Category Archives: Rated: Nae Bad

The Gold standard. Work worth seeing.

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (King’s: 16 – 19 April)

Posted in King's Theatre, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by
Chris Myles as Bottom Photo: Nobby Clark

Chris Myles as Bottom
Photo: Nobby Clark

‘unambiguously, unashamedly, unpretentiously hilarious’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

When I was a child, I couldn’t understand why half of Shakespeare’s plays were described as “comedies”; they seemed so resolutely unfunny. I wish I could have seen Propeller back then – because whatever else you might think of their Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s unambiguously, unashamedly, unpretentiously hilarious. There’s one particular scene which might just be the most entertaining five minutes I’ve ever spent in a theatre, and if they just stood and read from scripts for the rest of the running time, it would still be worth the ticket price for those moments of joy alone.

But of course, that’s not what they do. The director’s notes highlight a “rigorous approach to the text”, but his style and presentation are unashamedly modern. The piece is filled with bold, striking images – and it’s performed very much in three dimensions, with actors clambering and capering on ledges across the backdrop. The literal high point comes when Oberon and Titania first confront each other, perched on matching thrones far above the other actors’ heads, divided by the chasm of the stage.

The physicality of Propeller’s performance adds a lot to the humour, but it has a serious edge to it too. Joseph Chance’s Puck delivers just the right mix of the carefree and the sinister. The Rude Mechanicals are re-invented with a dash of Dad’s Army, though their comic play-within-a-play arguably suffers a little in comparison to the earlier scenes. And it’s all set off by an appropriately other-worldly soundscape – intriguingly created by the actors, live on stage.

But of course, Propeller’s work is best known for a completely different reason: specifically that the actors are all men. And surprisingly, it’s here that the sense of effortless coherence begins to break down, with their approach to Shakespeare’s women feeling distinctly variable. At one end of the scale, Will Featherstone plays Hippolyta convincingly as a female, while James Tucker’s punkish Titania is a fascinating creation – the perfect equal for Darrel Brockis’ magnificent, half-crazed Oberon. But with other characters, the gender inversion seems more of a parody, and seeing a male actor mincing and flouncing is a major part of the humour.

Humour, perhaps, is enough. But you can’t quite divorce Propeller’s concept from the gender politics of our modern day – and I’d been hoping for something more than that, some surprising sudden insights which a mixed cast simply couldn’t provide. As it is, I’m not sure they do quite enough to justify their most defining artistic decision. Still, this has to rate as one of the most entertaining Midsummer Night’s Dreams you’re ever likely to have – and a comedy that proves itself still worthy of the name.

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Reviewer: Richard Stamp (Seen 16 April)

Visit Propellor at King’s homepage here.

‘Wendy Hoose’ (Studio at the Festival Theatre: 29 March ’14)

Posted in Festival Theatre, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

Photo: Eamonn McGoldrick

Photo: Eamonn McGoldrick

‘a comedy of lack of manners, or of mannered people’s cringe-worthy attempts to misbehave’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Wendy Hoose is by Johnny McKnight and is A Birds of Paradise Theatre Company and Random Accomplice production. Directed by Robert Softley Gale & Johnny McKnight.

If you’re the sort of person who reads the small-print of theatre programmes, you’ll know all about audio description. Sitting at the back of selected performances, audio describers explain – for the benefit of those who can’t see the action themselves – exactly what’s happening on stage. lt’s normally done using headphones. But Julie Brown, Wendy Hoouse’s audio describer, wants to share her thoughts with all of us … so they’ve ditched the technology, and just let her speak over the PA.

Which, put like that, sounds suspiciously right-on. But Wendy Hoose is all about messing with expectations – and this particular subversion proves truly inspired. Like the opinionated narrator of a Victorian novel, Brown seemingly can’t keep her thoughts to herself, and colours her commentary with a hilarious blend of upper-crust unshockability and deadpan disdain. ”Jake touches Laura’s breasts. She doesn’t seem to mind,” Brown’s disembodied voice observes primly. And then, a moment later: “Which I guess is what makes her different from me.”

Wendy Hoose has been called a “comedy of manners”, but it’s more a comedy of lack of manners, or of mannered people’s cringe-worthy attempts to misbehave. Paisley man Jake meets the confident, sassy Laura on the internet, and turns up at her flat in Cumbernauld with casual sex on both their minds. But neither of them’s particularly good at it — and Jake, in particular, proves comically bad at actually getting the job done. You’ll have gathered that this isn’t a play for the easily-offended, but the whole thing’s played with a crucial measure of restraint; it’s explicit enough to draw squeals of shock from the audience, yet it somehow never quite lapses into being crude.

