leo and Bettina, who was regardless played with real sass by Miriam Elwell-Sutton. The music, all Parton stables, is performed well and the cast are a hugely multi-talented bunch seemingly picking up and playing anything with strings.

However, the show’s star is undoubtedly Dolly herself, the puppet sheep steals the whole second half and is ultimately the character that generates the most interest, arresting the audience’s imagination and drawing the eye. Whilst Bettina’s romance with Leo, her home-life and the fraught relationship between research scientist Neil and his wife are important strands, it is the sheep and the music which keeps the audience’s attention. Indeed elements of these other stories can become lost especially true of Neil, the scientist who can seemingly get a sheep pregnant with an impossible baby but not come to terms with the loss of his own child.

With Dolly New Perspectives, the company that was behind two personal favourites from the last year: Those Magnificent Men and the inventive The Falling Sky, have engineered a wonderful evening’s entertainment where Country & Western and gene splicing collide – if they can clone this then there is far more to come!

Dolly: ***

Gareth also saw: a reading of The Ashes by Michael Pinchbeck, which, as a cricket fan, combined two of my great loves and reminded me that good writing stands out even at a first (or in this case second) airing. Michael Pinchbeck has a real gift with language as there is a reverence and revelry in his use of words, they are not merely perfunctory vehicles of plot but they have an interest of their own. Too often we hear worn out slogans of words on stage masquerading as real-life, increasingly I find there are fewer writers who enjoy and celebrate the role of wordsmith in their stage work: Michael Pinchbeck is, for me (along with small group of others: Billy Ivory, DC Moore, Lauras Wade & Lomas, James Graham), one of those writers.


He also saw The Thrill of it All by Forced Entertainment but found it really hard to review - much to Tiger's dislike. However, loved it especially Small Things, the manic distortion of the voices over their microphones and Tom’s notion that rhubarb was a ‘funny fruit’. Forced Entertainment have a real way of playfully undercutting games with a disturbing undercurrent in a way no other company can.

Images courtesy of Robert Day and Forced Entertainment

Review: The Rivals, Theatre Royal

Sir Peter Hall’s most recent foray from his company’s summer home has the definite feel of their adoptive base: Bath. The show, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, is set in the regency west-country town and, in this accomplished rendition, Sir Peter’s craft as a director shines through. Whilst taking a traditional approach to the text, the director has firmly focused on the physical comedy in the piece and it is this decision which breathes a freshness into the production.

The farce opens with the rakish Captain Jack Absolute wooing the rich Lydia Languish under the pretended name of Ensign Beverly, she unwilling to marry a man set upon gaining her money and they plan to elope. Lydia and Beverly’s tryst is orchestrated by Lucy the maid, their go-between, but she betrays their love to Lydia’s aunt Mrs Malaprop who forbids their engagement. This is further confused by the arrival of Jack’s father, Sir Anthony Absolute, proposing Jack as a husband for Lydia. Thus, the ‘rival’ is created – as Jack says ‘my father wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with!’ To this Sheridan adds another pair of quarrelsome lovers in Julia and Faulkland, an aristocratic Irish debtor Sir Lucius O’Trigger and the foolish Bob Acres, a country gentleman also in pursuit of Lydia’s hand. These lively players create a flurry of comic moments that climax in a nervously hilarious duel between Acres and Jack swiftly followed by the lovers forgiving their better halves.

The show also exhibits the talents of some very gifted actors. Penelope Keith is superb as Mrs Malaprop, fleeting over her unwitting linguistic misappropriations wonderfully whilst her To The Manor Born co-star Peter Bowles, in surprisingly their first stage production together, bristles as Sir Anthony although he does stop short of the ‘fury’ he threatens through-out the play. Keiron Self gives a very likeable performance as the rustic Bob Acres and his wavering entry in to a duel with the young Captain Jack demonstrated the skill of an actor gifted with great timing. It is the timing of the production which is its lasting memory and all the cast give a good account of themselves in this respect.

Newcomer Robyn Addison, in her professional stage debut, made a good fist of Lydia Languish and warmed into the role as the evening progressed. However it was Tony Gardner’s jealous Faulkland who really stole the show in his quarrels with his beloved Julia. One scene especially is memorable for his waiting for her to return after storming out from their blazing row. His skilful use of direct address, feeding of his audience and then reacting quickly and eruditely was a pleasure to watch. Whilst criticism could be levelled that he becomes too like Bob Acres in his playing is valid, the performance is first rate.

It is classily staged, Simon Higglet’s design recalls the concealed passageways of Dumas’ swashbuckling adventures mixed with the sober sandstone of Georgian grandeur and never imposes its self upon the performance; it creates a great backdrop to the narrative without dictating or upstaging. However it is tight directing of tried and tested concept with a top-notch cast that bring this production its greatest moments; as Mrs Malaprop would say, this is a production toward the ‘pineapple’ of the theatre pile.

