Birdsong (on tour) – Liverpool Playhouse – 14&17/4/2015

A show that left me somewhat shell-shocked but strangely unmoved.

Here is a powerful story with elegant staging and some fine performances that somehow felt like less than the sum of its parts.

Based on the hugely popular novel by Sebastian Faulks, Rachel Wagstaffe’s stage adaptation was originally presented in London by Trevor Nunn in 2010/11. This revival is directed by Alastair Whatley and Liverpool was the 9th stop on a 17 venue tour, which ends in Richmond on 4th July.

Adapting a 500+ page novel for the stage is never going to be an easy task, and Wagstaffe has made a good fist of it, but the requirement to depict scenes across a very wide timespan does lead to frequent and often disconcerting leaps back and forth. You’d think that this would keep us on our toes, but for some reason the 1hr and 40 minutes of the first act seemed to drag its heels terribly, and even the much shorter second act felt as though it needed much more pace.

Victoria Spearing has created a spectacular single set that with clever shifts of lighting from Alex Wardle moves us from the barracks to the trenches and into the claustrophobic subterranean tunnels of the Somme with considerable élan. It’s when we need to find the more genteel surroundings of the Azaire family household that the relentless toing and froing of furniture on and off the stage becomes wearing.

What does work is the sense of impending horror in the scenes at the front and while some of the sudden explosions in Dominic Bilkey’s soundtrack seem an almost gratuitous shock-tactic (one woman in a seat near me nearly died of fright) the atmosphere is captured well.

There are committed and powerful central performances from Edmund Wiseman as Stephen Wraysford and Peter Duncan as Jack Firebrace, but the accents of the French characters were dodgy and uneven and I somehow felt unable to believe any of the amorous liaisons in the story.

I was so utterly surprised at how disappointing I found the play on Tuesday that I returned to see it again on Friday, this time after a relaxed day off work, but even in my more refreshed frame of mind and with a determined attitude I still couldn’t bring myself to care enough about the fate of the characters.

Nonetheless, the play had sold out every house for the entire week and the best part of half the capacity Friday audience were on their feet at the end.

Birdsong continues to tour until July 4th.

50 reaches 100

This posting is the hundredth since I began this blog just over 2 years ago, and it seems an opportunity to reflect back on what I’ve written about and why I do it.

I have had a few comments from friends and from people I have met in theatres (audience, cast, creative and theatre staff) remarking that I do seem to like everything, because almost all the reviews I write have a positive stance. One theatre marketing manager did actually suggest that I should write about stuff that I didn’t like too.

The fact is, I write here for the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm for performances I have enjoyed watching. For the most part I go to the theatre on my own – it’s usually easy to get great seats at short notice when you’re only looking for one, and I often go on a sudden whim. I used to enthuse with friends about things I’d seen and try to persuade them to go, and someone once suggested that I should be writing about it. Out of that conversation came the idea for this blog.

I’m passionate about performance (including theatre, music, opera, ballet and film) and occasionally get frustrated that some outstanding shows are playing to houses that have lots of empty space. If I love something then I like the idea that by effusing about it in a public way I might encourage others to go and fill those empty seats.

I also recognise that if I don’t like a performance it is probably not an indication that there's something bad about it - it’s more likely that it simply wasn’t to my taste, or I was in the wrong frame of mind at the time. I don’t see why I need to be publicly dismissive about a play or a concert just because it didn’t work for me. It's not the purpose of this blog to discourage people from seeing things.

A few months ago, I went to a play on a Tuesday and really didn’t enjoy it. However, I’d been tired at the time and found I could get a good seat for the Friday and see it again, so I did, and the second time I really enjoyed it. This said, I went through a similar scenario last week and sadly disliked the play even more the second time around. Now if someone actually asks me whether I liked it I will be honest with them (and I have) but is it really fair of me to shout it from the rooftops? However, my next review is to be about that very piece that I really disliked, by way of experiment. I still hope I'll be able to reach a balanced view.

My purpose in writing this blog is to enthuse, and in this context I can indulge myself in mostly writing about things I've loved watching.