James Young is sweetly engaging as the nervous, restless Jake, deftly capturing a veneer of confidence disguising insecurity and confusion. Amy Canachan, playing the bold-as-brass Laura, mocks Jake’s Paisley tones – as do the captions above the stage, which also feature cheery cartoons and other unexpected visual flourishes. The two actors share a deft comic timing, and they carry the audience effortlessly into the few more serious scenes.

The story takes a thought-provoking turn part-way through, but it’s only at the end that it hints at its true message – a comment on isolation in our seemingly connected world, with resonance even for those completely unlike Jake or Laura. Perhaps there’s more to draw from that concept; the ending feels distinctly abrupt. And the pace drops a little around the twenty-minute mark, though the gasps of laughter soon start coming again.

When all’s said and done, though, the plot of Wendy Hoose was always going to be upstaged by its design. lt takes the tools of accessibility — the narration, the surtitles, the sign-language interpreter — and rather than letting them divide the audience, turns them into an entertaining treat which everyone in the room can enjoy. So you should try to see Wendy Hoose; not because it’s commendable or inclusive (though it’s surely those things), but just because it’s clever, and tremedously good fun.

 

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Reviewer: Richard Stamp (Seen 29 March)

Visit Wendy Hoose homepage here.

‘This May Hurt A Bit’ (Traverse: 8 – 12 April’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by

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‘The Grim Reaper cannot wait for the good times to roll.’

Editorial Rating:Nae Bad

NHS England and not NHS Scotland is examined in Stella Feehily’s agile new work, which is mildly or wildly reassuring depending on the state of your health and where you live. This May Hurt a Bit is still a jag of a play, needle sharp where it matters and good for you. It will also, with luck, get stuck into government.

There is no squirming away from the political point of Feehily’s writing or from Max Stafford-Clark’s expert direction. The National Health Service is sixty-six years old, is in a High Dependency Unit, and needs your support before it is wheeled off as a terminal case. Here is an acute and tender understatement of a critical condition.

The play begins deep in the vein, if you will, of Ken Loach’s new film, the documentary The Spirit of ’45 when in his words ‘generosity, mutual support and co-operation were the watch words of the age.’ Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the post-war Labour government, is on stage and brings the attention of the House to the extraordinary fact that ‘we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world – put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration.’

That was in 1948, as indicated by the LED display. Move straight on to 2011 and then to the here and now but not before I, poor sap, thought that the medical staff were ‘serving’ customer/patient No.1948. Rather like those long waits in the East Coast advance booking hall at Edinburgh Waverley or, come to think of it, my time in A&E at the new ERI when a low-flying discus cracked my head.

The set of This May Hurt a Bit actually looks like an interior of the Old Royal before the PFI op. You cannot see it but there’s blood on the ceiling. Long and narrow gothic windows and grubby whitewashed brickwork and a screened treatment area centre stage with a disconcertingly large EXIT sign suspended above it. By scene 17, of 18, The Grim Reaper cannot wait for the good times to roll.

Nicholas James (66) is being treated for a prostate the size of a space hopper but has the good manners not to worry anyone but himself. His mother, Iris (91), suffers a fall and is admitted to the local District General for investigation. Fond but limited daughter Mariel is visiting from New York where all-American husband, Hank, is an orthopaedic surgeon. In Hank’s professional opinion – because you die in city hospitals – Iris should be treated privately where she’ll enjoy a lovely view of the Thames. Iris, bless her, swears (profanely) by NHS care, and refuses to move. Nicholas is with his mother all the way.

On the wards, or more accurately on the corridors, there is near bedlam. As well as Iris, Nurse Gina has to look after incontinent stroke patient Rev. John and dementing, bonkers, Dinah. Paramedics, porters, and police dispense black humour. There is a corpse in the screened cubicle, left.

Deadpan funny is rarely in remission but neither is the rolling political script. There is no positive narrative behind NHS reform, Prime Minister, so you just go out there and spiel away; and Feehily provides a wacky retinue – from within the cast of eight – of singing nurses, advisors, strategists, a board of directors, Churchill, a weather girl, and Maggie Thatcher on her perch. I have mentioned Death.

Stephanie Cole and Natalie Klamar

Stephanie Cole and Natalie Klamar

Iris is at the play’s selfless heart. Her absolute, principled, and dear refusal to leave NHS care means she is immune to what afflicts it. Peerless Stephanie Cole cannot be touched in the role. Similarly, Natalie Klamar as Nurse Gina from God knows where – possibly Poland, maybe Serbia – has an angelic part, made all the sweeter when she explodes in effing fury at the specious ‘Culture’ of shitty spending cuts.

