Beautiful Thing – Liverpool Playhouse – 29/05/2013

It’s hard to believe that it is 20 years since Jonathan Harvey’s “Urban Fairytale” first came to life at London’s Bush Theatre. It is probably through the film that followed 3 years later that most people have become familiar with the work but, whilst the film has become a classic, the stage version from which it grew has more power to touch audiences.

I have seen different stagings over the years, but this 20th anniversary production directed by Nikolai Foster strikes just the right pitch in revisiting the work for both new audiences and those who already love it.

Both Beautiful Thing and Harvey’s “Canary” (premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2010) are very dependent on the period being established so that the treatment of the characters has place and meaning. This is why any attempt to update the references to contemporary events and people would be inappropriate. Mentions of Bill Beaumont on Question of Sport and “that bloke from Erasure” do not date the play as some have suggested; they set it in its context. Good writing does not date – it ages – and Beautiful Thing has aged very well indeed.

Whilst this is very much a gay-themed play, the miracle of it is that what we see is primarily a love story between two teenagers who are coming to terms with themselves and how they fit into the world around them. It is the fact that there is no foot stamping, banner waving feel to it that really set it apart 20 years ago, and continues to do so now. The two lovers are both teenage boys but their feelings, uncertainties, fears and search for happiness are just the same as everyone else’s.

When it was written, Beautiful Thing broke boundaries by standing up as a play that asserts its equality by being a positive, happy story about growing up gay, at a time when gay theatre and film was almost exclusively either campaigning or tragic. It found its place by making us laugh, cry and leave the theatre smiling, and it still has the same capacity today.

Colin Richmond’s atmospheric design was conceived after research trips to what remains of the Thamesmead housing estate where the play is set. A balcony outside the doors to three flats is lit by numerous bulkhead light fittings and a deft piece of theatrical sleight of hand transforms it into the interior of Jamie’s bedroom and back without interrupting the flow. At one point we are tricked into seeing both interior and exterior simultaneously. As the play opens, David Plater’s lighting and some haze effects create the atmosphere of a steamy hot summer afternoon - remember those?

On the balcony we meet Jamie (Jake Davies) bunking off school from games and Leah (Zaraah Abrahams) the girl next door, who is excluded from school, looking at a rainbow. Leah’s obsession with Mama Cass provides us with most of the soundtrack, including the opening music.

They are joined by Jamie’s single mother, Sandra (Suranne Jones) and then the other neighbour Ste (Danny-Boy Hatchard) and the cast is completed by the arrival of Oliver Farnworth as Tony, the rather spaced-out artist boyfriend to Sandra.

The abusive relationship that Ste has with his father and brother (only heard as offstage voices) means that he occasionally escapes to stop over with Jamie and it is on one such night that their top-to-tail sleeping arrangement provides the opportunity for the pair to discover their feelings for each other.

Ste’s family life is a disaster, Leah hates her mother and Sandra’s affair with Tony is burning itself out as fast as the spliffs he smokes. The only relationship that actually seems to have any genuine love in it is that between Jamie and Ste and the cast all agreed, in their post show discussion on Wednesday evening, that they are probably still together today.

The real highlights of this production lie in the chemistry between Suranne Jones and her onstage son Jake Davies, and that between Jake and Danny-Boy Hatchard. In a world where we expect everything at breakneck pace, Nikolai Foster has encouraged his cast, especially Jamie and Ste, to have the courage to play some scenes with a beautifully measured stillness and delicacy of touch. Some of the dialogue between them superbly revealed their fear and awkwardness fighting with their longing for affection. When your best mate is “one of the lads” and adored by everyone in the school, how does a wimp who hates football but knows all about Cagney and Lacey and the Sound of Music find the strength to dare, and to explain how he feels. With the help of a salad, a copy of “Hello” and a bottle of Body Shop Peppermint Foot Lotion of course...

There are passages of astonishing tenderness from these two remarkable young actors - a hand reaching out, longing to touch - a head resting gently and silently on a friend’s bruised back – a stolen kiss when saying goodnight and the simplest of words that lead to an embrace. There is nothing graphic about any of these scenes, just an aching honesty and gentleness that is genuinely a beautiful thing. Just in case anyone was worried about being a little red round the eyes going to the bar in the interval, one of Harvey’s crack-shot touches of humour closes the first act with the sound of music, and we have to forget for the moment that Jamie is supposed to be fifteen, going-on sixteen.

