Educating Rita – Liverpool Playhouse – 06/02/2015

Because we could sing better songs than those…

Educating Rita may not have been born on the Liverpool stage but it always feels as though it has its spiritual home here, and Gemma Bodinetz justifies her qualifications as an honorary Liverpudlian in reviving it at the Playhouse in its 35th birthday year. The bittersweet tale of a hairdresser, whose search for self-improvement brings her to a teacher who likes her just the way she is, remains a timeless piece of wistful comedy.

In casting the iconic character of “Rita” the Playhouse have scored a hit here with the welcome return of Leanne Best, who has already long won over Liverpool audiences in a broad range of roles and who set the stage alight with her incendiary performance in The Matchbox. She inhabits the part of Rita as though the lines were written for her and delivers it with an irrepressible energy. From the moment she bursts through the door of Frank’s study we know we have a classic Rita.

To balance Rita’s hunger for enlightenment we need something approaching apathy in Frank, and it must be tricky to find an actor who can convey his lugubrious disinterest while having sufficient wit and shabby charm to make us like him. Con O’Neill who, like the play, has a spiritual home in Liverpool, is another great choice. There’s something in the quality of his voice that sounds world weary to begin with, and he succeeds in bringing out the shambling aspect of the alcoholic academic with alarming aplomb. Like Rita, we need to get frustrated with Frank but still like him enough to want to keep coming back. O’Neill makes us feel that here is a man who really doesn’t like himself very much but remains stubbornly conceited.

Gemma Bodinetz in her programme note agrees with Willy Russell that if a play needs explaining it’s probably not doing its job. The writing, which has been fine-tuned by the author to ensure its clarity to a modern audience, delivers its message with refreshing directness and it would suffocate with over-working. The only suffocating going on in this production is that caused by the lack of fresh air in Frank’s study, and the performances feel organic and natural. The pivotal scene in which Rita explains why she couldn’t make the party seems like a real revelation to both characters.

We do like our circular reading rooms in Liverpool. Not content with them in our libraries we put them in our theatres too. Ellen Cairns gave us a Victorian panelled affair for Glen Walford’s 2002 Playhouse “Rita”, with a big window dominating the rear of the set. For this new production Conor Murphy has designed a timeless, stylised version of a study; an arc of bookcases with exaggerated perspective and concealed doors. The window (necessary for the narrative) is invisible until Mark Doubleday’s lighting creates it through the fourth wall, putting us in the grounds outside, looking in.

Projections onto the sloped ceiling not only create additional detail but also carry us through the scene transitions, while Peter Coyte’s music perfectly defines the passage of time between scenes, with hours and sometimes weeks going by in a matter of moments.

Educating Rita has come back home and runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 7th March.

Leanne Best & Con O'Neill - image (c) Stephen Vaughan

Juno and the Paycock – Liverpool Playhouse – 01/10/2014

The whole world's in a terrible state of chaos. 

Sean O’Casey’s 1924 classic is such a rich piece of text that it can be approached from various angles. This new reading doesn’t aim solely for its tragedy, it is more a tale of people that tragedy has already descended upon and who are stoically carrying on as more befalls them. It’s not aiming straight for the comedy either. There are a good deal of laughs, almost farce at times, but we never hear lines played just for the humour alone.

What director Gemma Bodinetz has achieved here is an epic, sweeping piece of human drama that balances light and dark, and tells its story with genuine warmth of affection for the writing.

The setting, a single, squalid Dublin tenement, is placed in an uneasy fractured world in Conor Murphy’s design. The one room dwelling is a skeletal affair beyond which we see into the street beyond, and this is depicted by a chaotic arrangement of discarded objects, as though someone had dismantled the entire barricade from the set of Les Mis and hurled it onto the stage. It rises to a pinnacle at one side and looms heavily over the action, and the cast weave in and out of it as they come and go like as many of the rats they live amongst.

Parts of the ensemble play musical instruments from amidst this wasteland, and those not otherwise occupied perch upon it and cast their inquisitive or accusatory gaze on the story before them like some ghostly chorus.

