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The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter: April 2010
Review by Colin Archer
The Shepperton Players treated us to a fluent, brilliantly cast, and intelligent production of this remarkable and difficult play.
The set faithfully followed that prescribed by the author. The Director, Steve Lewis, had a choice between the dull dinginess of a boarding house of the 1950s and the bright stage lighting needed to appreciate all the nuances of the acting, wisely opting for the latter, and ably supported by the lighting designer and operator.
The first actor to appear, Roland Fahey, made a very convincing Petey, a solid and somewhat stolid figure who opts out of much of the action by heading out to his job as a deck-chair attendant. The moment we met Meg we realised that this man is in no sense ‘head of the household’. He was more than reasonably patient, and only slightly tetchy, in the inconsequential breakfast exchanges with Meg which included some absurd questions which, however innocuous, prefigured the even more absurd question which, with truly evil intent, the men in black would later use to torment the lodger.
It is difficult to imagine a better portrayal of Meg than that of Gill Lambourn. We saw first her dowdy, shapeless, mid-1950s, housewifely clothes (only one example of the excellent work of Chantal Suppanee who was responsible for costumes). Then came the little-girl voice which, despite some echoes of Frank Spenser’s wife Betty, Irene Handl, and even Pam Ayres, proved one which Gill quickly made all her own – or rather Meg’s. Then came the movement, that of a woman ill at ease in her own body, one minute awkwardly jerky, the next minute hovering uneasily and sometimes inappropriately.
What holds this character together? - starting off as a seemingly dutiful housewife; then becoming all-mumsy to her lodger; next suggestively sexual towards him with hints of what might be happening when she takes him tea in bed, and with her insistence on reading a sexual dimension to the word ‘succulent’; finally becoming a little girl herself with her childish delight in the idea of paying Blind Man’s Buff (still awkward in a party dress inappropriate for the occasion). In fact Gill did hold all these sides together into a convincing whole, a slightly simple and decidedly neurotic woman past her prime. A weak woman too, one who, like may weak people, can suddenly burst out uncontrollably, as she did at mention of a wheelbarrow. Gill made much of this reference, aware that it is an important piece of foreshadowing.
Meg is a very important character in the play, but the central character is the lodger Stanley played faultlessly by Howard Tame. Here is another weak character who can suddenly burst out in fury, and here is another actor who can highlight an important piece of foreshadowing by his slow and careful removal and polishing of his spectacles, revealing how short-sighted he is without them. He is a born victim.
His outfits (thank you Chantal) were exactly right for a person close to being a nonentity, a man half-living between fantasy pasts and a fantasy future, with even a fantasy present thrown in when it might be useful - such as claiming to be the Manager of this Boarding House (soon after denying that it is a Boarding House at all).
I cannot help wondering if Howard has researched such characters in psychiatric units. I have encountered such patients - often described as sociopaths, or as suffering from personality disorders. In this role Howard has certainly got them to a T.
Stanley has only a shaky sense of self and it would take little to undermine or destroy even that. And when McCann and Goldberg appear to do their “job” on him he is soon like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights – or in this case the torchlight. As Stanley slipped into incoherence Howard could still give him some skilful body language, as in the languid and puzzled half-lifting of the head at the mention of Basingstoke. His final arrival in a catatonic state, and ultimately into the anguished howl of some wild animal, were portrayed terrifyingly well.
This takes me to Goldberg and McCann, entering (thank you Director and Chantal) in black suits like undertakers – which is what, in a sense, they are. Each of these, like other characters here, lacks convincing identities. Is McCann really a recently defrocked priest? This hardly fits with the violence in which he demands that Stanley confess. Was Goldberg really once an apprentice vet? Surely such a person would not treat even an animal as cruelly as he treats Stanley, reducing him to little more than an animal himself. Alistair Ross gave McCann an utterly convincing Irish accent. His obsessive tearing of newspaper into strips was worryingly neurotic. His capacity for menacing stillness, and his sudden movements to cut off Stanley’s escapes, were handled really well. His sudden extreme violence when it came was by then half expected. Clive Tibbits as Goldberg read typically Jewish sentence structure into – or imposed it upon – many of his lines in a way which I had not detected when simply reading the script. Together they provided the mood of menace which came to dominate the play. Their quick-fire interrogation of Stanley was simply lethal. I was reminded of the Soviet show trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and Kafka, in the way no explicit charges were set out, and no time given for the defendant to reply. Poor, poor, Stanley.
I round off this survey of the cast with Sophie Tame, who delighted us with her performance as the Fairy Godmother Glynis in Sleeping Beauty, and was now cast as Lulu. This is not a part with anywhere near as much for an actor to get her teeth into as the major parts in The Birthday Party. But when Sophie got her chance, right at the end, she seized it with both hands, roundly berating Goldberg for ‘taking advantage’ of her – after we had seen her the previous evening throwing herself, literally and substantially, upon him!
