A Small Mind At The Theatre

A bit over five years stalking the theatre world of Northampton and a little beyond has never oddly enough led me to the door of The Hardingstone Players. Last Friday though I finally rectified that as I saw the final performance of their production of Peter Gordon's farce Out of Focus. Never also having seen a Peter Gordon play, left me with an interesting evening ahead. When an unfortunate over-booking at the Church Hall happens, a gathering of badminton players, brownies, pantomime actors and an odd exhibitor of slides collides into a chaotic and rather eclectic cast for this years pantomime, Super Cinders. Presented upon an excellently created set by  Alison Roberts and Iain Hodge, the evening is set for introduction to a feast of odd characters, and this beyond everything is where the strength of this production lies. The performers had clearly gone to great lengths to make their characters as big and bold as the colours upon Cinderella's oddly shaped carriage. We ha...

In pursuit of even more theatre, I ventured out to Hackleton to experience theatre company Group Eight for the first time, and their version of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (adapted here by Noah Smith). The first observation, and not from a production point, is how neat this adaptation of the story is by Noah Smith. It keeps the mysterious world of Dr Jekyll and his experimental attempts of unlocking his dark side but also fleshes out the world around him. We have two incorporated narrators, Shelly and Stoker (no prizes for guessing where those names came from, and simply Maid and Butler in the original Smith version), who give us locations and inner thoughts as well as scene changing. They are very much the unnamed narrator of the original embodied. Also while we have the standard "Three Musketeers" of Lanyon, Utterson, and Jekyll himself, the character of Enfield is fleshed out far beyond the original, and with his new lady, Hel...