Review Mrs Green at Curve Leicester

As part of the Inside Out Festival at Curve Theatre Leicester, Nottingham based theatre company Sheep Soup wow the studio audience with their home grown Soul and Motown musical Mrs Green. The musical already comes with a pedigree of popularity from professional airings at the Nottingham Playhouse Neville studio and also at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013 where their run sold out and played to great acclaim. Theatre company Sheep Soup are a group of former graduates from Nottingham's award winning Television Workshop. Sheep Soup is run by Nic Harvey the writer of the musical and lyricist for Mrs Green who also happens to play the character Darren in the show. Siobhán Cannon-Brownlie directs this comical play with a solid assuredness towards the wit and sympathetic notes.

The story goes that Mrs Mabel Green (Ben Welch) is about to be farmed off to an old people's home and has invited a group of friends round to her poky apartment for a cheery farewell. The marijuana plants in the living room are already attracting community police attention as the show opens.

 

 
Welch plays the elderly Mrs Green with great wit and although Mabel Green – the fairy Godmother of Nottingham- is occasionally naughty with her language she is never crude. He makes her very likeable and sympathetic. The audience feel very much at home watching the play almost as if they were actually in her home sitting alongside the tea, the piles of moving boxes and pot brownies. Welch also has a terrific soul singing voice and clearly revels in delivering the many songs including 'If The Lord Let it Grow', 'Home Made Love' 'Know Your Limits' and 'Mrs Green's Theme Tune'. It is such a familiar and relaxed performance from Welch that you feel the jamming sessions and dialogue is being superlatively improvised as the piece evolves.

The one act show is very much a lively and original song filled theatrical exposition with super fully fleshed characters. Tom Cowling is the local young community police officer Greg and is played as a fairly shy guy until he gets given one of Mrs Green's pot brownies, the effect of which, has Greg wilting to the floor and laughing outrageously at nothing. This is all to the great amusement of Scott played by Kieran Hardcastle. Mr Hardcastle is so brilliantly convincing as the ex bad boy idiot of the piece that it starts to become a wonder how and why the theatre group recruited this half wit. This doesn't mean his character is a cliché, Far from it. He just acts it so well with all his bling, hip hop street wear, reactionary finger flicking, gormless grin and characteristic truth that he is Scott. In my mind this is one of the best authentically portrayed roles in the show.

The two younger women in the piece are Natalia Bruce as ambitious Louise and Sabrina Sandhu as Scott's far more intelligent girl Kim. Both characters are well written and consummately acted each complete with their own history and complications and welfare concerns for Mrs Green.

Then enters the fiery soul singer with a cruel passion for knocking people and knocking back the whisky – Vivian de Wilde. Actress Shauna Shim gives Vivian de Wilde her very condescending best and despite her initial back biting comments to Darren and Mrs Green the audience eventually warm to her. The duets between her and Mrs Green are outstanding and have a real feel good factor in them.

The comic timing from all the cast is impeccable and whilst not a traditional song and dance show it has enormous heart and warmth and the musical numbers are performed with a very laid back and unselfconscious verve. The jokes are expertly and subtly delivered and the tender moments of the piece are very well done. The main thing is that Mrs Green is a feel good show and the Curve audience come out grinning. Ben Welch as Mrs Green is even standing outside the studio door saying goodbye to the audience as they leave. As I left I heard him saying that the elderly lady in front of him is actually called Mrs Green and it is her birthday today! What a treat! You can't make these things up!

Mrs Green and Ben Welch as.... Mrs Green!

 

 

Review originally written for The Public Reviews on 26th April 2015

Review: Shiv at Curve Leicester

The New York Times has described the work of American playwright Aditi Brennan Kapil as “Rich in feeling, wide in scope and teeming with poetry” so it is with great consideration that associate director Suba Das and Curve Leicester have chosen this newly penned one act play 'Shiv' to launch their Inside Out Festival. The exciting festival of fresh new drama, comedy, dance, the spoken word and music is taking place between 22^nd April and 6^th May.