The Rivals: ****

Image courtesy of Nobby Clark

Review: Hatch: it's about time, Embrace Arts

Hatch is back and in pastures new, Embrace Arts at the RA Centre in Leicester, with its usual mix of the unusual. The eclectic performers created a fantastic night and, whilst my time there was brief, I saw some work which really excited me.

Kristy Guest’s almost painfully sad Welcome All Time Travellers! has real scope, a great soundtrack and will be one to watch when the event travels up the A46 to Nottingham in November.

Hetain Patel’s straddling of the conceptual, visual art world and the self-deprecating stand-up humour he delivers with a telling authenticity is a real highlight; his anecdotes are skilfully and insightfully chosen to illustrate his investigations into self, identity and belonging in a uniquely humorous way. Since seeing his previous work, Ten, he has become an artist I'm increasingly interested in and this was only reinforced by his performance here.

Chris Dobrowolski rambling performance lecture captivated its audience way beyond its time slot. In Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape Chris showed his inventive approach to art and transport whilst regaling us with stories of his growing up, choppy super-8 footage of previous projects and one of the oddest musical contraptions ever seen.

The night was rounded off by the chaotic Oyster Eyes and, as I said in Edinburgh, their own brand of sketch comedy having a bastard love-child with performance art behind the main-streams back will be a slow burning success. The compare, DJ Alan Starr, Puppet Boy and Dr Shoo-bay-go are characters which have a demonic, dead-pan knack of being able to make you laugh.

Hatch: it’s about time is in Nottingham on 10^th November. See www.hatchnottingham.co.uk for details.

Image courtesy of Oyster Eyes.

Review: Twelfth Night, Nottingham Playhouse

Twelfth Night washes up upon the shores of 1930s Brazil for Nottingham Playhouse’s latest offering where the music 'playing on' is that of carnival calypso through a crackling gramophone and the merry dance the characters embark upon is punctuated with bouts of Capoeira.

 

In a strange land after a shipwreck, twins Viola and Sebastian are separated and presume the other has perished in the waves. Viola disguises herself as a boy and offers the services of her assumed identity ‘Cesario’ to the lovelorn Duke Orsino. The object of his desire is Olivia, in mourning for her late father and brother, and wil have none of Orsino’s suit. Her house is overrun by her drunkard uncle Sir Toby Belch and his drinking companions: the rich fool Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the ribald clown Feste and Maria the maid. Their revelry is derided by the steward Malvolio who is then bated by these plotters into believing Olivia loves him and is, in turn, locked up as a madman. Oliva falls for the disguised Viola, herself in love with Orsino, which until the arrival of Sebastian looks set for stalemate – in love, three always a crowd – and Malvolio is left threatening his revenge. 

Director Paulette Randall takes risks with her bold new concept in the production however these don’t fully pay off. The Brazilian reimagining has merits but is not entirely convincing and feels that the actors are burdened with playing their new context rather than their part. The accents swing wildly from West Indian, Portuguese and Mexican and do little to convey the work of Shakespeare the wordsmith, especially Anthony Ofoegbu's Feste – Olivia’s ‘corrupter of words’. Seun Shote goes down a storm as Antonio, innovatively played as a camp admirer of Sebastian’s, but this has its faults. The reason for Viola’s disguise, partly being her seeking not be recognised as one from Messaline at war with Illyria, is hurried over; in-fact the otherness of the twins never fully investigated throughout. Equally Shote’s performance began to encroach onto others with his over-played effeminate gestures upstaging much of the twins’ reunification. 

The play has some strong performances. Marcus Powell’s haughty Malvolio is extremely watchable and delights the audience in his transformation from his sober attire as the dour steward to looking as if about to play 18 holes in his yellow plus fours and chequered Pringle jumper. He plays the letter scene, where his deception begins, admirably but is not afforded the chance to react to the yelps and interjections from the concealed practical jokers, this a criticism of the direction rather than the clowning of David Webber's Sir Toby or Nicholai La Barrie's  Sir Andrew. 

This Twelfth Night is one weighed down by the baggage of a concept which would have been useful as a departure point but in not stripping away the layers which hindered the development it has impeded the character of text shining through. In its current state it lacks clarity and purpose in its leads, Rebecca Herrod’s Viola does not come across as one of Shakespeare’s strongest women; it is the humour ingrained in the dialogue and stage action which suffers from the yoke of resetting. The production has  good points including an excellent lighting design by Kevin Treacy but there are elements which have been overdone; a disengagement from the concept and stylistics shifting toward a more relaxed focus on the Shakespearian substance could help the production no end.

Twelfth Night: **

Image courtesy of Robert Day

Under the Covers – The Post Show Party Show, Lakeside Arts Centre

Zoo Indigo’s Under the Covers charts a course between the communal babysitting of the performers’ 3 young children, via live Skype feeds, and a recreation of selected highlights from Thelma and Louise. This odd pairing, early 1990s cult movies and maternal paranoia, is a fascinating one and, with the similarities and oppositions not lost on an audience, it becomes both witty and heartfelt in equal measure: it is this balance of dream and real-life responsibility as parent that creates the duality of the work.

