A Small Mind At The Theatre

Twelfth Night was either my very first Shakespeare encounter or if not that, the one I definitely remember as being so. It was one of two of his plays that I studied at school (I genuinely can't remember which dry boring history one I also studied), and it was, 100% the very first Shakespeare I saw on stage live, via a trip to the RSC as Stratford no less with my school. In that cast were the likes of Tony Britton (Sir Toby Belch), Desmond Barrit (Malvolio), Haydn Gwynne (Olivia) and Derek Griffiths (Feste), and it went some way back then to stop me from hating the bard, despite eventually having the soul ripped from me via the teaching of him. Since I started my epic escapade of theatre back in 2014, my love has been rekindled slowly for the bard with just seeing and enjoying plays being performed, as they should, and not dissected. Also, life has been brought into them by being endlessly innovative, maybe controversially for some, with their telling. My love is perhaps final

Remarkable as it may seem when I settled, although a little sweatily into my seat at The Playhouse Theatre to watch The History Boys , I was about to have only my second encounter with the works of Alan Bennett. My only previous meeting with his material had been the 1994 film The Madness of King George . Set in a Sheffield grammar school in the 1980's, The History Boys brings to life the story of the pursuit to Oxford of eight students and the school's collection of wacky and genital cupping teachers. It's a bewildering piece to stage with its pre-interval 18 scenes and another bag of 15 afterwards, however, this snappy production under the direction of Gary Amos moves without pause for breath, and perhaps despite my never thinking I would ever write this, maybe at times too swift scene changes. For a person whose musical tastes lie very much in the eighties soundtrack this play utilises, bridging every single scene with classics from the decade falls right into my happ

There is perhaps a certain inevitability that the amateurs of Northampton will provide a better play this year than Sextet , currently running at The Playhouse Theatre. However having said that, there might not be many on the stage that are as ambitiously optimistic of the skills of those local actors performing in it. There is much to trouble an actor here, with Michael Pertwee's piece (very much of its seventies period) challenging timing, prat falls, prop management and a navigation of a complex set (especially so on the small Playhouse stage). April Pardoe (Valerie), Simon Rye (Philip), Jem Clack (Denys) and Barry Dougall (Roger) The play itself as always with a character driven play, takes a while to get going. One by one we are introduced to the motley crew made up of family, business links and random people bumped into. Our six characters (yes, there is a clue in the title), are the Captain of the yacht, Roger (Barry Dougall), his (ex/current) wife Lisa (Tamsyn Payne),

There is a tradition at the start of some meetings that a member of a committee has to declare an interest in something being discussed. Therefore it is appropriate that at this time, I declare that as the relatively newly installed publicity committee member at The Playhouse Theatre, I am about to review a play that it has been my responsibility to promote. So how is that for conflict of interest? However to be fair, the amateur world has become an increasingly delicate place for me to work with reviewing as I have got to know more and more of those involved, and they have all learnt who I am. My reviews though are not here for me to make friends, as some recent offerings have shown, so if there was something up, rest assured that I would happily state so. Fortunately director Jem Clack has on this occasion gave me little of concern, as with his large cast of nine, he has produced a nicely polished production. I had the opportunity on Sunday to see the final dress rehearsal for th

William Shakespeare's Henry V was the sixteenth play that I have seen performed by Masque Theatre and I have to say it is the first that I didn't really enjoy. It was not though because of the performances though, as any play that has someone with the commanding presence such as Scott Bradley as the titular King is never going to be a disappointment. His "breaching" through the audience with the immortal line of "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more" shook those present and unprepared. However no matter how brilliant the lines were delivered, their drive was lost in a rather ponderous staging of the siege of Harfleur, as the army marched forward to the unseen forces and then rather bizarrely shuffled backwards to do the progression again a few moments later. For me it was this scene that told me much of the sadly lacking of ambition of this production over those many Shakespeare's I have seen in the last couple of years. It's not that

I have never made it a secret of my dislike of Mr Shakespeare's work. It's not so much that I hate the stories or the characters he creates, its just that my ears fail completely to attune to his language and often while watching performances, more than any other play I lean towards the production and visual aspect of the show. Therefore is was once again that during my latest Shakespeare, I watched costumes, sets, lighting and some most glorious make-up work going on. Not to say that I didn't see the actors superb work, there bodies and facial expressions helping me beyond the troublesome language and managing to take me into the story. It helped this time that I was coming at Macbeth as the first of the bards plays that I was seeing for a second time live, having seen the spectacular (and highly physical) feast that the University Of Northampton provided last year ( review here ). I therefore had a little more knowledge of the tale than I normally would. Here the Masque

Something like twenty-two years ago I studied Amadeus by Peter Shaffer along with the same playwright's Equus and The Royal Hunt Of The Sun for English Literature. I never saw a live production of it then or since (or any of them), just the film. Therefore when I heard that the Masque Theatre were performing it I knew I had to see it (even allowing for the fact that I had the small matter of sixteen Flash shows the same week). I won't pretend that I remember much about it from back then and I won't necessarily say I remember liking it much. At the time I was just grateful it wasn't Shakespeare which we were doing most of the time (some things never change). What we have almost with Amadeus is a one man show and that one man is not the title character. Antonio Salieri played by John Myhill is the star of the show, and remembering him for his scene stealing turn as Benedick in some Shakespeare I saw last year, he once again didn't disappoint. For an amateur show, th

For my fifth visit to the Masque Theatre, I headed Into The Woods  for their production of Stephen Sondheim's musical. In my fast learning theatre binge this year, I had encountered Sondheim once before with Sweeney Todd ( review here ) and to say I had been mighty impressed was an understatement. Even to my untrained ear, Sondheim is quite a different writer of music which needs a great deal of concentration. However it is mightly rewarding if you do. From the book by James Lapine, and cleverly weaving many Brother Grimms' fairy tales into one, it is a suitably macabre little story built around a constant musical track. While not having many totally memorable individual tunes with the exception of Into The Woods itself, the whole works suberbly together to make a hugely enjoyable musical. In their production, the Masque Theatre were once again showing their pedigree beyond their "amateur" status. None of the performers were a let down, and some were simply superb