The work that has gone into the production of Shiv is a clear demonstration of Curve's commitment to the arts, especially new work and the nurturing and exposure of it to new audiences. The set design by Kevin Jenkins is realised as a watery dream scape by a lake with a raked mattress central and integral to the action. Shiv's mattress sits aloft a square wooden decking section or landing. The gentle colour palate is a poetic mix of soft colours, the backdrop echoes of the landing by the lake, almost Japanese in the observing. To each side of the raised landing hang equally beautiful facsimiles of blue light shining on water as if grown large and pulled directly from a painting. The whole effect is of calmness and contemplation. Musical composer and sound designer Adam McReady (Poetic Machines Ltd) has created a superbly subtle soundscape that underscores and entirely compliments Aditi Brennan Kapil's play. David Holmes lighting design is a consummate blend of perceptive shades to achieve the constantly shifting moods of the work.

With only a three week rehearsal period Suba Das and his four actors have managed to create a superb realisation of Brennan Kapil's new writing. The story of Shiv (Emily Lloyd- Saini) and her search for meaning in her relationship with her Punjabi poet father Bapu (Andrew Joshi) takes place on and around the mattress – a solid depiction of safety and comfort but also a raft on which she tries to stay stable whilst coming emotionally adrift. Lloyd-Saint's Shiv is one moment a young girl in awe of her father Bapu – the next a more socially aware adult personality who realises her father's drinking problem and his affair. Andrew Joshi's Bapu is viewed as the younger version of himself so even as he plays flying kites with his young daughter and leaves the stage to return minutes later to talk with his adult daughter the poetic nature of the writing gives the illusion credibility and even adds strength to the storytelling. Like much in theatre there is an enjoyment in the theatrical corruption of reality. Both Lloyd-Saini and Joshi work attractively together and especially so in the very funny scene where it becomes evident that Bapu is a huge fan of Star Trek – The Next Generation.

Actor Ian Keir Attard is totally believable and the young American Gerard who lives and works by the lake and starts to fall in love with the enigmatic emotionally adrift Shiv. Their scene when they finally get together yet don't really is wittily realised. Like much of this complex and very human play one second the audience laugh with the characters and then have their hearts broken. In fact throughout this eighty minute play the audience are completely taken into this time shifting world of poetics. Shiv is a work of immense quality and depth and deserves a longer run than that allocated at Leicester Curve.

As this is a play about memory and different perceptions of a flawed creative (father Bapu) writer Aditi Brennan Kapil brings in a fourth character towards the latter part of the story. He is simply called The Professor. Robin Bowerman plays The Professor with an intelligent lightness and his recall of Bapu at a summer writing workshop in the past in which he brought with him a blonde lady 'translator' serves to add further levels of loving yet devastating understanding of the man who was Shiv's father.

Most of us go through life with evolving perceptions of our parents. In simple terms there is the complete trust of childhood where the adults and their actions are seen sometimes through rose tinted glasses. Then those confusing teenage years where we start to form opinions of others and often rebel and finally the adult years where it can take years to come to terms with the emotional self and other selves. The play Shiv takes us through many of these feelings and brings an added depth through its witty observations of what it can be like to live in a multi-cultural society and for the young woman heroine to live in two worlds at once.

Photo images credit Pamela Raith

Review originally published on 24th April for The Public Reviews

Curve Leicester. Abigail's Party. Review

“I told you nobody'd like olives Laurence.” says the lead character Beverly to her put down husband. He retorts, “Not nobody Beverly: I like olives. And that's twenty-five per cent of the assembled company” In such cleverly written lines throughout Leigh's comically tragic masterpiece, Abigail's Party, we recognise 1970s affluent pretension gone horribly wrong. The fact that we still laugh at the play is not a hark back to lesser cultural times but the fact that all the bickering and one-upmanship we witness on the stage still holds in society today.

The Curve production is set in their studio space which, for the first time ever, has been turned into a theatre in the round and Suba Das's wonderful production does a fantastic job of almost inviting you, as the very close audience, directly into the increasingly uncomfortable action. The square space is raised slightly and covered in a terribly brown, red and black 1970s carpet and a huge curved brown leather sofa with matching leather chair opposite. In two corners are Laurence's desk and opposite a drinks cabinet with a record player and record collection. Various lamps create a homely feel.