“Some things are hard to say”, Jamie tells us, and that is certainly true even today. What we need to recall is that, when this play was set, two teenagers in a same-sex relationship was a much bigger deal than it is now. In a backlash against the gay community following the AIDS crisis, it had seemed as though a lot of the advances made in the general acceptance of gay people had been lost. It took courage to be open with friends, but usually a lot more to be open with family, and Jamie’s horror that his mother had discovered that he’d been to a gay bar is easy to understand. Suranne Jones gives a superb performance as Sandra, but it is in this coming-out scene especially that stamps a seal of excellence on it. She is fighting with her emotions as much as Jamie is with his own, but at the end of the day all she wants is the best for her son. As I type the words “He’s good to me” I can feel again the emotion at that point in the story, where Jamie gives the ultimate justification of the relationship he has with Ste.

In the closing scene, as the music soars and the lights fade we don’t want it to end – we want to know what happens next. Some people want a sequel, but maybe we are better off making our own minds up. I for one like the idea that this cast have, in believing that this is a relationship made to last.

Tony gets dumped by Sandra along with the garbage, which is a shame, as Oliver Farnworth’s portrayal is lovable. He may be on his own planet but he has a heart of gold and although he might say the wrong things all the time he means well. Zaraah Abrahams is marvellous as the difficult teenager who is a mystery even to herself at times.

Jake Davies and Danny Boy Hatchard are fearless in their performances. Davies has wit and enthusiasm to temper his uncertainty while Hatchard gives a great portrayal of a lad whose body has grown up too fast for him and is desperately trying to grow into it – confident in a gawky, awkward way, but able to turn to softness when the moment calls for it. How could Jamie have failed to fall for him?

This gentle, funny, bittersweet reading is most certainly a Beautiful Thing. It has been playing to almost sold-out houses at the Liverpool Playhouse, where it closes on Saturday evening. It will transfer to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds from 3rd to 8th June and then to the Theatre Royal Brighton from 10th to 15th June.

For details, go to www.beautthing.com

Rossini - La Donna Del Lago - 28/05/2013

Royal Opera House Cinema, live transmission, seen at FACT Liverpool.

It has been some decades since Rossini’s two-act “Melodramma” after Walter Scott has been performed at the Royal Opera House. In fact it rarely gets an airing at all which is a shame, as it contains some beautiful writing, both for a strikingly lavish romantic orchestra and for its bel canto singers.

There appear to be two major challenges that any company contemplating a production of La Donna Del Lago have to face; finding a well-balanced cast capable of doing justice to the heavily demanding roles and coming up with a suitably effective staging that makes sense of some of the more troublesome plot points. The Royal Opera have certainly surmounted one if not quite entirely both of these hurdles in this musically stunning and visually ambitious production.

The story, plundered from Walter Scott’s 1810 narrative poem, is a sort of four-cornered love triangle between the King of Scotland who falls for Elena, who is in turn in love with Malcom, a sympathiser of the Highlanders who oppose the King. Elena’s father Duglas (an old friend of the King) has however promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to Rodrigo, who is a Highland Chieftain, in the hope of reconciling the clans and restoring peace.

Now pay attention because there might be questions later…

Just in case it gets too easy to follow, the King disguises himself and uses the well-known Scottish pseudonym of Uberto, whilst the part of the burly Malcom is a trouser role, taken by a mezzo-soprano, although this trouser role has no trousers because the men are all in kilts.

Finally, despite the fact that she is apparently in all other ways an ordinary woman, Elena is required to make her entrance from the depths of the lake in which she resides (don’t ask – I have no idea).

To make sense of all this, director John Fulljames has chosen to re-cast the two minor roles of Albina and Serano as representing Rossini and Scott, who effectively create a second, framing plot in mime, giving the impression that they are telling the story to their friends. This makes Albina into a second trouser role (with trousers). It also causes a few crossed wires in the storytelling when she and Serano actually do have lines to sing.

In Dick Bird’s finely detailed, dimly lit opening set there is no lake in sight, as the action begins in what seems to be a cross between a gentlemen’s club and a museum, with an atmospheric painting of a highland scene on the massive, oak panelled rear wall. Our Lady of the Lake appears suspended in a glass display case, her diaphanous costume floating gently about her creating a strangely underwater feel. As she is released from her captivity and awakes, the King swiftly removes his robe and crown so that he can assume the less kingly persona of Uberto and try to woo the beauty he sees before him.

Scott and Rossini slide open the panelling to reveal a cavernous revolving stage which contains a cylindrical stair-tower on which most of the remaining action takes place. This provides height and movement and an effective setting for most of what follows. Various other changes to the set during the interval allow for some picturesque scenes of hanging corpses and dimbowelling of deer during act two.