This sudden opportunity at the end takes me back to where I started this review, to Roland Fahey’s Petey. He, too, has his big moment right at the end and seized it memorably. This is when he suddenly realised – or at least sensed – the gravity of the situation, and shouted at Goldberg and McCann “Leave him alone”, then to Stanley “Don’t let them tell you what to do”.
Steve Lewis as Director paced the play very well, allowing - encouraging perhaps - a relaxed slow start which established a kind of everyday domestic life, and which gave every chance for the main characters to establish themselves with the audience. It was like a powerful engine building up steam, and by the end hurtling to destruction. Steve certainly drew the best out of this very strong cast, and drew out what I regard as – in technical critical jargon – the ‘Controlling Idea’, which in this play is the unreliability and fragility of identity, whether it being the conflicting elements of selfhood within Meg, the shifting (shifty even) pasts (and even names) of other central characters, or the dismantling and destruction on stage of the Stanley’s very being, almost as terrifying in an emotional sense as the physical putting out of Gloucester’s eyes in King Lear.
All who participated in The Birthday Party can – if they are inclined to do so – rest on the laurels they richly deserve for this memorable production.
The Sleeping Beauty by David Cregan: January 2010
Review by Colin Archer
The children in the audience clearly enjoyed this Pantomime, judged by their boos of the villain, their engagement in the repartee, their ready participation in the game of Grandmother’s Footsteps up on stage, but above all by their faces and voices at the interval and again at the end of the show. Kids are, of course, the most important members of the audience at Panto, not just because for some it may be the first steps in a lifetime of enjoyment of theatre.
Typical of Shepperton Players who never settle for the easy option, this panto makes heavy demands on the Director and set designers - demands such as a dream scene and an impassable wood which could only be met on a modest stage by great ingenuity. Emma Dow, as Director, brought just such ingenuity to the task: a minor triumph of staging, with lots of delightful touches such as the footsteps on flight after flight of off-stage stairs of the tower which we heard before the Princess arrived at stage level.
In the cross-dressing comic Dame role Mark Woollard was a commanding presence, holding scene after scene together in a fine performance as both Dame and Nanny. This character’s baby-speak was a joyful satire on this common way of addressing babies, and the frequently out-of-tune singing simply reinforced the comic dimension. The baby’s OTT mobile cot was a witty prop.
This Panto does not play to the Shepperton Players strengths, which do not lie in singing. Luke Spencer as Musical Director played the keyboard with skill and oomph, ensured the five-person Chorus put up a good show, but could not overcome the weaknesses of most of the individual actors. Helpful Persons 1 and 2 – Ron Millinger and Karina Haywood - were wise – in fact helpful – when they intoned their songs in the style of Rex Harrison. They went on to straddle the set and audience with seeming ease, shrugged off frequent sackings, and did much to help things along. I especially enjoyed their spoof trumpets.
Keith Doyle played King Robert with the right combination of mighty frame and weak will, entering – with credit to the Costume Department – in pyjamas and a nightcap on top of which was a precariously perched crown, an instant pointer to his comic character. In fact all the costumes were excellent throughout.
It was clearly this King’s namesake King Robert the Bruce who led the author to introduce the menacing spider descending scarily upon the heads of the Court, and even managing – in an unscripted encore which especially delighted the children - to join in the dancing, just one element of the choreography by Gill Lambourn which helped many scenes of this production. This spider was the second non-speaking part which nearly stole a scene, the first being the opener dominated by the raucous crying of the new-born baby, the first sign that this new Princess was not going to be all sweetness and light.
No wonder mother Queen Cynthia could not cope, played convincingly here by Olwen Holme as a pathetic and lachrymose little thing, with more traces of the beggar woman she played in Sweeney Todd than of the beautiful young Lucy that beggar woman had once been.
Peter Smith as the Archbishop worried me. He seemed stiff and ill-at-ease on this stage. Was this a weak stage presence? Or was it a good reading of the stiffness often associated with senior Clerics, and how any Archbishop would feel ill-at-ease-thrust into such a crazy Court? Remembering Peter’s very different and confident performance as the wicked Judge in Sweeney Todd, I think it must be the latter.
The three good Fairy Godmothers could easily have been written and performed as much of a muchness. But just as the members of the Greek Chorus in The Trojan Women (also directed by Emma Dow) were given distinctive characters, so it is with the fairies, with acting constantly and strongly re-enforcing the distinctive identities pointed to in the script: Sophie Tame as Glynis, the comic one; Sally Penman as Blanche, the relatively normal one; and Caroline Millinger as the raw ‘apprentice’ one on whom in the end everything depends. Together they made a delightful trio.
Then Enter –with a dramatic flash and boom - the wicked one, Maultash, played with full venom by Stacey Gramlich, who deserved every boo she got (though not for her acting!). I cannot imagine a better performance in this role. Her every entrance was dramatic, most from the left as is the Panto tradition for all evil characters: sinister in both senses of the word.