If nobody walked on to the set to act you would feel very at home on designer David Woodhead's set even if it lacks a television. But as the lights dim and the 1970s radio programme playing softly in the background fades away - in sways the hostess Beverly. Natalie Thomas plays Beverly to perfection. Initially she looks drop dead gorgeous in her long red dress, her lustrous shoulder length hair flicking seductively from side to side and resting on her exposed shoulders and back. Beverly dances confidently around the living room alone, arranging little touches for her small party, and playing her favourite music. Then her over-worked estate agent husband Laurence comes home stressed and starts making business calls instead of getting ready to meet his guests. At this point the true voice of Beverly is heard – at times seductive – at times irritated and at times rising to a very high pitch. Much later in the play she is reduced to screaming at her husband. The beast of the beauty is revealed through that voice with it's Walthamstow suburban twang. Thomas simply commands the stage with her often mis-placed sexuality and cosmetic vibrancy. She is also extremely funny.

Two exits are used to take the actors on and off the set and throughout the play we get to see young couple Angela and Tony (Emily Head and Cary Crankson). Head brilliantly bordering on vacuous and very amusing with it. Crankson in a beautifully studied role as Tony – a man with so little to say that it is a shock when he comes out with a short speech. Head and Crankson work very well as a couple invited into a party from hell. Not even Beverly's husband Laurence, subtly played as a man on the edge of cracking yet trying to retain his dignity in immensely trying circumstances, by Patrick Moy can save this social disaster from sliding into the proverbial flames.

 
 

Lastly we see Sue, an older neighbour and divorcee, whose teenage girl is having a party, arrive with a bottle of red Beaujolais that Beverly whisks off to be put to chill in the fridge much to the amusement and gasps of the audience. Sue is played by actress Jackie Morrison as a slightly nervous character and certainly the most sober and less garrulous of the group; that is until constant drinks are forced upon her by the unthinking Beverly. Morrison adds depth to Sue as the story unfolds and she goes from nervous and stiff to standing her ground whilst all around becomes chaotic.

Abigail's Party at Curve is one of the funniest and well observed performances I have seen of the play and many of the laughs came not just from the wit, drawn from social embarrassments, but from the unsaid and pauses. The scene where they all blow smoke rings is a classic moment. As I left my seat I heard another audience member say “I didn't expect that to happen” referring to the play's tragic end. I just goes to show that the plays that you think everyone knows can have a brand new audience appreciation. Highly recommended.

Originally reviewed for The Public Reviews.

 

Abigail's Party runs until Saturday 8th November 2014 at Leicester Curve.

Curve. The Magic of Queen by Rhapsody

To a packed audience at Curve, the Queen tribute band, Rhapsody, demonstrated that in the business of Rock and Roll tribute bands they are indeed – the business! They rock this venue brilliantly with their two hour show – The Magic of Queen.

 

 

The group have a new performer as Freddie Mercury in the charismatic form of Yvan Silva and he gets the camp, the swagger, the posing, the mood and the showman cheek of Freddie absolutely spot on. As for the athletic voice – wow! He has the eager audience begging for more after each song and their two sets generously allow the audience to join in with some of Queen's famous songs.

Considering that most of the audience are in their fifties or sixties, with even an old dear waving her arms about joyfully in unbridled octogenarian joy, almost everyone are up on their feet clapping and dancing for all they are worth. They don't need telling twice. The Queen hits come thick and fast and are performed and played to perfection. Among the highlights of the evening are 'Bicycle Race' 'Fat Bottomed Girls' 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' 'Flash's Theme' 'I Want To Break Free' a beautifully sung 'Is This The World We Created' 'Killer Queen' 'Seven Seas Of Rhye' 'Hammer To Fall' Mercury and Bowie's 1981 hit 'Under Pressure' and the gentle 'Love Of My Life'

There is a terrifically accomplished guitar solo from Jonny Sennett (lead and acoustic guitar and vocals) as Brian May and energetic and skilled drumming and percussion from Paul Lennox as Roger Taylor. As fifth Queen member, later in the group's original history, we have the keyboard and synth talents of Jason Mercer as Spike Edney. Matt Sparkes superbly plays the John Deacon role on bass guitar. All the young musicians are professional music graduates and are passionate about bringing Queen's magic to the stage. Rather than a steady stream of songs both musical sets have an organic feel to them which adds to the excitement of the rock entertainment.

