Review (extended) for The Three Penny Opera Nottingham Playhouse

Video (mainly for sound) for those unable to read this review.

A 400 word review was originally commissioned and published by The Big Issue. This is my updated version.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's musical masterpiece, The Threepenny Opera, is the forerunner to many modern musical theatre works and originates from John Gay's musical satire, The Beggars' Opera, written in 1728. Peter Rowe of Ipswich's New Wolsey Theatre and Graeae's Jenny Sealey have collaborated to bring an anarchic version of Brecht's theatrical vision to a breadth of regional theatres beginning with Nottingham Playhouse.

Brecht and Weill's original, Die Dreigroschenoper, was conceived in the late 1920's and received great critical acclaim. Despite the chaos of creative uncertainty during its creation and the late entry of the song 'Mack The Knife', it goes on to be performed in theatre spaces throughout the world. As the Weimar Republic came to power, the production exposed the difficulties suffered by the poor and dispossessed. It would be appropriate to say that the paintings and drawings of the artist George Grosz may have great influence in defining the look of the piece in its depiction of cripples and the underworld characters.

The work still has economic and social parallels today and this exciting new, decidedly 'rock and roll' production by Graeae brings the story bang up to date, reflecting current economic problems in the UK through text, vibrant and chilling songs and terrific multi-media projections designed by Mark Haig. Although there is the temptation to find oneself reading all the words along with action the system of live text translation works well and actually enhances the show giving depth to the piece. Likewise, having Jude Mahon on stage by the side of the actors signing rather than at the side of the performing space works well within the piece and her presence is beneficial boarding on vital, rather than merely additional or complementary to the action.

Graeae are a young and vibrant cast enhanced by old hands such as the charismatic Garry Robson playing JJ Peachum the King of the Beggars which harks back to John Gay's Beggars' Opera and in parts it is particularly mock opera as well as pop opera.

This new production design by Neil Murray has a predominantly greasy, underground, neo- expressionist black and grey brick, running blood stained tone and is creatively enhanced with projections and BSL interpretation and captioning. It is set slightly in the future with a new monarch, Charles 111 about to be coroneted. 

Initially, at the beginning of the show, the cast tear down a hanging set of torn and ragged red curtains in the centre of the stage we are introduced to the central character, McHeath, brilliantly played as a louche opportunity seeking and womanising killer by Milton Lopes. The whole cast sing Mack the Knife, a song normally reserved for one female singer. The new lyrics by Jeremy Sams reflect McHeath's misdeeds and are re-interpreted throughout to reflect modern times, events and language. This opens the show fantastically and likewise the powerful ensemble pieces throughout the evening are the electric highlights of this terrific show.

Stand out performances come from Victoria Oruwari as Mrs Peachum, Ci Ci Howells as the wronged daughter Jenny – very powerful vocals and great presence – Will Kenning as an imposing Tiger Brown and Ben Goffe as Jake – terrific tap dancing and comic timing and Sophie Byrne as Dolly, especially strong in the Jealousy duet.

Satire is prevalent throughout the piece with reference to 'happy cripples' always free, always carefree' and within this integrated cast, with some disabled, deaf and blind performers, these references take on a 'voice' of their own and develop an even deeper political and theatrical echo.

The mischievous John Kelly makes a fine and anarchic narrator often deliberately breaking out of character prior to his narrative and engaging the audience between each act with his blunt advice and witty opinions. The audience loved him.

Overall, it is a large cast of actor musicians and all appear to be having great lawless fun telling Brecht and Weill's musical story of corruption exposed and ridiculed and it truly is a show conceived with magnificence and delivered with brilliance.

'Anarchic theatre at its best!' Phil Lowe.

Threepenny Opera is at Nottingham Playhouse until March 8, then New Wolsey Theatre, March 11-22, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, March 27-April 12 and West Yorkshire Playhouse, April 25-May 10. See nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk for full details.

Review: The Last Five Years. Lakeside. Nottingham.