It is a bit too easy, I think, to import Hank as the big bad US example – not one reference to French or German systems of social health insurance for instance – but that goes with the staked out territory of this continuing debate, which as Freehily palpably demonstrates gets far too close for comfort to the cynical truths of ‘Yes, Minister’.

This May Hurt a Bit has deft feel and touch all over it but it is also an invigorating shot in the arm for the campaign to keep the NHS safe and in public hands. Scotland, I propose, is reminded to keep its resistance up.

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 9 April)

Visit Traverse, This May Hurt  A Bit  homepage here.

‘A Perfect Stroke’ (Traverse: 8 – 12 April ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by
Anita Vettesse and Scott Reid. Photo: Lesley Black

Anita Vettesse and Scott Reid. Photo: Lesley Black

‘The superbly cast Scott Reid (Thomas) proves he’s still very much in-touch with his inner 16-year-old gobshite.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

We enter to find a typical classroom. The learning environment consists of teacher’s desk set before a blue background wall. The audience are in the round. Between me (on the far left, as ever) and the performance space is the actors’ door onto the stage. Beside the door are two clear boxes of universal props. These, together with the drama studies posters, tell us that we’re at the heart of Spud Control.

That pejorative is how the other teachers, them what teach grammar and sciences, describe Ms. Stone’s Drama department. It’s where the kids not unique enough to be special go to pass the day. Despite the condescension of the foreign language teachers, Ms. Stone hasn’t given up hope. She gives as much of herself to releasing the potential of pupils like Thomas as she once gave to her on-screen parts in Casualty, etc – ‘those who can, teach’ and all that.

Thomas has an important audition coming up and Ms. Stone is forgoing her Friday evening to coach him. As she teases out his inner Romeo the teacher/pupil relationship blossoms into a thorn-bush.

Johnny McKnight’s script is as packed with sweet and sour flavours as one of the Warhead Candies me and the other school spanners shared behind the bikesheds. At first you’re watching the introductory moments of a Naughty America porno – young guy being beguiled by a sexy older teacher – then the tables are turned, you can’t remember who’s exploiting who, and by the end everyone feels nice and dirty.

“No teacher would allow such a situation”, cluck a gaggle of mortar-boarded, Easter-happy schoolmarms within earshot. Despite the suspension of professional realities, McKnight insists we must experience the unfolding emotional manipulation as prescribed. Society’s moral certainties are not up for discussion. Unlike Glen Chandler’s Fringe ’13 landmark adaptation of Sandel, and more like A Play For September of the same year, McKnight’s script closes off the audience’s options for moral self-determination.

Even so, director Amanda Gaughan gets serious mileage out of the railroading. You could cut the tension with a metaphor. It’s been ratcheted up as though for a tyre change on a fleet of Hummers. Anita Vettesse (Ms. Stone) compellingly combines sensitive charm with dramatic flair. She is so real and really something. The superbly cast Scott Reid (Thomas) proves he’s still very much in-touch with his inner 16-year-old gobshite. Reid’s genius is to hint at the man Thomas is becoming as much as to lampoon the boy he is. Vettesse and Reid demonstrate active and reactive character work of the highest order.

Dani Heron’s finely carved cameo as Carly, Thomas’ girl, replete in skimpy schoolgirl outfit, allegorically illustrates that this cast is overdeveloped for the limited material allowed in the time available. Until Heron bursts in, you might be forgiven for worrying you’re stuck watching theatre about theatre – isn’t the Alexander Technique hilarious?

‘Actors only exist to serve the script’ agrees everyone when only I am allowed to speak. But there are times when the script must play supernumerary to stellar performances, and this is one such. Yet there’s no doubt McKnight knows how to bring the funny; the three-way with Heron especially could teach Catherine Tate a thing or two.

In the hands of this cast and director this script deserves a second half. Presently Ms. Stone’s crisis point is absent. It’s not clear where she eventually found her courage. Could it have been from imagining Thomas’ true treatment of Carly, with whom she might have more in common that she’d care to admit? There isn’t time to tell.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 9 April)

Visit A Perfect Stroke‘s homepage here.

‘The Medea’ (The Vault: 2 – 5 April ’14)

Posted in Other, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by
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Sophie Harris as Medea and Olivier Husband as Jason.

‘Sophie Harris’s Medea has as much self-loathing as hatred for Jason – her love for him does not make her weak, it hurts her and she wants the pain to stop.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Rosy-shouldered dawn shrugs disconsolately at the thick fog which has covered the Grange for days. The smell of wild garlic perfumes the air as I trudge earlymorningedly through the lanes. While Monty-The-Dog, a single headed cerberus, sniffs daintily at lampposts through his muzzle, Robert Graves’ The Golden Fleece tumbles from my iPod.

