ONLY a writer with the talent of Bob Larbey (The Good Life, As Time Goes By, etc) could write a comedy on a subject as harrowing as the onset of senility, and only an outstanding cast could stage it successfully. Bournemouth Little Theatre Club has provided us with just that in Larbey’s A Month of Sundays, which is set in a rest home where two residents, Cooper and Aylott, cover their fear of what awaits them with a brave veneer of humour.
CRESCENDI is a young choir, started only in September 2010, but this concert showed what remarkable progress it has made during its short life. Even more remarkable is that the only requirement for new members is that they should be able to sing in tune: they don’t have to have had choral experience (and most of them haven’t) or be able to read music (and most of them can’t). What they clearly have got is an exceptionally talented director in the choir’s founder, Jo Corbin, who has turned musical geese, if not into swans, at least into a well-taught flock of very competent singers.
AGINCOURT, by Peter Courtenay, received its world première at Bournemouth’s Little Theatre Club on 24 June. Presented by Direct Theatre, it is a two-hander which tells the story of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and the events that led up to it. The core of the narrative is carried by Friar Bethwick (Peter Courtenay) and an archer, William Cornwayle (Peter Beebee), boyhood friends who meet again as they prepare to join the army of the Earl of Dorset that is sailing to France with Henry V.
BROADSTONE Players refer to their latest production as a ‘feel-good’ play and it is certainly that, but like all good comedy writers, Frank Vickery also provides insights into the human condition – in this case a marriage that has long since gone stale, the nature of infidelity and the unexpected strength that a middle-aged woman finds to recover from the collapse of her safe but boring world. It has some genuinely funny lines but the comedy comes more from the characters and is well-sustained through a long play; it might be an even better piece if it were slightly shorter and tauter. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to be caught up in the tension as the moment arrives when the main character has to make the decision: to return to a safe, known existence or to continue on the unexpected trajectory into which circumstances have thrown her. There was actually an excited gasp from the first-night audience as she revealed her choice.
WHEN Riverdance put on that electrifying performance as the interval entertainment in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, they started a tsunami of enthusiasm for Irish dancing that swept around the world. The wave reached Swanage with the appearance of Celtic Dream, a troupe of dancers and singers who turned the Mowlem audience briefly into a clapping, cheering band of Paddies and Colleens. This was one of those evenings where you couldn’t help leaving the theatre in a much better mood than when you went in, and you can’t ask much more of a show than that.
FOR those of us who spend months rehearsing a production, it is a bit disheartening to go to a show like this, which was staged in just 24 hours – or so the programme claimed, not altogether convincingly – but which was greeted rapturously by an enthusiastic and supportive audience. The reaction was thoroughly deserved as the cast threw themselves whole-heartedly into a series of songs and sketches, creating an atmosphere of huge enjoyment both on the stage and in the auditorium.
‘IT’S a bit of a shoehorn job, I’m afraid,’ said the man on the door, and Ringwood Parish Church was indeed packed for this unique concert. Why unique? RMDS having been founded in 1911, the Society’s choir was set to perform a centenary concert last June. Just a couple of weeks before the performance, their joint Musical Director, Chris Guy, died at the shockingly early age of 53. The event was cancelled and replaced by this concert, whose uniqueness lay in the fact that it was primarily a memorial to Chris but also fulfilled the original purpose of celebrating the Society’s centenary. Chris’s widow, Ivy Tan, who had shared the role of Musical Director with him, conducted, and the choir drew inspiration from the emotion of the evening to give an outstanding performance.
IF the last forty or so years come to be seen as a golden period of British writing for the theatre, it will be in no small way thanks to the two Northern Alans, Bennett and Ayckbourn. Both use comedy to explore profound themes; Bennett is perhaps the more intellectual, but Ayckbourn has a master’s ear for simple, everyday language and his pen is like a skilful surgeon’s scalpel as he peels back the layers of banality to reveal the sadness and disillusionment beneath.
THERE’S nothing sadder than a pantomime at a large commercial theatre, with the stars chosen according to which second-rate TV soap opera they have been in, and with adult jokes going over the heads of the children in the audience, who don’t mind because they are busy playing with light-up wands and crowns that their parents have been persuaded to buy at grossly inflated prices. As an antidote to all that tat, and to get back to pantomime at its rollicking best, Swanage Drama Company’s production of ‘Dick Whittington’ is hard to beat.
IS any other musical dominated by one character to the extent that the role of Dolly Levi dominates ‘Hello Dolly!’? It is a dream part for an actress of a certain age, and Julia Gadenne’s many distinguished performances on the Mowlem stage have suggested that it is a part she was born to play. Nor does she disappoint us, making the most of the brassy, wise-cracking meddler who lights up the stage all the time she is on it – which is most of the show. Her facial expressions, her graceful yet somehow saucy movements and the light and shade she gives to the lines make this a stand-out performance. It is not all rumbunctuous fun: her musings to her dead husband are genuinely moving, and her soliloquy near the end, which reveals the message of the show – that ‘money is like manure: it should be spread around to help young things grow’ – is very effective. Perhaps her singing voice is limited, especially on the high notes, but some skilful Rex Harrison-like fudging and subtle changes of register see her through.