And so to Princess Rose, the character the whole Panto is supposedly about. Sarah Oliver brought to this role just the right mix of headstrong petulance required, a girl much of whose attraction rested on her voice, one of a lascivious innocence reminiscent of the young Barbara Windsor. I feared for any man or Prince doomed to marry this spoilt darling.
In the second gender-swap required in Panto, Kirstyn Luton was amiable as the humble stable boy and modest when turned Prince, no more the standard heroic Prince than Rose was the standard perfect Princess. I worried about their future together!
The King’s final Proclamation that everyone was ‘going to live happily ever after’ would probably turn out to be as ineffectual as his constant sackings of the Helpful Persons, and I started to expect a sequel in which Maultash triumphs as Prince and Princess, and Archbishop and Nurse, are divorced. But then I remembered that this is all a fairy tale, and things like this do not happen except – of course - in real life.
What, then, did this production add up to, at least to an adult, or rather just this adult? I have enjoyed a lifetime of Pantomimes and am glad I came, though I did not leave the theatre with quite the delight of those key members of the audience, the kids. I knew that I had experienced a rather more than competent production, one better than most amateur dramatic societies would have attempted or managed, but this was not of the very best standard that I (a mere adult in the Panto world) have come to expect from the Shepperton Players.
And a Nightingale Sang by C.P.Taylor: October 2009
Review by Colin Archer
This play has travelled far in both place and time: set in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the 1940s, written and first produced there in 1973, transferred to London in 1979, and now, in 2009, scene-shifted to Hull and brought to Sunbury. And it has travelled well, thanks to the skill of the writing and the talents of the Shepperton Players.
The set made excellent use of the limited space available, centred as it was on a well-realised kitchen/dining room of the period with a half partitioned scullery and a corner which doubled up as a bedroom dressing table. Then the space in front of this set became many other things, and one of the delights is how characters could go out of the ‘door’ at the back of the kitchen only to re-appear from the wings after a few moments to arrive at a park bench, dance hall, air raid shelter, hotel room etc, the exact setting depending, as it does in Shakespeare, on the language of the play and the imagination of the audience.
The greatest initial impact came from the shallow, sentimental, superstitious, flighty, indecisive Joyce Stott (Helen Doyle), her of the incisive make-up and terrifying 1940s hairdo. “Stop being in a picture” says her sister, for this indeed is where Joyce seems to imagine herself, playing a part in some romantic Hollywood film. In the opening scenes she nearly stole the show, and although her role became less central as the play went on, her impressive range of facial expressions was there whenever called upon: utter terror at an air raid, recoil from the thought of sex with her husband, disgust at the offer of pink French knickers, fear when she thought she was pregnant, panic when she discovered that her husband was not the father. But the most memorable moment came when she learnt that her ‘perfect’ sister was going to live in sin, whereupon she stood, arms firmly folded, half looking away, with her face expressing in quick succession – and sometimes even simultaneously – dismay, wry amusement, unaccustomed primness, disapproval, moral superiority, mischief, and delight. Joyce is in many respects her mother’s daughter; just wait a couple of decades or so. For this actress, her face will be her stage fortune. Joyce remained the same from beginning to end, as did this excellent performance.
Joyce’s sister Helen (Emma Dow) has a more complex role. Firstly, it has a pivotal role: as narrator she holds the play together, while as central character she holds the Stott family together – for as long as she can. This required Emma to slip in and out of frame which she achieved smoothly (as she had as Cook/Narrator in The Canterbury Tales). Secondly, it called for a development in both the character and our reaction to her, and Emma paced theses changes with skill. The only element which might have been paced more convincingly was her lameness. Even allowing for “a bad day for my ankle” and the assertion that it worsened under stress, the degree of lameness varied rather more erratically than it should, especially in the opening scenes where there was little evidence for her family nickname ‘the cripple’.
Whereas Joyce ‘tries on’ emotions for fit Helen’s feelings are obviously authentic throughout and it is this which moves us. She clearly cares about all members of the Stott family, who she describes as “all sort of stuck there”, and is forever trying to smooth things over Her own low self-image is convincing: “I felt really funny, and awkward, and ugly, and a mess” she says as she sets out on her first sort-of-date with Norman, at which her body language is indeed gawky. But then came “he held my hand!” and she was suddenly a picture of surprised delight. Next came the astonished rapture when she found she could dance after all – and Helen warned our hearts. Later, in a daring breach of frame, she looked straight out at the audience with a mischievous grin as if to say “look what I’ve done” (and was that a wink?) as she told the hotel landlady “Yes, we’re married”. Emma made us care so much for Helen that when we discovered that Norman was far from the “straightforward chap” he called himself, I for one could have wept for her: another tiny and only too typical tragedy of war. This play has been called ‘bitter–sweet’, but at least this most bitter bit is finally made more palatable by Helen’s realisation “Now I know I deserve somebody worthwhile”. Helen, unlike her sister, has gone on a journey of growth, one which Emma led us to follow: a performance of substance.