The simple stage setting for New Street Theatre's production of The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown is two identical diluted apartments. Both sections are in black and white with white blinds at the back of a white table and two white chairs. Each apartment has a small pile of packing boxes and sets of half empty shelves that imply a state of impermanence. Stage design is by Georgia De Grey and the atmospheric lighting design by Jen Roxburgh. The piece allows the three musicians on piano, violin and cello to be seen throughout. The Last Five Years at the Djanogly Theatre Lakeside is a very sophisticated and stylish show directed by Martin Berry. It is produced with the support of Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol and Lakeside Arts Centre, University of Nottingham.

The show is a two hander and is a mainly sung through musical and has some interesting theatrical concepts in so much as the actors, Matthew Ronchetti (Jamie Wellerstein) and Roxanne Douro (Cathy Hiatt) tell and sing their relationship stories about the other person directly to the audience. Very rarely do they sing to each other to communicate feelings. The only time they sing together is at their wedding in the song 'The Next Ten Minutes'. In this they promise to love each other forever but as we see from the sad opening number 'Still Hurting' sung with great passion and poignancy by Roxanne Douro, things haven't been straight forward over the last five years. A very traditional play might have a beginning, middle and an end but in this case we have the fascinating perspective of being shown the story from the end by one person and from the beginning by the other. It works wonderfully well. Often in musical theatre the concentration is on the music and sung elements of a show and the acting as an afterthought. Not in this case – both emotionally complex characters are performed with great authenticity and spot on American accents.

There are fourteen songs, of various styles, in all and both Ronchetti and Douro perform the work beautifully accompanied by the equally talented musicians, Dan Turek (piano and musical director), Rachel Whalley (violin) and Laura Elliott (cello). The on/off relationship of two creatives at the opposite ends of success is very credible and at times raw but it also has a vein of amusing moments running throughout. Two good examples would be 'The Schmuel Song' performed by the character Jamie and cleverly interpreted by Roncetti and the 'Climbing Uphill/Audition Sequence', a bitter sweet wry song delivered with energy, pin perfect timing and wit by Douro as Cathy. A fine and thought provoking, sophisticated evening's entertainment.

The writer and composer, Jason Robert Brown has been hailed as one of Broadway's smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim. He has an extra-ordinary back catalogue of shows and The Last Five Years was cited of one of Time Magazine's ten best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics.

The Last Five Years runs until 26^th February at Lakeside – NottinghamUniversity and is a professional production. Catch it while you can!

www.lakesidearts.org.uk

Box Office: 0115 8467777

Show starts at 8pm and is appox: 1hr 30mins long.

Age recommendations 14+

Review of Penelope RETOLD at Derby Theatre

 

This fascinating one woman show is a dramatic exploration of Odysseus' wife Penelope and her life experiences are brought up to date just as in the main house production of The Odyssey. Penelope (Caroline Horton) is left all alone with her young son Telemachus while Odysseus reluctantly goes off to fight in the Trojan wars and returns nineteen years later a practical stranger. The multi-layered piece delves too into modern day experiences of forced separation for military wives. The performance is very much in the moment, compelling and often raises and highlights feelings and issues of hope and frustration through dramatic abstraction.

It is done with great expertise, humour and passion by performer and dramaturg Caroline Horton who returns to Derby Theatre in May 2013 with her Olivier Award nominated show 'You're Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy' set during World War Two.

Penelope Retold is superbly directed by Lucy Doherty with the set designed by Tim Heywood and finds Penelope hidden in a bed hugging and smelling her missing husband's great coat and watching rapid looping repeats of a cheesy film about a dog returning unexpectedly home to huge fuss and love. The whole show is wed to this unkempt bed – a place of comfort and of security and sexual memories and conversely of deep unbridled anger towards her missing husband. In the Odyssey Penelope questions the newly returned Odysseus about the bed that has been fashioned from an olive tree with its roots still in the ground. Horton roots her play and uses the bed surface to flit enigmatically between loving memories of marrying the handsome soldier Odysseus at the tender age of fifteen to sudden desperately frightened flight or fight syndromes. Penelope is not a wholly sympathetic character though despite her outward charm. She can be cruel. Within the story telling we hear tales of her cruelly punishing Odysseus' beloved dog, Argos, by locking it out of the house for whining at his departure and making it live nineteen years on a dung heap until it suddenly dies on seeing his master return.

