A Small Mind At The Theatre

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...

The Mystery Of Irma Vep was my first encounter with The Playhouse Theatre Northampton amateur group after missing their previous performances this year due to a clash with other happenings. It was also my first encounter with writer Charles Ludlum and I have to say that came as quite a surprise as well. Much like a Carry On film it was all silly antics and double entendres. As would be expected for an amateur production the set was simple yet effective within budget constraints. There were rickety doors and troublesome gun racks, but it all added to the general frivolity of the play. The story is slight and pretty unimportant from Ludlum but the antics were keenly played by the cast of six (four main stars and two added delights). Further research of the play has led me to understand that the play is traditionally played by two gentlemen via quick changing with the men playing both male and female roles. The Playhouse has dispersed with this, but nothing appeared to be lost in this e...

As Joe Pasquale prepares to squeak his way to Neverland in the Derngate next door, the Royal completes its 2014 Made In Northampton season with the more orthodox play Merlin. With no intentions of being seasonal in anyway, this is a more refrained non interactive take on the classic legend. It does however create a very modern version of the ancient tale, with the young characters partaking in a very modern language style and indeed even taking part in twerking during one of the music and dance interludes. It is perhaps suited for writer Ella Hickson together with composer Jon Nicholls to try to do something different with the very familiar tale. Distancing themselves far enough away from the BBC's hugely successful Saturday night show of the same name, while maintaining a lot of the comedy of that series, they have created a hugely enjoyable two hours of entertainment. While never being able to offer the super special effects of the series on stage, dark figures provide the sugg...

Celebrating its fifth year, I found myself at Strictly Northampton for the first time not really knowing what to expect. Turned out it was an entertaining (and very long) evening. Having sat in a few theatres this year, it took some getting used to the somewhat different crowd for such an event. People were talking, coming and going, and most angst of all, playing with their phones and shock horror actually filming the stage. This was all permitted, but took some getting used to such a different crowd. The show itself featured 16 couples made up of "locally significant" people paired up with a partner of generally a reasonable dance ability (although there were a few where it was difficult to tell the difference, hello Hayley Cole and Steve Church). Before the grown-ups took to the stage though, there was the small matter of the final of Junior Strictly that had semi-finals during the day. These school groups were better than many of the adults to come really and also pro...

While I had seen several theatre musicals this year at the local Royal & Derngate, I had yet to experience the full London effect until I settled down in my seat at the Apollo to watch Urinetown. I had grown to like musicals more this year after my first live one Blood Brothers in March and finally decided to make the effort in the big city. Also despite publicity and negative comments regarding the title Urinetown, this made it appeal to me slightly more to my bizarre mind. I am glad I did, what I witnessed was two glorious hours of fun, frolics, dark (very dark) humour, blood, dance and some singing as well. It is a musical. On arrival in the theatre the set from Soutra Gilmour cuts an imposing, perfect dystopian figure. Tough steel work, dull and grim, perfect. Before the show begins the creepy Officer Lockstock (Jonathan Slinger) starts to prowl the stage and is soon joined by Little Sal (understudy Katie Bernstein on my evening). As the show begins these two break the fourth...

Ever since the announcement of Speed The Plow and its stage débutante star and wild child Lindsay Lohan, the internet and press were as wild as her with comments about the likely disaster than the production was to become. I saw comments ranging from her not knowing lines, to her walking away from the show and the comment that her understudy was likely to perform more than her. I have no interest in naysayers generally and would rather form an opinion myself really and have not kept tabs on her commenter's much since the début. However a whole paragraph on Miss Lohan from me is ironic really as I didn't attend Speed The Plow to see her as I was here for the opportunity to see Richard Schiff on stage. The West Wing is probably my favourite TV series and I was never going to miss a chance to see Toby Ziegler in action live. He is not a disappointment for me and issues forth David Mamet's wordy script in all the fast paced manner I am familiar with from the aforementioned te...

I was struck by two surprising things at the start of the production of The Woman In Black, the first before the play had begun. This was the staggering slope on display on the set. I was aware of the raking (technical term!) of the Royal stage, but gosh surely this was in a different league. No pieces with wheels on most certainly! The second was in the very early stages of the play. I had never seen the play before and had the belief that this was a deadly serious, creepy ghost story. How wrong I was, with the initial setting of the story via a clever planned stage production, this was actually also a very funny play. Telling the story of Arthur Kipps (Malcolm James) and his wish to relay his shocking and disturbing tale for an assembled crowd, he seeks the help of a theatre actor (played by Matt Connor) and who remains only known as "The Actor". Much humour early in the play is garnered from Kipps' inability to perform his story for the, as yet, absent audience, and ...