It is difficult to see how these two girls could be daughters of the same mother, Peggy Stott, played by Gill Lambourn (Was this really the same Gill Lambourn who played Hecuba in the Euripides? What a range!). Here is a neurotic and manic version of Nellie Bosworth played by Jean Boht in Carla Laine’s 1980s sitcom ‘Bread’. Peggy, not her husband, is supposedly the head of this household, but who even in their right minds could hold together such a disparate collection of individuals? All are lost in their individual obsessions: Joyce in her fantasy Hollywood, George in his piano and later his Communism, Grandfather in his dead whippet and precious cat. Certainly not someone with their own obsession, one even more extreme than the rest, a woman trapped in a form of religious mania. Here, like that of Helen, is a role requiring, and receiving in full measure, development over time. Initially merely shrill, quirky, and mildly hilarious, Peggy’s mania grows with events: guilt with sinful thoughts when the Priest touches the back of her hand, guilt that it is her failure in due observance which caused the air raid, and the bomb which deliberately picked out her husband (or so she thought), and even the War itself. As the mania grew and took over, Gill paced the descent into panic, desperation, freneticism, and near-incoherence. A tour-de-force indeed.
Her much put-upon husband George (Peter Smith) impressed at first with his piano playing and then (when realisation slowly dawned) with his skilful miming of piano playing (though I wondered whether a slightly out-of-tune piano, or one with a few broken strings, might have fitted the place and time rather better (piano tuners and repairers being in short supply in the War – and expensive for a family like this). I would have wished his own obsession – with the piano – to have come over more clearly, and his later position on the Shop Stewards Committee to be more believable in such a mild-mannered man. But where this performance scored is when George officiously and comically tried out his Warden’s authority on poor grandfather with his cat. Here was a jobsworth of a man par excellence.
Grandfather Andie, played by Steve Lewis (one time Igor in Carpe Jugulum) as a lugubrious pessimist, was a delight from beginning to end, providing much of the light relief, a script which Steve delivered to our maximum delight. “Dying is not as deadly as people think" he intoned. And his account of the deaf widow he planned to marry is, in the lightest sense of the word, wicked. Here was a comic counterpart to King Lear, both being passed from one reluctant sister to another and both asking ‘what is man?’ The tragic Lear, stripped of everything on the heath, concluded that man adds up to nothing, while the comic Andie came up with the priceless-seeming nonsense that “people are not human beings”, a statement which Steve uttered with solemn weight, and which, in the context of the total war then being waged, contains a nugget of wisdom worthy of Lear’s Fool.
This, then, is the Stott family into which the military intrude at their peril, and under the fluent direction of Diana Denton-Baker the cast convincingly realise the strange family dynamics in which typically members do not so much talk with each other as at, across, and against each other. Nobody seems to listen. The faulty communication reminds me at various points of Beckett, Pinter, and Alan Ayckbourn. This is a family which would probably, these days, be described as dysfunctional, though for better or worse they are all in it together for the Duration of the War (where there is a common enemy, albeit one often less troubling than folk among their own number and visiting soldiery). The play is punctuated by the progress of the actual War, by the popular songs of the day (well performed by the cast), and by that great wartime morale-booster ‘cups of tea’ the provision or promise of which are wittily highlighted by the cast. It is also punctuated by something which suggests that real affection exists, and that is the very telling and typically British denial of any such thing: any attempt at emotional closeness between members of the family or their guests is met again and again with the phrase ‘Don’t be daft’ – most effectively when George makes a move towards his wife. Here the acting underlines the deeper meaning of the words.
And so to the suitors, starting with Eric (Chris Pavlou). The script itself gives few clues to Eric’s inner world, but his actions themselves speak volumes about his motivation and character. Here is a man insensitive enough to get a ring ‘from a tart’ let alone to tell Joyce that’s where he got it. Chris showed this insensitivity; all the frustrated patience of a man desperate for a bit of sex before a lot of death; the judgement which could even begin to see Joyce as good wife material; the fecklessness which could lose a rifle (least of all in a ‘bog’); and the type of weakness which can only express anger in a torrent of uncouth language like that with which he eventually assaults Peggy’s ears. That was when we saw most of Eric, and Chris exploited this to the dramatic full.
Howard Tame (remembered as Verence II in Carpe Jugulum) played the other suitor Norman with a marvellous Brummie accent to contrast with the Yorkshire accents which other members of the cast managed more successfully than they might have the original Geordie). He brought an open face which made Helen – and probably us – believe his story of being a straightforward sort of bloke, albeit none too bright. His later prevarication and confessions came over as a sign not so much of evil intent but of weakness at a time of quick passions, imagined romances, and painful betrayals. This was an intelligent and measured performance. Poor Helen.
All the performances were enhanced with good costumes and props courtesy of Pat Champion, Chantal Suppanee and Pauline Hutton and also with excellent lighting and sound from Richard Smith and Jonathan Millinger.
