Rose of June – Unity Theatre Liverpool – 24/09/2014

Liverpool-based Stack Theatre have devised Rose of June inspired by the writing of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, whose explorations of death, dying, grief and mourning have become standards on the shelves of many a bereavement counsellor.

Creator and performer Christopher Rae has worked with director Natasia Bullock and the other two cast members to produce a measured and delicately balanced one hour piece which they tell us is still undergoing further development and exploration.

As it stands in its current version, Rose of June is a compact and tightly focused piece that delivers its message with a mixture of subtlety and sledgehammer impact, very much as its subject impacts on the lives of those it touches.

Sam (Christopher Rae) is a young man whose life has been torn apart by the death of his wife, something that came very suddenly following a brief and unspecified illness that was diagnosed too late. Luckily for Sam he has two good friends on hand to lead him through the wilderness of his emotions. Iain Hoskins is Daniel, Sam’s best mate, a pillar of strength who seems to know exactly what needs doing, or so it seems. Gemma Banks is Emily, for whom Sam’s wife has left a letter outlining her wishes for her funeral.

We join Sam in a café where he is awaiting the arrival of Emily, but Daniel turns up first and we learn that he and Emily have already agreed that they both need to be there to support Sam through an ordeal. One of the play’s great strengths is that it rarely uses overt expository dialogue, allowing the back story to be revealed as gradually as the slowly blooming rose in the picture to the back of the set.

Daniel approaches the situation from the angle of focusing on the practicalities and getting everything perfect, while Emily has a more emotional response, and is anxious to make sure that the terms of the letter are respected. Frustrations soon develop between them and eventually Sam, who needs someone to tell him what to do, goes along with the practical advice of Daniel, while Emily despairs over unfulfilled promises.

Rose of June is a moving examination of the different ways each of us deal with loss, and the desolation of those plunged unexpectedly into bereavement. To be honest, the pre-publicity describing the inspiration of Kubler-Ross and the improvisational creative process had given me some uneasy expectations of excessive introspection, but in reality the piece moved with a natural rhythm and pace, and was graced with three excellent performances.

The dialogue is also very natural throughout, with the possible exception of an awkward first consultation with a counsellor that didn’t quite ring true. Beginning in a world of awkward silences and ending somewhere on the road to acceptance, it allows us to share Sam’s journey and feel the warmth of the sun coaxing us back from despair into hope, whilst giving us pause to think about how we react to friends in shared grief.

Shakers - Lantern Theatre Liverpool - 20/09/2014

“It looks like a glass of sick decorated with hundreds and thousands”

Liverpool audiences have become very familiar with John Godber’s 1977 play Bouncers in a number of recent revivals, one of which was here at the Lantern. Less familiar is its 1985 bookend piece, Shakers, which he co-wrote with his wife Jane Thornton.

While Bouncers features four tuxedoed men who play the eponymous doormen and all the other characters - male and female - Shakers is more or less the photographic negative of the concept.

The 1980s breezed along on an overdressed carnival float of Dynasty glamour, and along with the big hair and shoulder pads came the cocktail bars. So here we are in Shakers – the new place to be on the high street for a night out, where everyone hides behind a veneer of self-conscious faux confidence and nobody knows what’s in the exotically coloured concoctions they’re drinking.

The audience are in luck. Before the house lights even go down several of us are told we’re the hundredth customer and are handed a free drink - something luminous orange in a fancy glass – and so we meet the four cocktail waitresses in the usual garb, all bow ties and starched blouses, who are preparing themselves and the venue for the onslaught of an evening’s clientele.

The idea is simple enough of course, as a series of episodes introduce us to groups of revellers, all of whom are played by the same three actors in unchanging costume. The first big win for the production is the seamless transition that they make as they take on the parts of groups of young women, a gang of lads and a party of businessmen trying to outdo each other with their worldliness. There is a good deal of dark humour in this role play, especially seeing four women aping the lewd, seedy behaviour of these male characters out to impress each other with their machismo.

But as well as the carry-on humour there is a depth to the writing too, and in four excellent performances we see glimpses of the trials, tribulations, ambitions and failures that have brought these young women together to this place. There is hope for the future and jaded resignation behind the bar, where they listen to the same old jokes about suggestive cocktail names. They’ve heard it all a hundred times before, but still manage a weary smile that the half-cut customers take for amusement.