Niamh Cusack and Des McAleer are the long suffering Juno and her husband Jack, known as the paycock (or peacock) for his vainglorious strutting. Balance is the key again in these two sparring roles and they never allow their characters to become caricatures or excessively sentimental.

Juno slaves away to keep her family afloat, while “Captain” Jack spends his time drinking in the alehouse with his useless bevy of friends. He seems to care little of what his family do or say unless it reflects on his own inflated sense of self-importance. The daughter Mary (Maureen O’Connell) looks for upward mobility in exchanging her original intended for the pompous, ineffectual and apparently incompetent Charles Bentham (wonderfully sculpted by Robin Morrissey), but he leaves her only one unhelpful legacy when he discovers he won’t be marrying into money.

The son Johnny lives with both the physical and mental scars of his past, and some of that past’s shadows ultimately come to haunt him to tragic effect. Johnny is played by Donal Gallery, who brings a tremendous dramatic weight to the character. His last scenes on stage are filled with raw terror.

A wonderful foil to Jack is his drinking partner Joxer Daly, a daarlin’ man who may well be half cut but has plenty of homespun philosophy to offer. Joxer is a splendidly cast Louis Dempsey, who again never lets his larger than life character become purely comic. Aoife McMahon is Maisie Madigan, a neighbour with sage advice but debts owed to her, and her crazed performance has some startling moments (I trust they check that table over regularly). She also cuts quite a vocal dash with some fine singing.

Neil Caple is Needle Nugent, the local tailor who seems accommodating enough until he sees through the Captain and his mounting debt. Mary’s jilted first love Jerry Devine is similarly mild mannered, but there’s fire in him in Fionn Walton’s performance, kindled by both political beliefs and by the discovery that Mary has betrayed him, and his standards, in more ways than he could have imagined possible.

Maggie McCarthy plays Mrs Tancred, a neighbour whose own pain over her son’s fate is a sinister precursor of events to come. Finally, in an ensemble role, is Jonathan Charles, whoalso displays some fine violin playing.

Originally a play in three acts, this production cuts the first interval giving us a opening half that runs for over 90 minutes, but the effect is to maintain the dramatic flow and time stands still. A rapid and dramatic scene change is accompanied by some wild music that would be grand at any céilidh.

Music is used sparingly but to good effect, having a reason to be there whenever it appears but leaving the words their stillness when they need it. Peter Coyte, who has worked on a number of Gemma Bodinetz’s productions, once again provides a score that adopts the sound and atmosphere of the play, using traditional instruments and performance styles to great effect. Members of the cast play one two or even three different instruments, mostly upon the chaotic mountain of debris but occasionally amidst the action, and all accompanied by Fergus O’Hare’s deft sound design.

Lighting by Natasha Chivers is as subtle as the colour palette of the set and costumes enabling moments of visual drama to receive due prominence, including the suspended closing scene.

The world is still in a state of chaos, and this play has resonance with our times in more ways than Sean O’Casey may have imagined ninety years ago. The characters who populate this play have the power to show us that there’s a little of the spirit in us still and Gemma Bodinetz presents us with a paean to the indomitable human spirit.

Juno and the Paycock is a co-production between Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and Bristol Old Vic. It is the first play in 11 years that Gemma Bodinetz has opened away from her base in the Liverpool theatres, and having already enjoyed a hugely successful run in Bristol it continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 18th October.

Tickets and further information are available here:  http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

Des McAleer & Niamh Cusack (c) Stephen Vaughan

Shakespeare Through the Looking Glass – Twelfth Night – Liverpool Everyman Theatre – 08/03/2014

Yesterday saw the first public performance in Liverpool’s completely rebuilt Everyman Theatre. Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz thought long and hard before settling on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as her opening show. She wanted something that was an ensemble piece to highlight the democratic ethos of the theatre, not something that would put one actor’s face on the poster. She also wanted something with poetry and comedy, something that reflected on loss and the joy of reunion and, above all, “...a play that celebrates love, a renegade spirit and a naughtiness”.