IN their biographies in the programme, three of the four actors in this production of Katherine Desouza describe the play as ‘challenging’. A cynic might think that they are covering themselves, but in fact the audience is treated to four extremely strong performances. However, it is indeed a dense, demanding play, touching on fundamental themes of loss, loyalty, trust and justice. David’s daughter, Katherine, has gone missing and he suspects that she was the victim of a serial killer who has drowned five women. Kevin has been convicted of the crimes and, in prison pending an appeal, starts receiving visits from Fay, an old acquaintance from the village where they both grew up. David engineers a meeting with Kay and the play is driven by his obsession to find out what happened to Katherine.
THE intimate space of Poulner Church Hall is the setting for Poulner Players’ production of ‘Katherine Howard’ by William Nicholson until Saturday 20 August. The story has all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy – power, sex, jealousy, ambition, political evil – and is strong enough to carry an uneven script, with which the Poulner cast copes generally very well.
IN 2005, when the Ascot racecourse was having a facelift, the Royal Ascot meeting was moved for one year only to York. This is the starting point for Amanda Whittington’s ‘Ladies Day’, in which four women working in a fish-processing plant in Hull decide to celebrate the retirement of one of their number, Pearl, by having a day out at the race meeting on Ladies Day.
THE Broadstone Players’ ‘Plays ’n’ Chips’ evening is one of the highlights of their season, with a fish and chip supper being served during one of the intervals and a relaxed, informal atmosphere. The evening of three one-act plays also has a purpose, though: to give parts to newcomers and to allow existing members to try new skills, like directing.
TODAY’S children have so much entertainment thrown at them through so many different media that it is heartening to feel the excitement of a young audience at a traditional pantomime like Highcliffe Charity Players’ fortieth panto, ‘Red Riding Hood’. This is one of the more polished local societies, and details like the very professionally written and designed programme put one from the start in a mood to be impressed. That mood continues as the lights go up on the first of a series of really excellent and imaginatively-lit sets and well-executed dance numbers, right through to the cascade of glitter from the Regent Centre ceiling at the final curtain.
THE Bible has proved a rich seam for writers of smash musicals: ‘Joseph’, ‘Godspell’, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, for example. These take the scriptures as a starting-point and develop from there but ‘The Birth of a King’ is in a different category, not because it lacks the potential to be a hit but because it sticks faithfully to the story as told in the Gospels, often using the exact words. Although marrying the familiar Christmas story to a thoroughly modern score seems like an exciting, obvious idea, it is also risky enough to have deterred – presumably – the Lloyd Webbers and the Schönbergs of the musical world. Yet ‘The Birth of a King’ rises to the challenge and maybe, just maybe, has the potential to become a classic.
THE P&P Singers recently carried off two trophies at the Bournemouth Music Festival, which were proudly displayed at the side of the stage of Wimborne’s Layard Theatre during their annual concert under the title ‘The Gift of Music’, given on 9 July. The concert showed us why the Singers are near the top of the top division of local choirs as they presented music ranging from the Beatles through ‘Oklahoma’ to Mozart and Mendelssohn.
THE works of Rodgers and Hammerstein are part of the staple diet for musical theatre societies: think ‘Oklahoma’, ‘Carousel’, ‘South Pacific’. ‘The King and I’ is not seen as often as these old favourites, perhaps because it is less of an ensemble show. Apart from the set-piece ballet in the second act, the ladies’ chorus has precious little to do except to look beautiful and submissive, and the show would be a good choice for a society which finds it difficult to raise a men’s chorus, because there isn’t one.
THE Yeomen of the Guard is the Marmite among G&S operettas. Its comparatively serious plot, its unusual lack of satire and its pathetic central character mean that it is liked and disliked in equal measure. It is therefore a challenge to stage, and nothing would give me more pleasure than to report that Christchurch G&S Society’s production rises to that challenge. Sadly, it does not.
WHEN we go to the theatre we expect to be asked to suspend our disbelief but there is a limit, and ‘Time to Kill’ is a badly written, badly plotted, implausible load of drivel. To justify that opinion, no more is needed than a brief resumé of the play’s premise: four housewives on an affluent estate in Maidenhead decide that the local Lothario is responsible for the death of a neighbour, so they lure him to the house of one of their number, where they handcuff him to a chair, dress up in (badly fitting) legal wigs and gowns borrowed from the local dramatic society and put him through their version of a trial. Here, ‘Desperate Housewives’ meets drawing-room drama meets ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ – perhaps a superb writer at the top of his form might make it work, but author Leslie Darbon isn’t and wasn’t and doesn’t.