The work also explores, with some humour coupled with sensitivity, the life of military wives and their support systems and meetings. The audience are fully involved throughout and are spoken to as various ladies at the meeting and at one point an audience member is addressed as though he is the estranged husband. Also there is a very funny weather report based on the shipping report and speaks of Greek gods and stormy seas. This becomes a paradox however as the shipping report broadcast in the British Isles is generally seen as a comforting medium but not in this version.

The temperature of the sea and tides, swimming and drowning are constant metaphors and states within this gripping piece which ends with Penelope dramatically tearing apart the bed and her exposing her tortured soul through an explosive barrage of poetic wordplay before drowning herself in the sea. Penelope RETOLD takes us on a journey deeper into Penelope, the caged and isolated woman, and beyond the end of the main house stage play and importantly, gives a powerful voice to the character of Penelope that was denied by Homer.

This is a gripping and unique piece of theatre and a must see. Five stars!

Booking www.derbytheatre.co.uk

Box Office: 01332 593939

Phil Lowe

The Odyssey trailer at Derby Theatre. Thinking of booking? Watch this and get excited!

This short video is a promotion from Derby Theatre of Mike Kenny's fantastic and fantastical adaptation of Homer's classic, The Odyssey open for booking until 1st March. As Homer once said, and I quote:

"We are quick to flare up we races of men on the earth.
There is a time for many words and there is also a time for sleep."

I beg you not to sleep too long on your decision to go and see this amazing show that is winning audiences and critical plaudits across the Midlands and beyond. Book through this LINK. There is no joy in 'flaring up' when the show is over!

Read my review and other Odyssey blogposts on this blog.

Tomorrow I am reviewing the companion piece to The Odyssey - Penelope Retold at Derby Theatre. I look forward to offering the insights of the playwright and performer Caroline Horton on Penelope's life and traumas.

Phil Lowe

Propeller's Comedy of Errors at Theatre Royal Nottingham: a review.

When Shakespeare's shortest surviving play, The Comedy of Errors, was produced and staged in 1594 at Gray's Inn in London for an audience of lawyers to conclude a night of revels, the records of Gray's Inn reported thus: Night was begun and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called “The Night of Errors”. The play was then performed in court in 1604 and, in the centuries that followed it has been produced in unaltered and adapted forms ever since. Shakespeare's original source for the plot was from a Latin play by the Roman playwright Plautus and Shakespeare made his version ever more farcical by introducing a second pair of twins into the plot and gave it a happy ending. Historically it is his only play, aside from The Tempest to use the convention of having all of the action happen in the course of one day.

The traditional story is set in Ephesus, a Greek town with a reputation for witchcraft and mis-rule. In the modern day it is in Turkey. Merchants from neighbouring Syracuse are not allowed to conduct business in Ephesus without paying a fine of a thousand marks and vice versa. Should they trade 'illegally' and not be able to pay it the law said that they will be put to death. Solonious, Duke of Ephesus upholds this draconian law. However he becomes more flexible when he hears Aegeon – a merchant of Syracuse – relate his sad story of how he came to Ephesus.

For the play to work, firstly the audiences must be moved by Aegeon's story and believe that his life is at stake. If these circumstances are unconvincing then the story will lose the purpose of the following comic acts. Secondly the whole play relies heavily on all of the actors' comedic abilities. So, after that little bit of history, is this production by the all male Propeller company of The Comedy of Errors funny?