The role of a mother is a driving force in the piece and developed through the use of both the audience as tool for interaction and cardboard cut-outs of their partners, flat dads. The latter alter from mere shapes to become a clever metaphor and are emblematic of the presence or absence of a father, most notably at the birth of their children, whilst serving to illustrate how true friendship lasts no matter. In this the Thelma and Louise decision suddenly comes starkly into focus.

The message of friendship through difficult events does work, if a little stretched to compare the actors’ real lives to Thelma and Louise’s position, but it is the depth of self reference and confession given by the performers which is most revealing and interesting. It is a show filled with comparisons and juxtapositions to consider, the technical wizardry of live projection under-cut by the actors spraying their faces with a water pistol to mimic tears. Equally with the show structured around interaction and meta-theatre the roles of performer and observer were strained and their designation switched from audience to the actors and back again. In the last section of the piece the audience are left listening to one of their number reading baby Charlie’s favourite book whilst the performers simply slip away: there is no heroic flight into an Arizona canyon, simply how do we find a way to carry on.

This evening is a truly family affair, with three generations of Pinchbecks appearing. Dylan is one of the sleeping children in Under the Covers, the son of Zoo Indigo’s Rosie Garton and Michael Pinchbeck – who also appears in 2D form as a cardboard dad. The rest of the family appear in the second half of the night, The Post Show Party Show where Michael and Tony Pinchbeck, his father, investigate how the latter met the former’s mother Vivienne, also appearing as their prompt, at a post show party in 1970.

With the original show having been The Sound of Music it is only right that this performance is also shaped around the same soundtrack; Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs unerringly camp and kitsch with many phrases commonplace are wittily used by the actors – Indeed, how do you solve a problem like Maria? Even the form of the songs is well known and this is expertly subverted in Do-Re-Mi where the performing von Trapps’ rounds of song are transformed into a motif about Tony Pinchbeck’s tongue-tiedness when asking Vivienne whether she needed a lift home. This cleverness pervades the whole event: the Shloer, presented to each entering audience member with a careful insistence that it was sparkling grape juice, is wonderfully observed, encouraging those watching into fully partaking in the pseudo-post show. The man-made mountain too, complete with snow storm, is a lo-tech gem and evokes the same flurry of flakes created in a tourist knick-knack. The presentation of artefacts from both then and now again is a wonderful device to give both worlds a physicality, the simple difference of showing an LP and a CD demonstrates forty years passing very skilfully.

This is a show with great personal depth but is overly complex in its dealings with some of the past-present relationships. The mapping of the Lincoln theatre’s back-stage spaces felt extra, it was impersonal and didn’t translate. It was the memories of personal moments which gave the piece real heart and its core idea, a life created from a meeting where another ended, is genuinely poetic. It is rare to see a show with such a tangible personal link to all involved and this is one which tells this in an interesting and imaginative way, neatly moving between explorations like the record between the tracks or from Do to Re to Me.

In these two shows, which beautifully consider the relationships we have with all those close to us, it is wonderful to see them performed by these small ‘family’ ensembles and even better to watch them together as double-bill. Whilst both do well as stand alone pieces, as a pair they combine to create a special evening which allows you to consider what friends and family have done or will do for you and more personally what you would do for them.

Under the Covers - The Post Show Party Show: ****

Images courtesy of Zoo Indigo & Michael Pinchbeck

Review: She Stoops To Conquer, Nottingham Playhouse

Lucy Pittman-Wallace’s production of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer doesn't quite conquer it's audience in the way its protagonist does her man. Whilst it goes through the motions of this Eighteenth Century Comedy of Manners it falls a long way short of actually invigorating both the script and the story to make an interesting, energised performance. The narrative, where a suitor mistakes the manor of his promised betrothed for the local inn, is not complex and the audience are privilege to this information before even the arrival of the young lover. This knowledge however, instead of serving to amplify the foolishness of the characters, merely makes the events less exciting with the privy of later information related in semi-naturalistic scenes rather than in winking asides to a willing and knowing crowd.

The same can be said of the approach to the text, which whilst far from high-brow lacks the joke-per-minute bawdiness of the earlier Restoration Comedies, and with a plot so contrived the audience lacked any conspiratorial involvement to keep their attention. Chris Nayak is likeable as the simplistic Lumpkin, with some great last night ad-libs it must be said, and Ellie Beavan’s Kate at least plays some of the expository asides to an audience keen to be directly involved with her ploy to ‘conquer’ the bumbling Marlow by dressing as humble barmaid.

Yet this style of delivery is lacking elsewhere with most of Mike Burnside’s lines as Hardcastle lost by his flapping wig and profile stance. More pressing is that all the actors become upstaged by the larger-than-life scenery; it certainly larger than the characterisation of most the actors with the indictment being that the biggest laugh of the night was given to the arrival of the two actors on the back of a giant prop dog. This production stooped more to ask politely than conquer with a brash and ribald performance of the mistakes of a night.

She Stoops To Conquer: **

Image courtesy of Robert Day