Amy Courtenay, Amy Spencer, Liz Walker and Jenny Roberts play together like clockwork in the fast paced dialogue under the direction of Pamela Courtenay for Trap Door Theatre Productions.

This entertaining and often poignant show has played two nights at the Lantern and now heads off to several venues in Wales.

Noises Off – Royal Court Theatre Liverpool – 05/09/2014

That's what it's all about. Doors and sardines… Getting the sardines on; getting the sardines off. Or so says Lloyd Dallas, the hapless director of a touring company in final rehearsals for an ill-fated production of “Nothing On”.

Michael Frayn’s 1982 play is a masterclass in farce, with all the requisite doors and windows, comedy props, dropped trousers and, above all, split second timing with entrances and exits.

Richard Foxton’s design for this production uses an impressive and substantial two-tier set on a full revolve, that enables two scene changes, one of which takes place in full view, running acts two and three together without a break and thereby maintaining the manic comic energy after the single interval.

Onstage in act one we meet the cast and crew who seem to believe that they are having a technical rehearsal, only to find to their dismay that it is the final dress and the opening performance is only hours away. Among their frustrated efforts to perfect all the lines and stage business we discover their frailties, foibles and indiscretions, and can see that their forthcoming tour is not going to be an easy ride.

Act two finds us backstage on opening night. The situations that were being set up during the first act now conspire to sabotage the performance. Most of the action is almost completely in mime, with everyone rushing about frantically and next to killing one another in between entrances and exits, and all the while we can hear the now familiar dialogue on the stage beyond and catch glimpses of the play trough doors and windows. It’s a minor miracle that the curtain comes down with all the cast still alive.

A quick scene change accompanied by the music of Madness brings us back onstage again, this time just before a performance toward the end of the run almost ten weeks later. The cast are now beyond the end of their tether and, having seen the backstage antics earlier, the lunacy that “Nothing On” has become has us imagining the mayhem behind the scenes to even greater comic effect than if we could actually see it happening.

Frayn has provided a scintillating script, but it takes a great sense of subtlety and timing to pull it off. Bob Eaton directs a splendid ensemble cast here and while the comedy is very slick in the first act it really lets rip in the high-speed antics after the interval.

Kim Hartman’s Dotty, is a perfect balance of bumbling and dismay, with her endless plates of sardines and some beautifully executed business with a telephone in the second act. Stephen Fletcher is wonderfully hammy as Gary, with a wig that almost needed its own separate billing and Danny O’Brien’s long-suffering Tim has much lower key humour in his lines but makes the most of them in an immaculately played part. The big star of Nothing On, Belinda is played with larger than life panache by Tupele Dorgu, while Jessica Dyas is splendidly dippy as Brooke, who just keeps on with the text as written regardless of the non-sequiturs resulting from everyone else’s [scripted] ad-libbing, and whose contact lenses spend more time on the floor than in her eyes.

Chris Jordan’s rabbit in the headlights Freddy seems not really to be very aware of what’s going on and Phil Hearne is perfect as the old thespian Selsdon, selectively deaf, a little sozzled and completely unable to remember his cues. Stage Manager Poppy is played by Jennifer Bea, and we feel her pain as she tries to hold everything together among the cast while dealing with her own personal frustration with the director, Lloyd Dallas. Dallas is played by Jonathan Markwood, who makes many of his entrances from the auditorium during rehearsals. He completes a great cast with a suitably weary and withering performance as a man on the edge of a professional precipice.

I am never quite at ease with the Royal Court’s policy of close-mikeing its performers but although it makes some of the comings and goings a little confusing with the position of voices unfocused it does come into its own in act 2, when we get to hear the dialogue from the invisible actors onstage and the sound balance works here better than anywhere else in the performance.

This is a hugely entertaining, high-octane performance of one of the great pieces of late 20th century English farce and well worth a visit. It runs to 4th October, and don’t forget that at the Royal Court you can book both the play and a pre-show meal at a table seat for a bargain price.

Stephen Fletcher, Kim Hartman and Tupele Dorgu