Graves’ Argonauts are a fractious lot, just about held together by the strings of Orpheus’ lyre. His Jason, a somewhat querulous figure, is little more than the unwitting product of circumstances and Chiron’s peerless tutelage. It’s easy to see how Graves’ Jason might have ended up on stage at the Vault in Victoria Fairlie’s adaptation of the Euripidean afterword.

Where I was dragged up you didn’t win the school classics prize if you described the story of Jason’s divorce from the headstrong princess Medea as an ‘afterword’ to the swashbuckling Argonautica. Edinburgh49’s editor (a former teacher himself) assures me this holds true most everywhere.

Up until last night I never fully appreciated the reasoning (other than antiquity) for the play’s enduring appeal. Euripides’ take on the jilted wife, who spites her lost love by destroying his new wife and father-in-law, before slaughtering her own two children by him for the sake of revenge, had always rather baffled me. What is there in a statement on the nexus of neurosis inherent in a barbarian woman who has betrayed her own kind to be with a foreign prince who in turn betrays her?

Through Fairlie’s well-scaled adaption I have (belatedly) come to appreciate that The Medea holds universal insights into the sorrow of falling out of love. Sophie Harris in the title role was sensational. Her strong, perfectly-paced voice opened proceedings, and her subtle variations kept the darkness bright. Harris’s Medea has as much self-loathing as hatred for Jason – her love for him does not make her weak, it hurts her and she wants the pain to stop.

The cast excel at squeezing the juice out of Fairlie’s lines until the pips squeak. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Medea.” My keyboard lacks punctuation marks expressive enough to encapsulate what James Beagon, as Marnes, did with that line. Another instance is the interplay between Medea and her importunate friend Althaia (Leyla Rana Doany). When the latter states, “A man is not your life” Medea retorts, “Maybe not every man, but this one was.”

The Classics Society should know its material like their degrees depended on it. That they do shows up in some A* character summations. Medea is “a shuddering mess of a woman,” whereas Jason’s new wife, Glauce, is “a pretty woman with an empty life.”

Fairlie calzones the script, flipping one half over the other to preserve the heat and amplify the flavour. Rather than relying on the traditional Chorus, the narration is provided by simultaneous retrospection from a Medea haunted by the incarnations of her good and bad angels. Maddie Haynes and Alice Vail shoulder something of the weight of expectations carried so artfully by Harris. They tease out her nuance, throwing up ideal dramatic uplighting.

Gone with the Chorus is Creon’s kingship. Cormac Rae presents Jason’s new father-in-law as a shady figure, wielding influence, rather than power, as might a supreme mafioso. Rae’s clipped tones saturate simple lines such as, “I’d like you to stop,” with quietly assertive menace. His crucial scene with Medea is played with a beguiling understatement. It’s very different from the bombast so often deployed at this familiar moment in the drama. Rae’s Creon is a concerned but devoted father. Perhaps he even harbours an apologetic sympathy for Medea denied disclosure by family loyalty.

Harris’ reactions are as essential as her acting. She is fortunate in her soundingboards, who bring depth and creativity to their roles. I’d like to see the colossally tall Josh Reid fending off bi-planes as he clings to the outside of the David Hume Tower, clutching the diminutive Harris in his hand. The difference in their size may be comic, but the exchanges between them crackle with sombre tension when Reid as Aegeus convinces Medea to connive.

I was not much taken with Olivier Huband’s previous outing as Jason, during the Dionysia. In his reprise of the role he has reached further and achieved more. The somewhat slimy efforts to overpower Medea with sexual magnetism are gone, replaced by a more thoughtful and thought-provoking interplay with Harris. Huband has tremendous poise, shaping himself to the moment as though he has stepped from an Attic vase. He also posses a powerful delivery. In the reprise he has proven he can use it to be more E-Type Jag than Centaur Tank.

This production and adaptation were not without faults. The tinkering with the death of Glauce and Creon’s needless survival were unimpressive. The backdrop of electoral politics hindered rather than helped the contemporary feel. Neither did the script allow Medea to do much more than scorch her bridges with Creon, when for the plot’s sake they needed to be burned entirely. The swearing was unnecessary. If an audience can cope with infanticide they’re not going to be upset by the f-word.

A good production avoids its weaknesses as much as it displays its strength. This was not the cast to present grief stricken fathers coming upon the fresh corpses of innocent children. The ending was downright muddled. If Beagon wants to be credited as a script editor, he needs to demonstrate at least as much ruthlessness as when he reduced Sword at Sunset to a mere three and half hours.