She has found all this and more in Twelfth Night and has assembled a cast and creative team who have brought her vision joyously to life in this wonderfully exuberant production.



Did you ever see the picture of we three?
Matthew Kelly, Paul Duckworth and Adam Keast
Photo © Stephen Vaughan

 Laura Hopkins’ design is made to appear as though it grows organically out of the very brickwork of the theatre. Audiences are greeted at the beginning by an almost empty stage dominated by a large, ornately framed mirror to the rear wall reflecting their own image, and its twin, smashed into fragments and scattered about the stage floor. These shards of glass offer opportunities for characters to reflect on their appearance, their identity and their motives.

It is very hard to know where to begin with the cast, as it is just what Gemma wanted – a great ensemble piece with strong individual parts. Matthew Kelly and Nicholas Woodeson worked together in the Everyman company of 1974 and seem a logical place to begin. Woodeson is everything you need in a Malvolio, lugubrious, poker-faced and faintly ridiculous as the pompous steward but turning into an excited little boy when he falls for Maria’s cruel joke. His Cheshire-Cat grin is something to behold, as is his unusual entrance in act 4.

Could Matthew Kelly have played any other role than this occasionally flatulent Sir Toby Belch? (It’s the pickled herring, you know.) He blends the comic element of the part with genuine pathos and imbues the part with tremendous energy. It’s through performances like this that the character is so memorable.

Adam Keast is a spot of casting genius as Sir Andrew Agucheek. His last appearance in Liverpool saw him suspended from a wire dressed as a giant shrimp in Aladdin (if you weren’t there don’t even ask!) Agucheek offers plenty of opportunity for some of the most eccentric excesses of comedy and Keast’s skill is in making us care about Sir Andrew despite his behaviour. Almost upholstered rather than dressed, he struts about with a ludicrous hairstyle and somehow captures our hearts.

And now to our shipwrecked twins: Luke Jerdy is a splendid Sebastian, wide eyed and full of confusion as the plot ravels and unravels around him. He is full of charm and also finds the sharp wit in the writing. Jodie McNee as his twin sister Viola is another crack-shot bit of casting. She is a perfect balance of determination and vulnerability and her masculine bearing throughout her masquerade as Cesario is nothing short of perfection.



Luke Jerdy and Jodie McNee
Photo © Stephen Vaughan

We strike theatrical gold with our Feste, Paul Duckworth, whose fearless performance really highlights the central importance of the part. His transformation into the fool is arresting, and he finds a wonderful balance between the many faces of the character. Often dark and almost sinister and occasionally leaning toward near burlesque, this is a splendid creation.

Alan Stocks playing Fabian appears almost part of the furniture at first, being onstage for a long stretch with no lines. When he does make his entrance he has the great stage presence that we expect from him and his cat and mouse scenes hiding in the shrubbery with Keast and Kelly, waiting for the woodcock to find the gin, are timed to perfection.

Maria is played by Pauline Daniels and her vocal characterisations almost nod in the direction of Hilda Baker at times. She has all the blustering blowsy personality to stand up to the difficult household that she finds herself trying to keep order in, and when she joins in with the revelry and gets caught she becomes a naughty schoolgirl.

Natalie Dew plays the bereaved and occasionally perplexed Olivia, who on finally breaking her self-imposed vow of chastity manages to fall for a wrong-un. Her turns between girlish charm and astonished confusion require some great comic timing and she pulls it off beautifully. Antonio falls to David Rubin. As the sea captain friend and saviour of Sebastian, he has tremendous stature and poise.

Neil Caple as Curio and Robin Morrisey as Valentine, with relatively little text, provide a perfect foil to the love-sick Duke Orsino.

So what of our noble Duke? He has the opening line and here he appears to be pondering its meaning as he delivers it. Adam Levy combines the dignity of the Duke with a real feeling of despair and disenchantment Decked in a natty linen suit he presides over Illyria with a melancholy charm and we have high hopes that he will find his match in the end.