There are love scenes between Elena and Malcom, unsuccessful wooing from the disguised King, a battle in which Rodrigo is slain and, finally, the unmasking of the King’s true identity before he pardons Malcom and gives his blessing for Elena to marry him. In the closing scenes we are returned to the museum, in which the protagonists are mysteriously reinterred in their display cases.

As a concept aimed at making sense of the difficult plot I am left undecided whether it is fully successful, but it looks great, it is wonderfully executed and it is very atmospheric.

What really makes this production memorable is its outstanding cast. Joyce DiDonato’s Elena is simply beautiful. She tempers her fine coloratura with a legato that gives it a romantic lilt to match the silken playing of the orchestra. Daniela Barcellona is a perfect match and it is probably the duets for the two Mezzos that are the finest parts of the evening. Barcellona even manages to have us believe her alpha-male character despite the theatrical device of the travesty role.

Colin Lee has overcome his earlier illness to take up the part of Rodrigo and he too is in fine voice, making a commanding presence on stage. There is no doubting the pin-sharp accuracy of Juan Diego Flórez's singing, but there were times when he seemed a little forced, as though he felt the need to over-project.

Simón Orfila gave suitable gravitas to his Duglas while the veteran Robin Leggate as Serano and Justina Gringyte's Albina (complete with trousers) managed to vocally survive the incongruity of their schizophrenic transformation into storytelling poet and composer.

The cast was completed by Christopher Lackner and Pablo Bemsch as bard and soldier, and the fine voices of the ROH Chorus.

The Royal Opera House Orchestra under Michele Mariotti were characteristically superb in this, one of Rossini's most romantic and ground-breaking scores

Live transmission to cinemas worldwide gave a huge audience a rare opportunity to see a work that infrequently sees the light of day. Camera work was excellent, giving some welcome views of the full stage among the tighter close up shots. The sound was well reproduced too, with great clarity of the splendid singers as well as good depth to the orchestral texture.

There are four more performances of La Donna Del Lago at the Royal Opera House, with the last in the run on 11th June 2013 and there are a very few tickets remaining.

Children of the Sun – National Theatre, Lyttelton – May 2013

It had been a Sunday Matinee performance at the Lyttelton, and as I paused halfway across Waterloo Bridge to take the early evening air I found that I was still physically shaking from the impact.

When Maxim Gorky’s play had its 1905 Moscow premiere the audience began to flee their seats in terror during the closing scene, in which the townspeople invade the Protasov household. Political unrest was running at such a pitch that they were in fear of an uprising and they believed that the theatre was under attack.

It seems that director Howard Davies wanted to recreate the same degree of horror for a comfortable modern London audience and I would say he certainly achieves this in his utterly terrifying, incendiary conclusion to this new adaptation of Children of the Sun. So much so that it took a few hours for me to fully recollect the excellent drama that had gone before it.

At the play’s opening we were faced by a solid brick wall filling the proscenium, with Roman, the Labourer, trying to mend a sticking gate. The wall descends into the stage to reveal Bunny Christie’s splendidly detailed set design. Here is the heart of Pavel Protasov’s house, a kitchen into which his chemical experiments appear to have overspilled from the laboratory, housed in something like a conservatory stage left. Upstage we see through huge glazed doors into the yard beyond and the same brick wall seen from the inside.

Something else that is overspilling is the residue from Protasov’s experiments, which has been leaking from the house’s septic tank and polluting the town beyond, much to the growing displeasure of the townspeople, who are now blaming him for the onset of a cholera epidemic.

Distracting him are Nanny, an old family retainer, and Protasov’s neurotic sister Liza. They urge him to challenge the local blacksmith Yegor, who has been beating his wife, but Protasov is more interested in getting Yegor to line the tank with copper.

Protasov, played by Geoffrey Streatfield, manages to remain oblivious to almost everything around him unless it concerns his experiments. His wife Yelena (Justine Mitchell) is becoming weary of her husband’s lack of interest and is becoming more drawn to Vageen, a local artist (Gerald Kyd). His Sister Liza (Emma Lowndes) is heading for a major breakdown and refuses the advances of the Vet, Boris (Paul Higgins). Meanwhile Boris’s sister Melaniya (Lucy Black) is intent on seducing Protasov himself, but he appears almost wilfully unaware of her feelings. When she says she will do anything for him he just asks her to supply him daily with fresh eggs from her hens.