Reflecting on how much Fairlie’s adaptation has furthered my understanding of this oh so dark tale, I cannot help but be mightily impressed – it’s what you want from a Classics Society production. The venue may suit lines about cold, dark and dank environs but, as Harris so flawlessly demonstrates, the Vault is a great incubator of vibrant, compelling talent.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 2 April)

Visit The Edinburgh University Classics Society’s Facebook page here.

‘Love With a Capital ‘L” (Traverse: 1 – 5 April’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by 
Benny Young and Lesley Hart. Photo by Lesley BlackPhoto: Lesley Black

‘How, in the name of all that is haughty and holy ….. ?’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The first of the five short plays within the annual ‘A Play, A Pie and A Pint’ series that runs through April. Edinburgh49 is reviewing all five.

Loved it. And I’m not just talking about the Scotch pie and the pint before or afterwards. [Hot tip: the venison pies go quickly.]

Writer Tony Cox’s first stage play, directed by Hamish Pirie, is top-drawer work. A cross-examination of (i) rectitude on air and of (ii) the sneaky premise that all marriages are like potted plants – terminally pot bound – Love With a Capital ‘L’ is Radio4’s Thought for the Day with attitude.

It is ethically spiky. John Reith, the BBC’s first Director General, challenges Hilda Matheson, the Corporation’s ‘Head of Talks’. She, in straight-backed, imperturbable, manner, challenges him back and … a nice yucca plant is smashed to the floor.

This well-researched script is right in there at the beginning of public service broadcasting. We are in Reith’s office in Savoy Hill in June 1929. The BBC employs around 400 people at that time. Matheson has invited H G Wells to go on the radio to talk about world peace. George Bernard Shaw is due ‘on’ the election. Reith, son o’ the Free manse, regards both as ‘Reds’ and Bolshevik apologists but what really riles him is the air time being given to the Bloomsbury set and in particular to Vita Sackville-West and to her husband Harold Nicholson. Their views on marriage, open affairs, ‘free’ love, and the rest of it – most of it gay – appal him. How, in the name of all that is haughty and holy can ‘the keeper of the nation’s conscience’, allow it? Answer, if you would, Miss Matheson, please.

Easy: in brief, “Will that be all, Director General? I have work to do.”

Actually, that is far from all, as Reith has Matheson read his diary. Personal history will out and both characters are drawn sympathetically, if briefly, together.

Benny Young plays John Reith. It is the driven self-control, self-censorship, and the tight smile that gets you and the force of the interrogatory “Why?” Reith, momentarily wobbling, quotes Puck who will ‘put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes’ and you acknowledge that what Reith created at the BBC was unique and valuable. What Young gives us, also in forty minutes or so, is a more compassionate man than the unsparing biographies would suggest.

Lesley Hart is Hilda Matheson, who would have been forty-one in 1929; one year older than John Reith. Hart does not flinch once and plays Matheson as the extraordinary and successful woman she must have been. The script provides wit and intelligence enough but the confident bearing and sense of self-worth is Hart’s doing.

It is not on the wireless but you will want to listen in to Love With a Capital ‘L’. Its subject and its acting reward that kind of close attention.

 

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Reviewer: Alan Brown  (Seen 1 April)

Visit PPP Love With a Capital L homepage here.

‘Double Bill’ (Traverse: 27 – 29 March’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by

Double Bill

“Open-sourced quality”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

This is the Traverse Theatre Company’s starred pairing of Clean by Sabrina Mahfouz and of A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity by Douglas Maxwell; both plays directed by Orla O’Loughlin. Indisputable showcase productions, they’re looking sharp for the Brits Off-Broadway season on the 59E59 ‘A’ stage from 2nd to 27th April.

Clean is as in, “We searched her and her luggage and she was clean”. Only unapologetic protagonists Zainab, Chlöe and Katya, are not. It is just that they specialise in criminal work that scrubs up well: credit card fraud, emerald smuggling, and share price ‘protection’. They work and talk alone until one lucrative job and an evil Mr Big brings them together.

They make a game trio on the same spare platform, which is Mahfouz’s point. Clean is Bold Girls (at Level 1) on an Android OS: mobile, smart and sassy. Its story might as well be released for a PS4 console in search of female characters. Mahfouz’s on-off poetry is attractive with quick dialogue pressing hard on ‘Refresh’, providing feminist content and voice(s) within an all-user setting.

The performances display just as distinctly. Emma Dennis Edwards is Zainab. Hackney street-wise and ‘sick’, man; save that this is one sorted 23 year old who does not need a man in her life. She moves, sometimes raps, in-between poised, posh Chlöe (Jade Anouka) and Russki, Katya (Chloe Massey), whose accent is as hard, probably, as her steel toe-caps. OK it’s off-script, but you don’t ask Lara Croft if she has a younger sister, obvs.