I’ve already described the opening setting in Laura Hopkins’ design, but there’s more than meets the eye. In an opportunity to display some of the theatre’s new technical abilities there are some almost seamless and magical scene changes, and the set manages to reveal a few surprises from the beginning right to the very end. It’s easy to overlook the lighting when it is so neatly married with the action, and Paul Keogh’s lighting script uses the Everyman’s new equipment to blend the scenes together atmospherically.

Music is an important part of Shakespeare, and has a special part to play in Twelfth Night. A regular collaborator with Gemma Bodinetz, Composer Peter Coyte does not give us excess of it. The recorded segments of his score seep out of the pores of the production, whilst his live music performed by the actors themselves is as mysterious a mixture of styles as the fabled location of Illirya.

Feste accompanies himself with a guitar in a folk-like rendition of his ballads. It is he who opens the final lines of verse that end the play, and it seems only natural for the cast to add their voices to the refrain as they reassure us that they will – as we hope the Everyman will do for many decades to come – strive to please us every day.

If...

Twelfth Night plays at the Liverpool Everyman until 5th April 2014. Details are available from the theatre website: www.everymanplayhouse.com or the box office: 0151 709 4776

A Theatre Reborn – The Everyman Theatre Liverpool – March 2014

I was barely more than two years old when the Everyman Theatre was born on 28th September 1964 and Liverpool acquired its second repertory company. The converted Hope Hall, once a chapel and more recently a cinema, presented its work in a new type of arena for a Liverpool unfamiliar with a thrust stage before.


The New Everyman street frontage at night
(All images in this posting are my own, © N. P .Smith)

It was not until my late teens that I began to venture to the theatre. My school did not really teach drama or theatre in any sort of a serious way, confining its contribution to having students read out the parts of a couple of plays in class. For years afterward I felt somewhat disenfranchised, as many of my contemporaries clearly studied stuff like Shakespeare in earnest. The closest I got was the importance of Being Ernest. We certainly never had any school trips to the theatre. I have since become rather grateful in an odd sort of way, realising that many of those same friends of mine dislike Shakespeare with a passion and refuse to go near it, after having it shoved down their throats at school along with the over-boiled cabbage and lumpy custard.

My love affair with the theatre must have begun tentatively. I really don’t think that I could say what the first play was that I took myself to see, nor exactly where, but I do know that the place that rapidly became central on my radar was the Liverpool Everyman. Having been taken to concerts by my father since the age of seven at the nearby Philharmonic Hall I suppose that I knew that part of town, so it was a natural place to go, but there was something very special about the Everyman that made me want to keep coming back.

My Damascene moment came with a performance of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in the January 1983. Director Glen Walford and designer Sue Mayes managed to divide opinion by setting the play in something like a clearing in a forest somewhere in the Far East. Actors made their entrances via rope bridges slung over the audience and Paddy Cunneen’s live score was performed on a collection of strange instruments from a sort of tree house to the rear of the stage. The fact is that, over thirty years later, I barely have to close my eyes to be able to see, hear and almost smell that production. Its energy and rhythm and its sense of genuine stage magic were incredible and it completely wiped the slate clean in my mind as far as Shakespeare was concerned.

The following winter the season included month long runs of both Return to the Forbidden Planet and The Tempest, on which the former was (rather loosely) based – by this time I was hooked.

Two programmes from 1983/4 season

The mixture of both pioneering new work and daring re-imaginings of timeless classics continues to be one of the hallmarks of the theatre, whilst its scale and design have ensured that every member of the audience was able to feel enveloped in the experience.

With the passage of time the theatre, its work and the very building itself (including the legendary Bistro) have become part of the fabric of Merseyside’s cultural and social life. On more than one occasion its very existence was threatened by economic pressures, but each time people have rallied round to save it.

At the turn of the century the Everyman joined forces with the Liverpool Playhouse, another controversial decision but one that has proved to be a great partnering. With the arrival of a new Executive Director Deborah Aydon and Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz in 2003, the theatres began to look to their futures with a new optimism in the lead up to Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008.