Overall, the play itself is brilliant, not least of all how it undercuts and domesticates aspects of the War with some well-realised moments of black humour such as the whistle of a bomb turning out to be the whistle of the scullery kettle, George’s playing of the Last Post not on a bugle but on a mouth organ, the use of a lifesaving baby respirator for a cat, and Norman’s anguished question following his admission that he was married only to be met with Helen’s pragmatic ‘I’ve brought some ginger beer’. Shepperton Players brought to this play a performance of a high standard under a direction which was fine both in overall structure and in tiny detail (such as changing the Geordie ‘netty’ to the common ‘bog’). Well done all round.
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Christopher Bond
In Sweeney Todd we enter a dark Dickensian world of corruption and human degradation, a society to which one could rightly apply the ancient Latin tag Canis Canem Edit / Dog Eat Dog, although here we move up the food chain to Man Eat Man – simply turning the metaphorical into the literal.
Once again Shepperton Players bravely chose a difficult play, and once again showed the number of skilful actors they can draw on.
Sally Penman made an irredeemably evil but utterly believable Mrs
Lovett, a cockney after your own heart - if only she could pop it into
one of her meat pies. With an impassive face she still managed to
impart a deep chill to the words “You’re so lovely I
could eat you up”. She was more the villain - the
‘Demon’ even - than Sweeney Todd, which is exactly what
is required.
Olwen Holme as the Beggar Woman – eventually revealed as Lucy – wheedled away convincingly as she sought “alms for a poor unfortunate woman”, backing away fearfully every time her appeals were rejected. A delightful feature was the endless hand tremor induced no doubt by her years of incarceration in the Bedlam-like Asylum.
Robert Hardy successfully doubled-up – or rather trebled up – in sharply contrasting roles, none more impressive than that of Jonas Fogg as the keeper of the Asylum once used to house Lucy and now housing daughter Johanna. His own insanity was revealed bit by bit at breakneck speed. His well-delivered justification that the only true madness is to lock up people in Asylums gave a dimension of social satire to an already complex play.
Belinda Doyle’s Johanna was a pure delight, every inch the wronged maiden, full of grace, and with the singing voice of an Angel. Her rejection of her Ward’s lascivious advances was pure melodrama both in the script she was given and the way she spoke the words “The grave shall rather have my maidenhead then marry you.” Belinda’s range was hugely evident when she froze in horror, her shoulders hunched up in tension, as she looked upon the bodies of the couple we knew to be her parents.
Philip L Milne made Anthony, who is already marked as a hero by having saved the Barber’s life at sea, went on to make just the fresh-faced clean-living worldly-experienced suitor for such an innocent maiden. They made a fine pair indeed.
Peter Smith made a suitably cynical, self-seeking and villainous Judge, Joanna’s Ward and wouldbe seducer. The self-knowledge which led to his self-flagellation was one of many pointers that this play is very much more than Victorian Melodrama: we could not envisage Squire Corder of the archetypal Victorian melodrama Maria Marten or Murder on the Old Red Barn engaging in such an activity. Having made the point so forcefully, it is a pity that Peter took quite so long to dress himself again when this might have been done off-stage.
The Judge’s side-kick the bumptious Beadle was presented by Geoff Buckingham with just the right degrees of unsavoury body and manner: he made me half-believe that if I was nearer to the stage than Row F he would smell even worse than the human remains in Mrs Lovett’s basement, a stench which he was sent to investigate.
In Alfredo Pirelli (Clive Tibbits) we were back with pure melodrama: here, if anywhere, was the classic moustache-twirling black-hearted male villain, a figure of unmitigated evil, here attempting blackmail. I was not at all sorry to have him filling meat pies.
Sally Warner as his assistant Tobias, later assistant to Mrs Lovett, has a tricky role, described elsewhere as somewhat slow-witted but required by the part to act as a suitable applicant for any‘Smart Lad Wanted’ advert, moving around with alacrity. In an interesting and good piece of casting, Sally does the latter well, and I suppose we can’t expect to see whether Tobias’s mind is moving at a similar pace.
The production was backed up by a clever set, including a convincing
cabin trunk placed handily for bodies (one which closed with a loud
bang to provide original pieces of punctuation), and an ingenious
barber’s chair which could carry bodies off at an impressive
speed. I must also mention the music by Steve Lewis which established
the atmosphere and, at the opening of Act II, tightened the tension by
one more notch.
At the start of this review I suggested that Sweeney Todd is a difficult play – a deceptively difficult perhaps. It is ultimately in the hands of the Director and of the actor playing Sweeney Todd (both in this case James Wallis) that any production stands or falls. This production did neither. It came close, but stumbled. There are two big challenges to be met and surmounted to totally succeed.