The show has some great lighting to enhance the songs and visually Rhapsody look great with costumes to match those of the original band.

It is rare that the huge 1975 hit song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is played in full by a tribute band but Rhapsody stun the audience with a fantastic live (no backing tracks) rendition of the full thing with great harmonies. Throughout this highly energetic show Yvan Silva as Mercury impresses the audience with his brilliant vocals and portrayal. Just when we think the show is coming to a close we get a new performer on the stage.

This is Amy Fuller. Amy is a former graduate of the Royal College of Music in Cardiff and totally wows the audience as she joins Yvan in singing the operatic song 'Barcelona!'. The notions of 'Who Wants To Live Forever?' and 'The Show Must Go On' are at the fore front of each and every onlooker tonight as they relive their youth and revel in the showmanship. Nobody wants to leave. Rhapsody totally nails the music, the style and raw energy of the original Queen and there are no proverbial grumpy fathers shouting upstairs to “turn that racket down!” A perfect evening's entertainment.

Photos by kind permission of  David Clarke

Original review posted on 19th September 2014

Barnum at Curve review

 

 

Phineas Taylor Barnum – the greatest showman on earth! What a statement! A claim like no other! That may be wise cracking humbug, and there may well be a 'Sucker Born Ev'ry Minute', but darn it, that fella Brian Conley as PT Barnum is certainly up there with the greatest show folk and boy what a show! There is a lovely warm chemistry from Conley with the audience and he handles all the great physical demands and vocal demands of the show with a hard earned cheeky ease and humour. The tension in the audience is palpable as he attempts to walk the high wire!

Like a previous Barnum (Michael Crawford) Conley has that wonderful ability to engage you wholesale in the emotional roller-coaster of his character with each utterly joyful and sometimes tearful note. His performance is electric and he is superbly supported by the whole talented ensemble and especially by his stage wife Chairy Barnum played by Linzi Hateley, stalwart of many a West End show. Hateley brings out all the grounded love for her husband PT Barnum and her depiction of her beautifully sung songs feel genuinely heartfelt.

Actress and singer Kimberly Blake throws a romantic Swedish spanner into PT Barnum's world with her seductive talents as 'Swedish Nightingale' Jenny Lind singing Love Makes Such Fools of Us All. The brilliant staging as she rises to the roof of the stage on a swing has her literally ending her song on powerful 'high' note.

Landi Oshinowo makes 160 year old Joice Heth one of funniest parts of the show with her mad rendition of 'Thank God I'm Old' and Landi's later talents as Blues Singer warmly imbue the musical tone perfectly in the more poignant parts of Barnum.

General Tom Thumb – only twenty-five inches tall – played by Mikey Jay -Heath flings himself into the optimistic song 'Bigger Isn't Better' with great gusto and his scene with Jumbo the huge elephant has the audience in stitches.

This is a very slick production with each of the all singing, all dancing, circus skilled cast putting in 200%. The live music (Musical Director Ian Townsend) is spot on acoustically and instrumentally and each musical number gets huge applause from the very appreciative audience.

Bang from the outset we are bedazzled by the cast playing amongst the audience and bamboozled with Conley's baloney and all sorts of circus trickery and hokum pokum. The wonderful stage set is lit like a versatile Victorian gas lit theatre with all the colours of the spectrum thrown in for free. Well maybe not for free. A few worthwhile dollars may need to spent on a ticket or two but like Barnum's American Museum I can envisage people heading for the egress and queuing round the block to see it again and again.

This exuberant production of Barnum, adapted from the original 2013 Chichester Festival Theatre Cameron Mackintosh production is utterly breath-taking acrobatically, musically, visually and fizzing with theatrical energy.

The whole concept of Barnum is that the audience get swept along wholesale on a huge musical and spectacular wave of unashamed enthusiasm and emotion and this show, beginning its tour at Leicester Curve, far from disappoints. In fact it excels beyond measure. The multi talented ensemble are a force of energy that could light up the whole of Leicester one golden brick at a time!