Clean deserves to clean up in New York, which is more than Candy Crush’s listing managed.

A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity has the same open-sourced quality as Clean. It looks explicitly to class and culture but plays nicely alongside the character graphics of Mahfouz’s piece. Director Orla O’Loughlin puts this on second, probably because it is funnier, less edgy and virtual, I suppose. Regardless, the direction is just as tight.

Writer Douglas Maxwell describes it as “My Fair Lady in reverse”. Sounds good. Well-spoken Annabel from purlieus douce meets young employee Jim Dick at her husband’s funeral. He’s emphatically not James Dick of Dick Place, EH9, the most expensive street in Scotland. Annabel would converse, he cannot without tripping into his f’ing vernacular that embarrasses him and fascinates her. There you have it. Flippin’ Pygmalion flipped.

Joanna Tope is Annabel and has just to adjust her scarf for you to realise that she does not shop at Accessorize, as the spelling would appal her. Her speech is pitched so well that ‘cadence’ probably registered on her P1 report. Gavin Jon Wright as James plays very reluctant, wired, ‘teacher’ with the merriment of an actor who knows he has a gift of a part. See him on the terraces when Annabel goes one word too far!

A crude joke of a name ends the piece and has them both choking on their Big Macs. An appetite for language is always healthy.

 

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 27 March)

Visit Double Bill’s homepage here.

‘The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart’ (Assembly Roxy: 18 – 22 March ’14)

Posted in Assembly Roxy, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by
Photo: Johan Perrson

“Few playwrights would find the chutzpah to rhyme ‘dangerous speed’ with ‘Berwick-on-Tweed’, and even fewer would have the skill to make it funny…”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

It has been gathering acclaim for the last three years, so the chances are you’ve already heard of The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart.  And if you’ve picked up a passing reference to a few of its themes – witchcraft, devilry, a damsel dragged into Hell – you might be picturing a grimly ancient story, set on a desolate moor a handful of centuries ago.  But think again.  The eponymous Prudencia Hart isn’t a mediaeval wench, but a thoroughly modern and thoroughly capable woman.  And her “strange undoing” happens at a conference.  An academic conference.  In Kelso.

That’s just the first of the pleasant incongruities which define David Greig’s now-celebrated script.  He’s penned a bawdy and raucous play – but it’s shamelessly intellectual, too.  It pays homage to the fine traditions of the Border ballads, yet it derides those who try too hard to understand them.  And for this repeat run in Edinburgh, even the performance space is a kind of contradiction: built like a church, but laid out like a pub, with the audience clustered round tables and a well-stocked bar close at hand.

Echoing the ballads whose study is Prudencia’s life work, Greig’s script is written in verse – and like all the best examples of their type, his rhyming couplets invite groans as much as laughter.  Few playwrights would find the chutzpah to rhyme “dangerous speed” with “Berwick-on-Tweed”, and even fewer would have the skill to make it funny.  The boisterous, free-wheeling spirit of the poetry extends to the performance too; you’ll find you spend a fair part of the evening swivelling in your seat, as you strain to follow the actors cavorting around (and often atop) the bar tables.

Some of that cavorting isn’t for the faint of heart, but when you look past the music and the drunken ribaldry, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is far subtler than it seems.  Greig’s script is filled with sly self-references, and he frequently builds biting humour around things guaranteed to annoy the educated elite.  His characters are stereotypes, but oh-so-delightfully drawn – the feminist, the populist, the blokeish boor – and he’s particularly incisive in his deconstruction of Scottish academe, with its self-obsessive tendency to find fashionable hidden meanings among once-straightforward tales.

It’s a demanding production for the five-strong cast, who are required to be both strong actors and capable musicians too.  Melody Grove holds things together as the poised Prudencia, descending into a delightful blend of primly-accented profanity, as her day – no, her eternity – begins to go awry.  Some details of Wils Wilson’s direction stand out as well, especially the striking use of hand-held torches as Prudencia’s world turns to black.

But there’s one shortcoming which does, to a small but definable degree, undo Prudencia Hart.  Notwithstanding a few poignant interludes, the play only truly works when it barrels relentlessly forward – hurtling from jig to caper to karaoke session, never pausing, lest a moment’s hesitation let mood-killing cynicism creep back into its audience’s minds; but sometimes the barrel-ride stalls. Too often they go for one repetition too many, or prolong a joke for just a beat too long.  And when you do have time to watch with a more jaundiced eye, you suddenly realise that – for a two-and-a-half-hour play – both plot and character development are really rather thin.