You bet! It is supremely funny!! Propeller take Shakespeare's play and bring hissing and spitting colourfully to life through their madcap interpretation. The play is well known for its farcical nature, clever word play and slapstick humour and this production has already started as you find your seat. The live background music playing is Latin style and the actors banter with the audience. When they reach the stage and the play starts we are transported to a cheap and cheerful Latin style Costa del Ephesus, holiday resort complete with, gaudy lights, graffiti and a barmy mariachi band kitted out in football shirts and sombrero hats.

Through an impassioned speech by Aegeon ( Chris Myles) the audience learns that two sets of twins (two goodly sons, the one so like the other that could not distinguished but by name) are separated on a voyage after a violent storm at sea. All survive but are split up and each is not aware of the other's existence. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio find themselves washed ashore in Ephesus, the home of their twin brothers and the inevitable farce of misunderstandings and mistaken identities grows apace.

Shakespeare's language and complex plotting can sometimes be difficult for a 21^st century audience to grasp if one is unfamiliar with the story but Propeller make it an enormously fun journey and the characters are very recognisable even if some of the men are parodies of women and the actions have connected sound effects and are often cartoon like. The verse and prose is perfect and handed with panache by all the cast of eight male actors. There is much hilarious campery for the actors playing the female roles and the work that must have gone into developing and refining even minor characters is incredible and the whole play is bench mark of clear story-telling plus a million laughs. Scarily this reviewer started to actually believe the deceptively aggressive Luciana (Arthur Wilson) was actually female!

The play had a multitude of highlights and some real laugh out loud moments that will stay with you long after the play has finished – actors slide into wheelie bins, a cheesy Spanish policeman serenades a female member of the audience, Pinch, a lunatic Baptist conjurer played with reckless abandon by Darrell Brockis rocks the stage and the courtesan with rabbit ears (Mathew Pearson) is hilarious with his/her deadpan delivery. Plus there is much ridiculous farce with men fancying someone they ought not to and confused arguments over the payment for a tacky gold chain.

This production of The Comedy of Errors has enough energy to light half of the city of Nottingham and the sets of twins Antipholus of Ephesus (Joseph Chance) and Dromio of Ephesus (Mathew McPherson) and Antipholus of Syracuse (Dan Wheeler) and Dromio of Syracuse (Will Featherstone) are the electricity that powers the show. They are nonstop throughout and although they don't really look exactly like each other the power of the theatre demands you suspend belief. A superb show and I for one wouldn't hesitate to see another performance by the unique talents of Propeller. Highly recommended.

Review originally written for Nottingham Live,

The Odyssey at Derby Theatre. Nobody should miss this. It's totally un-mythable!

The Odyssey at Derby Theatre. Nobody should miss this. It's totally un-mythable!

This modern production of Homer's classic tale of a soldier king returning home from war, especially adapted by playwright Mike Kenny for the Derby Theatre stage is a triumph of story-telling, theatre and of mythology mixed with the grim realities of war and their aftermath.

From the moment a giant wave crashes on to the stage leaving Odysseus for dead on a beach and the Olympian gods decide to weave a story around the hero, the play begins a rich tapestry of torturous adventures. We encounter mythical monsters and seductive sirens that haunt brave Odysseus and kill off his men one by one. It is in turns, funny, exciting, clever and wickedly inventive but the inner thread that drives the story forward is the soldiers' tale. The true eternal story is one of the struggle of soldiers returning home from war, battle weary, inhabited by the terrible things they have seen and have been compelled to do in battle and how that impacts on their lives as a person back in the civilian world and on others they love. Some of them don't return. So it was in Homer's time and so it is still as relevant today, only today we have a name for it – post traumatic stress syndrome.

 
 

Wole Sawyerr imbues his complex character Odysseus with a great depth of feeling moving from a leader of men, the brave war hero full of his own grandness and calling himself a slayer of cities. Gradually as the play unfolds we see him become mentally broken by his experiences. As in all Greek tales there is a catharsis and the man finds a way of re-connecting through humility and attempts to rejoin his wife Penelope on his island of Ithaca after twenty years of absence. Sawyerr commands the stage throughout and garners great sympathy in an emotionally and physically challenging role. This is not selfish acting but selfless creativity that allows the whole ensemble of eight actors to support and tell the tale through and around him to great effect.