I realise there’s a danger in saying this: If I now don’t write about something I have seen then this could be taken to imply that I didn’t enjoy it. This isn’t necessarily true. What with working full time and spending so many nights in the theatre or concert hall I don’t always get round to writing about everything I’d like to, and sometimes I end up adding reviews retrospectively. So, if there is anyone out there following this endless rambling, please don’t feel offended if I haven’t written about something that you were involved with or loved seeing, it’s highly likely I spent so many nights seeing it again that I ended up with no time left to review it!

My biggest hope is that, somewhere along the line, a few people may have been to see performances that they might otherwise have missed, because what I have said has caught their interest.

Thank you to everyone who has read, remarked, retweeted or favourited, and please do keep on reading and spreading the word, because word of mouth is one of the best ways to get venues putting out the “HOUSE FULL” signs.

Plastic Figurines – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 08/04/2015

I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest that Ella Carmen Greenhill’s new play, which premiered in Liverpool last night, is not a play about autism – it’s a play about people. More specifically it’s about that way that a brother and sister, each facing their own individual challenges, deal with the impact of the loss of their mother. It’s a play about grief and bereavement; love, pain and hope.

And it is beautiful.

We keep fixing back on a thoughtful Rose in “the present” in the inauspicious surroundings of a hospital waiting area, and her memories trigger successive scenes in flashback. We are then introduced to her brother Mikey on his 18th birthday. I’m not going to destroy anyone’s enjoyment by telling you too much detail, but it’s important to note that the narrative pulls back and forth through time.

The evolution of the work from a 15 minute short to this full length one-act play, commissioned by Box of Tricks Theatre, has clearly involved a tremendous amount of research and character development, as well as the construction of the fractured timeline.

The result is a pair of finely drawn characters who have been brought vividly to life in two astonishing performances from Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel.

Mikey has autism but, refreshingly, this is played as one (albeit very significant) aspect of his personality, and it is his personality that is key. Great care has been taken to ensure that what we see on stage is a young man, not a condition. It’s clear that in his background work Jamie Samuel has assembled a host of possible mannerisms and has then thrown most of them away, so that he uses the subtlest ways of delivering Mikey’s difficulties. This subtlety enables the more emotionally charged scenes to become all the more impactful. A good example is where what begins as a very funny scene with a chocolate bar quickly evolves into something of terrifying power.

Jamie Samuels’ performance is so mesmerising that you do sometimes have to make a conscious effort to turn attention to Remmie Milner’s Rose, the level headed and mature big sister who has given up her new life to look after her little brother. This too is a beautifully crafted performance, and again the gentle delivery of most of her part throws some of the pivotal moments into sharp contrast.

As the piece reaches its dramatic climax we are left with an open ended future for Mikey and Rose. Writer, director and cast remain tight-lipped over their personal ideas of their ultimate fate, but I left the theatre with a tentative optimism. More importantly, they are characters that I found myself really caring about.

Ella Greenhill’s moving text feels completely natural and the flow of the narrative, while fragmented, is clear and concise and Adam Quayle’s direction has a wonderful lightness of touch. The set by Katie Scott has an elegant simplicity that enables it to carry us back and forth in time and place with the aid of clever lighting from Richard Owen, while Chris James’ splendidly subtle sound design  provides clarity to the settings.

I last saw Remmie Milner in the main house here in Melody Loses Her Mojo and Jamie Samuel in Jumpers for Goalposts at the Bush (see my earlier postings) and I have also seen some of Ella Greenhill’s previous writing, so I had high expectations for this piece. So much so that I bought seats for two consecutive performances and am returning again this evening. I wasn’t disappointed and may well need to buy another …

Adam Quayle told me that half a director’s job is done if they can find a great writer and great actors, and based on this principle he was on to a winner with this. The writing is insightful, delicate and real, and Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel give flawless performances that are impossible not to be drawn into.

And the Plastic Figurines? – Buy a ticket and find out…

Plastic Figurines plays at the Playhouse Studio until Saturday, after which it embarks on a national tour visiting 14 additional venues until 16th May, and if there’s justice in the world it will have a life beyond this. For venues and dates, see Box of Tricks’ website:

http://boxoftrickstheatre.co.uk/production/plastic-figurines/

View the rehearsal video diary on YouTube Here

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel "It'd be like I was flying".

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel in rehearsal - Photo (c) Lucas Smith