But as Prudencia herself suggests, it’s folly to search too hard for a deeper meaning; sometimes, it’s enough to recognise beauty.  And this modern ballad does do something beautiful – it creates a precious sense of joy-filled unity, powerful enough to make a straight-laced Edinburgh audience sing and sway like a football crowd.  It’s not the most tightly-plotted narrative, but it’s a theatrical experience like almost no other.  If you’ve strangely missed Prudencia Hart for the last three years, undo that omission now.

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Reviewer: Richard Stamp (Seen 19 March)

Visit Prudencia Hart homepage here.

‘The Gentleman’s Stratagem’ (The Vault: 18 – 23 March ’14)

Posted in Other, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

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“Rebecca Smith, as Lady Henrietta, establishes herself across the emotional range of the script. When she’s happy, she’s happy. When she’s angry, Lord help you.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The traffic was bad coming in from Livingstone and the Current Mrs. Dan was feeling rushed. “I’m glad we’re seeing this tonight and not the other stuff you’ve seen this week,” she confided. We’re on the same page. Last November she’d been left unaccustomedly speechless by Charlotte Productions’ Goblin’s Story – the best thing I’ve seen since the Fringe.

For Gentleman’s Stratagem director Laura Witz took the same straightforwardly tangential approach to under-read literature of yesteryear. Her script is a remodeling of Maria Theresa Kemble’s Smiles and Tears, or The Widow’s Stratagem. Witz started by knocking through the script’s internal walls, reducing the original locations to a single, open plan scene set in the reception room and garden of a smart house in Richmond Upon Thames.

Lord Earnest Gerald, together with his friend Mr. Belmore, is attending a masque ball. Lord Earnest’s aunt, Mrs Stanly, wants him wed to the frightfully ambitious Lady Delaval, but Earnest has eyes only for Miss O’Donolan. Mr. Belmore is embroiled in litigation, his affairs are in a precarious state. Will the gents be able to find resolutions to their affairs among the studied graces of the smart set at play?

Witz is no embalmer. With the assured hand of the truly reverential, she surgically removed Kemble’s “sentimental narrative.” This would not have gone down well with the original audiences (a bolshy lot at the best of times), but for a 21st century audience the fashion for high melodrama is as remote as powdered wigs and smallpox.

Witz delivers a bright and breezy script, full of life, wit and sparkle. No one, but no one, does timing like Witz. The play runs not a moment too long or too short – its elegant proportions are genuine Georgian.

“They should have gone more Cruel Intentions and not tried to do it in costume.” I suggest afterwards.

“Rubbish!” The Current Mrs Dan was having none of it. “I loved the costumes. It was so P&P.”

I’m not sure what postage and packaging have to do with it, but on reflection the Austen-era costume was great fun and made the clothes swap at the centre of the plot properly entertaining.

The set, however, felt cluttered. The cane screen which severed the stage created too much dead space. Neither did it effectively delineate inside from outside, garden from ballroom, as was perhaps the intention.

Upstage right there’s a door from a mid-century suburban semi, with the handle on upside down. Why? There’s nothing similar on the opposite side also used for comings and goings. Overhead paper lanterns, set amid floating fabrics, flicker distractingly. The Vault might do chinoiserie – provided it’s of the Maoist, brutalist kind.

The start of the show was partially drowned out by an unsuitable cacophony. There was also a heater on full blast, until it was poked at with a stick. The music too eventually settled down to something more reflective and sedate.

George Selwyn Sharpe, who played Lord Earnest, must be one of those method actors. Other than deciding that his character had been traumatised by tales of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, I can’t think why he’d be sporting 5 o’clock shadow to a high class ball. He’s got strong stage presence, a confident mastery of his lines and a playful approach to their delivery, but Sweeney was a Victorian invention, so maybe Earnest can have a shave after all.

Michael Heard-Snow and Nuri Syed Corser are the yin and yang of footmen. Heard-Snow is poised, deferential, dry as Gin Lane. Syed Corser, by contrast, is a labradoodle in a tailcoat who ought to look to Catherine Livesey and Francesca Street for tips on the art of being supernumerary without being superfluous.

Rebecca Smith, as Lady Henrietta, establishes herself across the emotional range of the script. When she’s happy, she’s happy. When she’s angry, Lord help you. Her performance is the most in keeping with the direction of the script – primary colours not shades of grey.

The kindling romance between Florence Bedell-Brill as Lady Henrietta and Bryon Jaffe as Mr. Belmore was sophisticatedly adolescent, Wildian almost. Jaffe is moving up the batting order, mastering some bolder strokes than when I saw him in The Birds.