There are some extremely funny moments throughout however, especially around the brilliantly conceived scene in the Cyclops cave, all dark, damp and dangerous echoes and thunderous effects. Christopher Price as Polythemus the Cyclops must be the comic hit of the show as he struts around on stilts greedily eating up Odysseus' men. He is at once menacing and very funny and even tender towards his hilarious flock of rams. It is a scene which manages to combine real danger and some very funny touches as Odysseus tells the wounded Cyclops that his name is – Nobody. And Nobody did it!

 

The wonderful set design by Barney George allows for a large creative space to be utilised and to be endlessly creative upon through the actors own rehearsal Odyssey (terrifically sensitive direction by Sarah Brigham) and the inspired new writing of Mike Kenny. As well as the live music, a violin played by actor, composer and sound designer Ivan Stott and drumming, the piece has elements of often haunting song sung by the ensemble and a palate of superb lighting by Tim Skelly.

 

As an ensemble of eight the company work terrifically as a team and clearly enjoy the very active story telling with men and women morphing seamlessly from human to monster, from siren to animal. They sing and carouse, they fight and succumb to the whims of fate, of exhaustion by war and the fickle gods determinations. Each actor plays a variety of parts in a show of two decidedly different halves. The story of Odysseus' attempts to return home after ten years away fighting the Trojan wars and the mythology of the Odyssey forms the first half. The second half is how, on arriving back on his island, yet another ten years further on, the troubled and broken soldier king attempts to win back his wife Penelope and son Telemachus and destroy the evil suitors led by the brutal and constantly besieging Eurymachus (Christopher Price).

 

 

 

In this production acting versatility is the name of the game. Emma Beattie comes into her own as she portrays the hardened and determined wife Penelope struggling to control the ungracious suitors with her son Telemachus, (Rich Dolphin). Dolphin's portrayal is played with a finely acted, and very believable inner frustration building into manhood as he joins forces with his father.

Ella Vale particularly impresses as the beguiling enchantress Circe who, with a twist of her hand, turns men into pigs! Vale also portrays the devious plotting palace maid Melantho, and is especially chilling in her final scene under the control of Telemachus – her face is pure terror. Anna Westlake is deeply moving in her seductive singing as the siren and as the old woman Eurekleia who recognises Odysseus and grieves piteously for the slain suitors.

Ivan Stott is the most versatile of all, giving each role a distinct inner and outer life of its own often with great subtlety when he is one of the suitors rejected by Penelope and equally in his portrayal as the kind old Eumaeus. keeper of pigs and loyal to Odysseus' memory. His superb musical score brings a whole new depth to the play.

 

It is good to see that the Derby Theatre are pro-actively engaging local talent such as Adam Horvath, an ex Derby Shakespeare actor now professionally engaged in this totally un-mythable production of The Odyssey through the Brian Weaver Fellowship.

Production photos copyright Robert Day.

New Street Theatre present The Last Five Years - three nights only!

I've seen this fantastic show and would highly recommend going. It's only on at Lakeside Arts Centre for three nights next week: 24th, 25th and 26th Feb. Phil Lowe

The press called it "Brilliant, brave, innovative and thrilling!"

Tickets can be booked through this LINK.

It is written and composed by Jason Robert Brown and is a modern musical and theatre classic - a story of love made and love lost. It tells the beautiful sweeping story of a five year relationship between two artists: Cathy an aspiring actress and Jamie a successful young author.

Brown's stunning score follows their relationship with songs that will resonate with everyone who's ever experienced a real relationship full of laughs, tears, love and pain. Their story is often painfully familiar and at times surprising, revealing what it is to have love without shame and dare to dream of a life shared with another.

Directed by Martin Berry and designed by Georgia de Grey.