With its 1975 monolithic, brutalist facade and its modern reputation, it was hard for lovers of the Everyman to recognise that the main fabric of the building dated back to 1837 – some 29 years older than the Playhouse. Little wonder then, that when architects were brought in to look at the potential for improvements and renovations on both theatres, they suggested that pulling the Everyman down and starting from scratch was the most viable option.

Queues for one last visit on the Bistro's last day

There was naturally a great wailing and gnashing of teeth and the knives were out for anyone who laid a finger on our Everyman, but after almost a decade in the planning the Everyman went dark in July 2011 following Gemma Bodinetz’s triumphant production of Macbeth and a celebratory event to gather everyone’s memories of the place.

A representation of the extiguished neon sign burns atop the old theatre

All the memories were fond ones of course. Everyone who loved the Everyman (myself included) manages some sort of psychological trick of selective memory-loss, being able to forget how it felt to sit for three hours on a hard wooden bench or a rickety old cinema seat, managing for the most part to avoid passing out from the heat as the staff desperately tried to keep a few people cool with portable air conditioners whirring away at full kilter. Access to the auditorium was via steep narrow stairways and front of house areas were cramped. Backstage things were worse, with Spartan being something of an understatement for the conditions endured by the cast and crew.

Yes – I know we will all look back wistfully to the old Everyman, but give the company a break everyone – to put on a show fit for the 21st Century they need the space and equipment to do it and, let’s face it, we audiences aren’t going to complain about a comfy seat and room to move about are we?

The old girl wasn’t so much demolished as dismantled, painstakingly rescuing anything that could be re-used in the rebuild or auctioned off as souvenirs to bolster the rebuilding fund. Via a webcam on the building opposite we were able to see the slow descent of the Everyman and the building next door down to basement level, and then the growth of the new structure on the same site.

Although the building now has a larger footprint the auditorium occupies a very similar space, remaining roughly the same capacity in its standard configuration. The extra room has made possible much better provision for public circulation space front of house as well as new facilities for rehearsal and scenic construction, a venue for the youth theatre and outreach projects, a writers’ room and new offices for the administrative teams.

Last Saturday evening a lantern parade danced and played its way from the Playhouse to deliver a love letter to the Everyman. Giant lantern puppets representing the two venues danced together in Hope street in front of huge crowds before symbolically lighting the illuminated Everyman sign that adorns the new facade, beneath the curtain of aluminium shutters that depict 105 local people.

The following morning we were able to see behind that facade as the doors of the building were opened to the public for the first time for a free event allowing access to just about all areas, except some parts of backstage where the finishing touches were being made to the set for the opening performance.

The new Stalls Bar

The first thing that grabs you when you walk in is that it doesn’t feel brand new, somehow it has a welcoming, lived-in feel about it. The use of reclaimed materials, including a very large amount of bricks from the old building, as well as clever surface treatments, have combined to give the place a sense of instant history.

The theatre visitor will find an open, airy cafe bar at ground level, with the box office to the right of the entrance. This cafe bar can open out to the pavement when the sunshine beckons. The next level up is the stalls bar, with access to a balcony overlooking Hope Street (no glassware out there please folks) and doorways to the left and right of the auditorium. Stairways to each side take you to circle level, although this is also accessible from within the auditorium from the stalls via curved stairways. To the right of the auditorium and bars are the main stairs and lift access to every level, as well as toilets incorporating baby changing facilities. In this side of the building we find the other new spaces like EV1 for the youth theatre and the writers’ room, while the offices run along the front of the building from circle level upward, screened from the street and the sun by the portrait wall.

Stairwells and lifts seen from stalls bar level

All the public spaces are finished in warm tones, incorporating a deep red ceiling mural design, while here and there are reclaimed theatre lights. Also reclaimed is much of the wood providing the finishes to the bars etc. Even some of the timber shuttering used during concrete construction has been re-used in the finished design.

Entering the auditorium, we find ourselves in a space that actually does feel like the Everyman already. To enable the same seating capacity while offering better comfort and access, the architect has returned to an aspect of the pre-1970 Everyman in using a gallery but this time it has just two rows of seats, above a stalls level with fully flexible seating. The “standard” layout gives us the familiar large thrust stage with seating on three sides. With five rows all round and a sixth row of raised seats (with footrests) at the rear of the centre block the capacity is approximately 400, but this can rise to 500 if reconfigured to be fully “in the round”.