Saskia Ashdown as the villainous Lady Delaval struggles to find her inner bitch. Ashdown is young and pretty. She doesn’t quite inhabit the ageing, cloying, clawing Delaval. Similarly, Shannon Rollins as Mrs Stanly is not quite the dreadnaught doyenne. I can’t help but blame the cane screen – it has a such muting effect, not least because it so physically imposes on the limited space available.

I’d spent the day starting to reorder World FringeReview, the online hub for performers and reviews at Fringe festivals from Adelaide to Edinburgh. I made sure to keep up the many pictures of the late, hugely lamented Adrian Bunting – he who developed Kemble’s Riot into such a hit with audiences.

Bunting was fascinated by Maria Theresa Kemble and her family. I hope he’d have liked what Witz has done with one of her scripts, especially how she inverted the characters’ genders. Reverential yes, but where there might be disagreements of taste Witz remained respectful, while being right to make the changes she did.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 20 March)

Visit The Gentleman’s Stratagem‘s homepage here.

‘Bloody Trams; A Rapid Response’ (Traverse: 19 – 20 March ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by

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“The overall tone went a long way to suggesting that if the voice of the people is the voice of God, then stepping aboard a tram may incur the wrath of heaven.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

“You’ll have had your trams.” Not since Aneirin, court poet at Din Eidyn in the sixth century, rhymed ‘Ywain’ and ‘cairn’ has a line so pithily captured local frustration. The intervening history is spectacularly dotted with SNAFUs – Flodden, the muddleheaded wombatry of Edinbuggers during the ‘45, lacking Nashville’s knack of reconstructing Parthenons, and of course the reinstallation of the trams ripped out during the mid-twentieth century’s fetish for civic self-harm.

Joe Douglas, he of Educating Ronnie fame, has been out and about interviewing folk for their take on the city’s 7 year itch. Douglas arranged the material, collected from sources in and out of the loop, into 50 minutes of dramatically rendered vox pop. The overall tone went a long way to suggesting that if the voice of the people is the voice of God, then stepping aboard a tram may incur the wrath of heaven.

We enter to find an upright piano, manned stage right by David Paul Jones; a fluorescent jacket hanging on a coat stand far upstage centre; and two chairs downstage, leftish, occupied by Nicola Roy and Jonathan Holt. To the sound of Jones’ seductive tickling of the ivories – “Once I built a railroad, now it’s done, Brother, can you spare a dime?” – Roy and Holt set out to distill Douglas’ captured voices into a lotion of essential oil.

It’s not always clear if this balm is intended to soothe or aggravate. At times I get to wondering where lies the line between satire, sackcloth and ashes. Tribal identity is a strange thing. If a bloke’s kickball team teeters on the edge of relegation he feels personally embarrassed. If his cooncil ignorantly mismanages a major infrastructure project he feels personally shamed.

Several of the interviewees argued that the trams would damage Edinburgh’s reputation. Perhaps I am too divorced from the starched self-regard of the city’s professional classes, but I suspect globetrotters will not be crossing Auld Reekie off their to do list because of the trams – it would be like avoiding the Nuit Blanche festival because Toronto’s mayor likes the hard stuff.

Roy and Holt heave and rally, dragging up the dead weight (after all there is only so much entertainment to be drawn from the politics of civil engineering) with style and flare. Watching them is like observing a competitive game of dress up, as each leaps into the voice (if not always the movement) of the character they are inhabiting.

Roy was flawless: dynamic control matched by a powerful delivery. Holt might have been this too, only his villainous German contractor accent (surely there was comedy gold to be had there) was so bad he’d have struggled to be admitted to the cast of ‘Allo ‘Allo!

My old Newcastle People’s Theatre pal Tom Saunders on the sound and lighting desk did what he does best, being artful without being showy. Despite the minimalist staging, Saunders created 3 distinct spaces with an interplay of sparingly applied foundation. If, for the sake of a Cancer Research promoting selfie, this production decided to do without his makeup it might well have appeared noticeably more harassed and haggard.

This was a serious-minded production for serious-minded people. Although I didn’t stay for the after show talk, I had a prior engagement to gnaw my own leg off, I would like to have seen Douglas producing something beyond the earnest range he conquered in Educating Ronnie. He does a great line in upfront sincerity – as does Edinburgh’s most recent famous son, Tony Blair.

The use of recorded prompts feeding into the ears of Roy and Holt was a bold move. It provided meaty monologue on short notice, might have gone horribly wrong, but paid off handsomely. For all that Holt isn’t going to be playing Willy Brandt any time soon, (he does a fine impression of his director BTW), both he and Roy demonstrated a discipline under pressure matched only by their lightness of touch. The clay rose from their wheel into an innovative, engaging piece of fringe theatre.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 19 March)

Visit Bloody Trams homepage here.