The first is to bring out fully that this play has greater depth than a Victorian Melodrama. This was certainly recognised in this production, though not brought out to a sufficient degree. The play is, in many ways, like a late Elizabethan/early Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, with roots less in Maria Martin than in Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. It contains some of the sine qua non of that old genre, including several hints of a ghost starting with the Beggar Woman’s shocked half recognition of Sweeney “Your face!” and Mrs Lovett’s opening reaction “Are you a ghost?” And am I right in detecting in the shaving and tooth-pulling contest the relics of the usual play-within-a play? Most importantly, Sweeney Todd, despite his unforgivable actions, has a clear and understandable motive: he has been massively wronged, “I will be revenged” he declares, and “I will have blood”, echoing Kyd’s Hieronimo’s “Naught but blood will satisfy my woes” (III.7). While Mrs Lovett would, no doubt, happily continue using an endless supplies of human meat, Sweeney is not – despite the play’s subtitle - a pure ‘Demon’. He would be content simply to revenge himself by taking the life of the evil Judge who stole and – he believes – killed his lovely young wife. Seeing the Judge coming he says “One more and my work is done.” He will use Mrs Lovett to dispose of the evidence of his misdeeds, but holds her in contempt: there was to be no seaside retirement with that woman. As the brilliant Miller in The Canterbury Tales James Wallis would no doubt have made first-rate flour for the crusts of Mrs Lovett’s pies, but in the career move as the provider of meat to fill those pies he failed to reach the same heights. James filled the stage, albeit rather stiffly, and performed the words themselves well enough, but he did not, until the very late stages of the play, demonstrate the range of emotions – and above all of body language – required for us to feel sufficient empathy for the fellow, something which is surely required.
The second challenge arises from the number and frequency of scene-changes in this play. Many of these were too slow; some rather noisy and clumsy; one, early in Act II, maybe in a trick of the lighting, allowed us to see through the white screen, albeit in shadowy form, the frantic efforts of the stage hands: very distracting from the scene being played out in front of the screen. Too often the impetus of the play was lost. We needed crisper scene-changes. I don’t know how this might be achieved which is why I am merely a lower-case critic, not a Capital Director! I do wonder about doubling up of the title character and the Director. Maybe each needed to observe the other’s work independently.
This production, then, for all its many merits, did not in the end quite attain the very high standard I have come to expect from the Shepperton Players.
One final good point: Gillian Lambourn as prompt was either redundant or extremely skilful in her whispering. In either case, Shepperton Players come out well.
Canterbury Tales : Chaucer made modern by Phil Woods and Michael Bogdanov: February 2009
Review by Colin Archer
I doubt if Shepperton Players have ever given better value for money. Director Gill Lambourn opened with an inspired piece of casting in which Emma Dow became simultaneously MC and Cook. This role gave shape to the whole evening from the opening, through the constant verbal tussles with the churlish Miller (James Wallis) - who sat in the audience larger then life and twice as uncouth - to the Finale.
Music was provided by the delightful five-piece Medieval Medlers who made modern instruments sound remarkably Fourteenth Century. The lighting in the hands of Richard Smith also made a subtle but significant contribution to the whole.
The Knight’s Tale is the longest, and most difficult to stage with conviction. Both Howard Tame (as Palamon) and Alistair Ross (Arcite) showed their dramatic range in the Pardoners Tale and the Franklin’s Tale. But while both gave creditable accounts in their initial roles as warring nobles in the Knight’s Tale, neither was at his convincing best in this tale of chivalry.
We were, however, instantly rewarded with one of the highlights of the evening, the Nun Priest’s Tale introduced by Doris Neville-Davies in black habit, every inch the Nun. From first cockcrow, Chris Stotesbury (briefly released from his ‘cello) made a magnificent preening cockerel Chanticlere, and Sally Warner a superb chicken Pertilote. Their every movement from jerking necks to scrabbling feet, were pure poultry. In this they were joined by equally able chicks, and the movement of the chicks about the farmyard was well choreographed. James Wallis reappeared transmuted into the lethal sweet-talking Fox. Sally Parker was the hapless Farmer’s Wife making some skilful dramatic stage tumbles (which would not, I am sure, account for this being her only appearance of the evening). Follow that!
What followed was the Tale related by The Pardoner, now updated to Social Worker. At the heart of the tale were Tom, Dick, and Harry - roles in which the erstwhile Palamon and Arcite seemed very much more at home, being joined by young Nick Hampshire. Diana Denton-Baker as the Old Lady provided one of the excellent cameo performances of the evening (others including Marion Millinger as the Miller’s Wife and Olwen Holme as the Guru).
As the narrator in the Reeve’s Tale, Eric Champion, previously the Knight’s Jailor and later Carpenter John, revealed both his lean legs and his strong stage presence to good effect. Howard Tame as student John, looking much like Rupert the Bear on a ripping wheeze, was happily joined again by Nick Hampshire as fellow student Alan. Together they gave a good account both as seeming innocents abroad and later as scheming thieves after more than the Miller’s corn. As the Miller’s wife and daughter, Marion Millinger and Robyn Watts were suitably sexy but grounded, with nice singing voices and Marion’s face at key points was brilliantly expressive. Here, and in other Tales, we enjoyed the imaginative upright beds occupied by less than upright folk.