The cast are all excellent and although the piece could very much centre around Streatfield’s Protasov he gives a very generous performance which allows the other characters equal standing, while Howard Davies helps to wring a good deal of humour from the text. Especially striking are the three strong female roles of Yelena, Liza and Milaniya, who carry most of the narrative.

Andrew Upton’s new English version of the text is generally very convincing, although some rather modern sounding usage of expletives occasionally sounds a little clunky.

At 2¾ hours a piece like this could easily drag, but the pace was maintained exceptionally well and there was no fear of this at all. The gradual build-up of tensions between the characters, and the sense of ensuing menace from the increasingly angry mob outside hold the audience through to the sudden acceleration of the plot in its closing pages.

Completed with lighting by Neil Austin and a score from Dominic Muldowney this is a very stylish and satisfying piece of theatre.

The final denouement quite literally takes the breath away, but beware - if you sit in the first four or five rows, it may singe your eyebrows...

Children of the Sun runs at the Lyttelton Theatre until 14th July 2013

Trolley Shaped Bruise - Unity Theatre Liverpool - 21/05/2013

In a week when "a survey says" there is an almost record low point in speaking parts for women, Laura Kate Barrow is a brilliant storyteller who brings us a piece of theatre for two strong women that blows the socks off that theory.

Opening with a series of interwoven scenes, switching between more than fifty shades of grey to a glorious Technicolor, we meet Rachel McLinn's Danielle, a budding, monochrome interior designer and Cat Stobbs's rainbow-like party animal Kate, filling her time with any frivolity that will add colour to her life.

Danielle troubles herself with how she came to be trying her key in the wrong front door whilst Kate explains how she comes to be arrested stone cold sober in a shopping trolley in Stanley Street.
Maybe she just needs to get the bruises to prove she's had a night out at all... Or at least FELT something.

What comes across most of all in this production is the tremendous voice that Laura Kate Barrow has and the great choice of acting and creative team who have brought it vividly to life.

Under Sarah Van Parys's delicately un-studied direction, Rachel McLinn and Cat Stobbs give real and compelling performances that genuinely do make us think about our own motivation and priorities in life. After the unashamedly transparent comedy of the first part of the play, everything becomes more introspective, dark and telling. It is with some astonishment that we find ourselves drawn almost to tears by Kate's savvy admissions of social failure and Danielle's earnest attempts to understand.

I was given to wondering whether the series of animated projections to the rear of Alex Herring's set added to the production or confused it, but the simplicity of the tripartite design worked really well overall.

Writing like this is hard to come by. Trolley Shaped Bruise has one more performance at Unity 2 tomorrow, 22nd May 2013, and every seat deserves to be filled.

Blue Remembered Hills – Liverpool Playhouse – 14/05/2013

Small but perfectly formed.

Denis Potter’s 1979 television play has established itself so well as a stage play that its text has now found its way onto the GCSE syllabus. Despite the fact that it obviously lends itself to being performed by children, the play certainly gains added layers of almost surreal meaning when played by adult actors.

Director Psyche Stott seems to have set free the children within her seven strong cast, probably aided a great deal by her liberating decision to leave much of the stage movement free and unspecified. The theatrical device of using adults to play children is one that could fail miserably in the wrong hands, but this team have us convinced from their very first entrances onto the stage. The fact that they are at liberty to run around spontaneously carries us all into that apparently carefree place that we’d like to think childhood occupies, but reality is never too far out of sight.

Potter’s glorious dialogue, written in a quirky Forest of Dean dialect, is delivered faultlessly by every one of the cast, all of whom also colour their performances with a wonderful collection of childlike mannerisms – all gangling and awkward – loping about in bodies that they’re growing into.

The fact that the play has been kept to barely more than an hour has been remarked on elsewhere, but to have extended the dialogue for the stage would not have added anything to this story, which is perfectly paced in this compact single-act format. It is to a large extent the speed with which childish horseplay slips through taunting and bullying toward its abrupt, final tragic conclusion that keeps us held in its grasp. Every member of the audience, whether the bullies or the bullied, the winners or the weaklings in their own lives, must have experienced multiple flashbacks during this piece. It has the ability peculiar to good theatre of holding up fragments of mirror, in which we catch momentary reflections of our own lives.

It is at once gloriously funny and strikingly dark, and allows us to see that the cruelty of childhood doesn’t lie far beneath the skin in an adult world.

Rauri Murchison’s grassy bank of a stage design makes a great deal out of simplicity, with its splendid projected forest and its overgrown stepladder doubling as a barn, while Colin Grenfell’s lighting completes the transformations of time and place. Grenfell has lit a number of productions for Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and his work always adds tremendous atmosphere.