The auditorium with visitors to the housewarming
(note rehearsal desks over some seating)

In its default layout, every stalls seat offers a completely unobstructed view of the stage, but it’s useful to remember that the back row in that centre block are the high seats. I will be occupying one of these seats myself next week and will provide an update on the experience (see below for update). Up in the circle, the two rows of seats both have a safety rail with an open mesh below it, and there is a possibility that this may be slightly in the line of sight to the nearest part of the stage. This is theoretical advice and I will be checking it out in practice soon (see below for update).

Over the stage is a lighting and flying grid with another remarkable innovation, in that the catwalks for rigging are fully accessible, meaning that a wheelchair user can perform rigging work. It also makes the whole rig far more easily accessible and safer for the entire crew.

A view up into the overstage grid

No description of the new Everyman is complete without mention of the Bistro. This was once an iconic venue in its own right, attracting people with its great atmosphere and cheap, wholesome food. A haven for anyone who wanted to chat over a meal or a drink, and one of the first places in town to include a wide range of vegetarian dishes among its home-made and locally sourced menu.

It is inevitable that this will be an opinion divider, as the most careful reconstruction could never have entirely satisfied every died-in-the-wool regular. The architects here have aimed at recreating the scale and feel of the old without trying for a direct reconstruction and I think they’ve hit their target pretty well. The new Bistro is in a windowless basement (of course) and has the obligatory low ceiling. Furnishings are simple tables and refectory style chairs as well as bench seating against the walls. There are some suitably retro looking rise and fall lights (which are already fascinating the punters) and the room has some cunning acoustic treatment to cut down hard echoes and help maintain a convivial buzz of chatter when it’s full. Entering from the main entrance from the foyer you approach a central, island bar with a smaller seated area to the right and the main long room to the left. Between the two is an inglenook containing a wood burning stove. One end of the main room may be separated off by a large sliding door to create a smaller space with its own entrance. The substantial kitchens are tucked away to the far end and the open food display counter no longer exists.

Inside the new Bistro

The street level cafe bar is open from breakfast time and throughout the morning while the Bistro takes over at lunchtime, remaining open till late. This means that there is a food and drink offering all day every day, bringing people into the building and hopefully providing an additional revenue stream to help support the theatre.

I spent the best part of three hours in the new Everyman last Sunday, along with a few thousand other people who came to explore. I also popped in for a post-concert glass of wine in the Bistro after a concert at the Philharmonic Hall on Thursday, and was pleased to find a pleasant atmosphere and quite a number of people there even at that late hour.

All that remains now is to see a performance in the new auditorium, and for that I have to wait till tonight...

Update:

Subsequent to posting the above item, I have seen the same production again from other angles and can now report on the experience in other parts of the auditorium.
I sat in the end seat on row F stalls, the "high" seats on the back row. These are comfortable, with foot rests at two heights to afford a choice of leg position. The view is excellent and still feels close to the stage even though it is the back row.

I also sat in what must be the theoretical "worst" seat in the house - this being the very end seat at the front end of the back row of the circle. The effect of the safety rail on the view is minimal and I saw no-one in either row leaning forward because of it (as would be the case if view was impaired). View of the stage was excellent with the slight exception that the reveal to the side of the arch partially obstructed the view to the very rear part of the set that fell behind the arch. The effect of this will vary according to individual set design, but it was only entrances and exits that were occasionally out of view in this production. This was countered by an enhanced view into the "wings" at the opposite side of the stage. A quick shuffle while some seats were empty showed that only the very last two seats in this row are really affected and by the third seat along the restriction is minimal.

Both of these performances were full houses and my view was unaffected by the people in front of me. Also, it is the nature of an open stage design like this that most directors will block a piece in such a way as to use as much of the space as possible, and actors will play to the whole house rather than focussing centre front.