Barnum plays at Curve until 13^th September and tours throughout the UK until August 2015.

Review originally published 11th Sept 2013 by www.thepublicreviews.co.uk

Frances Ruffelle 'Piaf' video.

This fantastic video came through on Facebook today and I wanted to share it with those who read my earlier review. It really sums up the nature of the show at Curve in Leicester and Frances Ruffelle's brilliant performance in Paul Kerryson's wonderful production.

For my original review clickez ici.

Frances Ruffelle as Piaf. a review.

“Mesmerising, I never wanted the music to stop.” Phil Lowe

The first time I saw Pam Gems play 'Piaf' was at the Derby Playhouse in 1982. The original play had opened in February 1978, at the RSC's  Other Place in Stratford on Avon, transferred to the Donmar Warehouse; and from there to the Aldwych, Wyndam's and the Piccadilly theatre in the West End and Jane Lapotaire had won the Tony award for her performance of Piaf on Broadway.

In the Derby Playhouse production, a young, relatively unknown actress called Caroline Quentin played Edith Piaf and was stunningly good. Further in her career Quentin went on to be part of the ensemble and played a prostitute in the original production of the musical Les Misérables. Based on those theatrical memories and that of seeing FrancesRuffelle as Eponine way back then, I went to Leicester's Curvetheatre to see Frances Ruffelle as Edith Gassion (Piaf).

This gripping and entertaining drama is performed at the studio space with an ensemble cast playing many and various roles of characters that came and went into Piaf's dramatic, difficult and often lonely life. Piaf couldn't bear to be alone especially after her concerts when she said that: 'The audience is so warm down there in that black hole. It's as though all those people are taking you in their arms, opening their hearts to you and taking you in. You overflow with their love, and they overflow with love for you. They want you to give yourself to them, you sing, you shout, you scream your pleasure, you're beside yourself with happiness.'

The world outside the stage door, for her, was often filled with exploitation and abuse from men. Yet through this life drama she had a great spirit, a naughty sense of fun and a voice full of raw emotion and power. She touched the hearts of millions and when she died from liver cancer in 1963 over one hundred thousand Parisians followed her coffin to its final resting place.

Frances Ruffelle as Edith Piaf

Frances Ruffelle brilliantly charged her theatrical portrayal of Edith Piaf with energy, fun, grittiness, pathetic vulnerability coupled with a determined stubborn toughness as the character struggled to carry on and on during the crazy circus of her short life. Ruffelle's singing was brilliantly done, nine songs in well articulated French, gesturing as Piaf but giving the part something extra special – creating a real live gutsy raw character you really cared about despite her massive mood swings and drug abuse. She was especially magnificent during her scenes of terrible despair, caught in a circle of cold harsh light scrabbling on her knees at the street cobbles racked with desperate sadness and the final scenes with Theo, her last, calm and caring lover were very moving. She is on stage for the entire play and runs the gamut of emotions throughout through her acting and songs.

Including Frances Ruffelle there were nine actors in this company and all were terrific morphing into one character after another on some extraordinarily quick scene changes. I particularly liked Laura Pitt-Pulford as Toine as she portrayed Edith's prostitute friend through various stages of her life – you sensed the ageing and growing bitterness and sadness of the character. Tiffany Graves as Marlene and the two nurses was wonderfully different in each role and Oliver Boot was perfectly cast as the tender boxer Marcel. This was ensemble acting at it's best as each character portrayed by the other male actors was clearly defined and regardless of the longevity of the role on stage each was totally believable.

The set design of a brick railway arch, framed within a frame and a sweeping black curtain created the tawdry atmosphere for the many scene changes as the audience flickered back and forth through  the late Pam Gem's play of Piaf's life. All was angular and smoky, terrific lighting and sound and with three live musicians, pianist, accordionist and drummer the stage was set for a wonderful time at the theatre. Paul Kerryson's direction was exemplary.

This was the first production I have seen at the Curve and I will certainly be going back again. The production runs until March 16^th.