The cast are too tight an ensemble to want to single anyone out. Tilly Gaunt Joanna Holden, David Nellist and Christopher Price have worked with Newcastle based Northern Stage previously, while James Bolt, Phil Cheadle and Adrian Grove are playing with the company for the first time, but they all work together seamlessly.

I would certainly be revisiting this production were it not for the fact that I simply have no free evenings left this week and could not get to Wednesday’s early performance. Seats are selling fast for all remaining performances at Liverpool Playhouse, where it runs until Saturday evening and then continues on tour.

Liverpool Playhouse
14 – 18 May
Box Office: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
21 – 25 May
Box Office: 01483 440000
www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk

Watford Palace Theatre
29 May – 1 June
Box Office: 01923 225671
www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Oxford Playhouse
4 -8 June
Box Office: 01865 305305
www.oxfordplayhouse.com

Lighthouse Poole
11 – 15 June
0844 406 8666
www.lighthousepoole.co.uk

Richmond Theatre
18 – 22 June
Box Office: 0844 871 7627
www.atgtickets.com

Derby Theatre
25 – 29 June
Box Office: 01332 593939
www.derbytheatre.co.uk

http://blueremembered.co.uk

Mind the Gap – Unity Theatre Liverpool – 01/05/2013

As ushers admit us to one dimly lit half of the Unity Theatre’s intimate upstairs studio performance space, we are asked to move down the platform and keep clear of the yellow line. With the background rumble and recorded announcements we know that we’re on a platform of London’s underground and it feels oddly real even though we’re facing a wall of black cloth, and we can almost believe we can feel the rush of hot, stale air as the familiar safety warning of the title heralds the arrival of our train.

Naturally we board the carriage to find that there are just about enough seats for us all, and we face each other across the gangway in polite silence as our journey begins. The lights flicker, the train stops, and an apology from the driver tells us to wait patiently for further announcements.

And so we sit in typically tube-style stoical silence until Nina, a scouse girl sitting opposite me decides to be friendly. Piotr who is sitting next to me is unimpressed at being asked who he is, where he’s from and what he does – I can’t blame him – I agree with his view that these three questions being answered do not constitute instant friendship, and I’m every bit as wary as he is of being drawn in by a complete stranger, especially in an enclosed public space. I keep my eyes front and allow myself a quiet chuckle under my breath as he hedges around her interrogations before reluctantly starting a conversation. He’s Polish and works as a pot-washer in a restaurant, despite being a trained chef, and everything about London gets up his nose; its tube system, its people, its attitudes and especially its pervasive black dust.

Further down the carriage Darren is becoming more and more agitated by what he sees as banal conversation going on when we are stuck underground and the guy sitting opposite him is quite clearly a terrorist – well look at him with his rucksack – it’s obvious isn’t it.

Well no, it isn’t. Faisul is a chemistry student with a clear interest in philosophy, but the textbook in his bag is just further evidence for Darren, who tries to muster support for his argument from his fellow passengers, revealing the tragedies from his past that have planted the seeds of paranoia and eventually bringing Nina to a state of panic.

With individual stories told in a spotlight from the ends of the carriage and the restless pacing of the characters, I was reminded a little of the traverse stage layout used in Joe Ward Munrow’s earlier “Held” (Playhouse studio). However, with an audience of 20 sitting in two facing rows in this space the staging could barely be more intimate, and the cast of four have absolutely nowhere to hide, with the tiniest movement clearly visible to everyone. All give absolutely committed and utterly convincing performances and it is impossible to single anyone out for top billing. Munrow’s direction draws every last nuance of characterisation from all his actors without ever stepping too far and the balance never tips far enough to become melodrama.

This is the third play in succession that I have seen which compels its audience to confront their inner attitudes and prejudices (see my reviews of Joe Egg and Di is Dead) but each goes about it a different way. The piece is described as “immersive” and the fact that the audience are sitting in the same performance space as the actors in the rarefied atmosphere of the tube makes it an intense and very real experience. As we were led down the tracks to safety at the end I had to rub my eyes to reassure myself that I was back in Hope Place.

Nina was played by Rachel Worsley, Piotr by Rik Melling, Darren by Errol Smith, and Faisul by Jag Sanghera.

Mind the Gap, which has just completed a short sell-out run at Unity 2, is co-written by Joe Ward Munrow and Ella Greenhill and directed by Joe Ward Munrow.

Mind the Gap was produced by Liverpool-based Pimento Theatre Company, co-founded by Joe and Ella and Rachel Worsley, all of whom already have firm foundations in the Liverpool theatre scene.