After an interval, we returned with the Merchant’s Tale where Peter Smith excelled himself as a gormless, bumbling, desperately keep-fitting, old man, and was ably aided and abetted by Roland Fahey (a competent future King) as his incompetent friend Justinus. Caroline Millinger convinced both as the innocuous virgin and the devious adulterer, with a slipperiness enough to worry any male. Sally Penman was a delightful Proserpine always having the upper hand over her amusingly grumpy king.
Old friends from many previous tales soon returned in fresh roles, joined now by Helen Warner as Dorigen in the Franklyn’s Tale: Shepperton Players clearly has strength in depth Diana Denton-Baker made a fine worldly-wise Wife of Bath, with Robert Hardy, Knight from the opening Tale, retuning as another Knight. The magical transformation of the Hag (well acted by Cathy Dunn) into a young beauty (Caroline Millinger) was a well-managed coup de theatre.
The ‘mucky’ Miller’s Tale lived up to expectations, with an excruciatingly believable red-hot poker to punish the sins of the flesh. Sophie Hellicar obviously revelled in the role of the “outgoing” wife always on the lookout for a bit of fun and the multitalented Nick Hampshire demonstrated a fine singing voice. This was an hilarious fitting near-ending to the evening’s entertainment saving for the Cook’s taking centre stage and the whole cast receiving well-deserved applause.
This was a decisive ending, and I would have wished more of the stories to have reached clearer minor endings; too often there was an awkward pause both for actors and audience while the latter became sure it was time to applaud.
Overall, this was another tremendous success for both Gill Lambourn and the whole cast. Chaucer would have been proud of them.
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett: October 2008
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are among the
funniest, cleverest, and best loved in modern literature. Now award
winning writer Stephen Briggs has brought them to life for the stage.
If you aren’t familiar with the novels don’t worry, just
think Monty Python meets The Adams Family and get ready to laugh. In
Carpe Jugulum the politically aware witches are called upon to defend
the kingdom of Lancre from a family of new-age vampires. It begins on a
joyous occasion when the progressive King Verence has invited various
dignitaries to attend the christening of the royal baby. Unfortunately,
Granny Weatherwax’s invitation has gone missing and when you
invite vampires in they’re not inclined to leave quietly. Can
the power of Lancre’s witches defeat vampires who aren’t
afraid of losing their socks? Can the inner, thinner voice of Agnes
Nitt make herself heard? Will Igor’s self-surgery leave you in
stitches? Can the novice Omnian priest do anything useful at all? Find
out as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comes to Sunbury.
Review by Colin Archer
I came to this play expecting to be disappointed. Discworld is an acquired taste, one which I had failed to acquire. Then I read that the running time of the play was two-and-a-half hours, and doubted whether I, or many of the audience, could sustain attention.
I was so wrong. I left the theatre at 11pm delighted by the whole riveting experience.
The play opens to a skilful, solid, and convincing set designed by Ron Millinger which provides six main spaces which easily accommodate the fifteen locations specified in the text. I loved some of the witty touches, especially the familiar black-and-yellow cover of the ‘Dummies Guide to Witchcraft’.
Full marks also go to those responsible for the many props (the Doyle family), for special effects (Pat Langley), slick lighting changes (Jonathan Millinger and Richard Smith) and for sound (Stephen Millinger) for the many dead-on-cue deliveries.
Olwen Home directed at a flowing pace which ensured that we did get away by 11pm, but not too fast for us to miss some of the wit.
Not one of the 21 actors was less than competent, and most were good.
In this production it was some of the smaller parts which were among those performed most memorably: Roland Fahey as The Old Count, Hugh Thomson as Death, Keith Doyle as The Border Troll, and the delightful method-acting of Sally Warner as that ultimate mongrel, Scraps.
Turning to more substantial parts, special mention must be made of Caroline Millinger as Perdita the thin witch trapped inside Agnes Nitt, the large one played by Robyn Watts. Robyn was a star, but even she was at times outshone by her alter ego who followed her faithfully everywhere, sometimes leaning, languid, bored, examining her fingernails, at other times passionately angry as Agnes fell under a vampire spell.
Among the vampires I enjoyed the quiet menace of Ron Millinger’s Count and Sue Dye’s loving but truly chilling wife and mother, but was especially impressed by the “children“ - Vlad, played by Philip L Milne as the spoilt-brat product of a very minor English Public School, and the virulent blood-lusting Lacrimosa played by Belinda Doyle who reminded me of a very minor Royal.
Turning back to the Witches, Nanny Ogg, played by Lorna Doyle in the longest Witch part, was the best. Awkward, determined, defiant, down-to-earth, she exploited to the full the language given to her. It wasn’t just the fact that we never knew what she would dig out next from her voluminous knickers that held our attention at all times.
Sally Penman - who gave a nice performance as the former Witch now Queen - had a difficult role. Somehow she had to persuade us that she was now every bit a Queen (in which she succeeded), but also that she was until recently a full-bloodied Witch (which we found hard to believe)
Even more difficult was the Joy McQuade part as Granny Weatherwax, a pivotal role in the whole story-line. She appeared very much the witch, and gave the part a sensitive reading.
Two other Major parts were played triumphantly:
One, Steve Lewis was a comic masterpiece as Igor, the stereotypical hunchback servant from all the old black-and-white Vampire B-movies, a vampire longing to go back to the old days of dungeons, coffins and cobwebs.
The other, Robert Hardy as the Quite Reverend Mightily Oats, who reminded one of Derek Nimmo, brought out all the satire on religion contained in this play, here relocated in a religion called Omnianism . We have the constant schisms, the dietary rules, and the problems of translating ancient languages.
The cast variously performed well the occasional filmic freeze-frames, and the Director managed well that terrifying stage-direction “a mob enters”.
The length of the play did not in the end put an undue strain on the audience, but it did so on some of the cast, and towards the end the busiest person was, sadly but efficiently, Gill Lambourn as Prompt, the need for whose services did at times interrupt the flow.
Ultimately, though, it is not much more than a knock-about menace-filled comedy, a good one, and one of which Shepperton Players gave a good account.
What the butler saw by Joe Orton: July 2008
Review by Stephen Macvicar
Synopsis
The chase is on, and libidos run rampant, in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity. From the moment when Dr Prentice - a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary - instructs her to undress, his world is destined to change forever. The plot of ‘What the Butler Saw’ contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies.
Dr Prentice's increasingly desperate and ultimately doomed attempts to
cover up his indiscretions can only lead him into trouble… and
it is difficult to know who will get him first - the government
inspector, his wife or a very confused policeman (in a dress). Poor
Geraldine and Nicholas are just caught in the middle - sometimes in
each others clothes, and sometimes without many clothes at all.
Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. ‘What the Butler Saw’ was Orton's final play before his tragic death in 1967, at the height of his career.
Overview (for NODA London Magazine)
The cast of this SP production gave some nice performances on the night I attended and the set was once again well concepted. Maybe it is me but I just don’t find this play sufficiently funny. I enjoy a good farce but some of the situations are painful – the scene with the roses for instance. Differences in the measurements of the cast meant that changing costumes convincingly just wasn’t possible.
The stage of the Riverside Arts Centre was transformed into the psychiatrist surgery of Dr Prentice. The room was tastefully decorated in yellow with table and chairs, bed, three doors for entrances and exits and of course 60’s music to give us a flavour of the period.
What the Butler Saw by the controversial Joe Orton strikes me as a potentially funny play if performed exquisitely. Whilst this production entertained, it never really tickled as farces should. In reality, I don’t blame in any way your Director Steve Lewis, there are some extremely awkward situations in the play which require timing and fantastic acting ability to be even remotely convincing. I refer particularly to the roses and the praying etc which were at best awkward.
Pace is so important in a play of this nature. It is keeping the pace and intensity going for two hours which will ultimately build the humour for the cast of six. Whilst the endeavour was in abundance, the intensity was lacking in places.
A mere forty years on, this play is already looking dated in terms of attitudes and slapstick humour. As Steve mentions in his Director’s Notes, the gags that were common place then would now be deemed offensive, sexist, prejudiced, ageist and many other derogatives. Slapstick humour is difficult to deliver well and that is where the pace, the time and the delivery are so crucial.
Visual comedy was very
much to the fore in this production. Scantilly clant ladies, a cross
dressing bellboy and a policeman caught with his trousers down. The
differences in size among the cast made costume changes largely
unconvincing but it didn’t really matter as the situations they
found themselves in were suitably preposterous.
I have written a few notes on the cast members who were all hard
working (in programme order);
Dr Prentice – Crispin Shingler – I thought Crispin gave a
sound performance as the agitated doctor who was getting pulled around
from pillar to post. Perhaps a slight tendency to underplay his
dialogue – there were times when I really wanted him to lose it
- but I can understand why Crispin didn’t given the absurdity of
his situation. Crispin reminded me of the successful actor Philip
Franks best known as ‘Charlie’ from ‘The Darling
Buds of May’.
Geraldine Barclay
– Sally Penman – A fresh face for the society - Sally was
convincing as the potential receptionist who, in a rather obscure
situation, is asked to undress behind a screen. It can’t be easy
spending most of the performance scantily clad but Sally survived the
experience.
Mrs Prentice – Katherine Lewis – This was a nice role for
Katherine to play if a little bit bitchy but it gave her a chance to
display her pins.
Nicholas Beckett – Phil Milne – Self-respect goes right out of the window in comedies and in particular farces. Phil got the raw end of the stick by putting on a women’s dress but it did give some hilarity.
Dr Rance – Steve Lewis – Steve has a nice stage manner and his bureaucratic character was confusing the matter more than we could cope with.
Sergeant Match – James Wallis – James was another new face as the bumbling policeman. I look forward to seeing him in future roles.
Thanks to Steve Lewis for pulling together an entertaining evening despite what you were up against in terms of content and hopefully your cast will have been able to get some personal artistic success out of the show.
Kindest Regards
Stephen Macvicar
© Copyright Shepperton Players 2010