Swallows and Amazons - Bristol Old Vic
Guardian Review by Michael Billington
It is a nice irony that the author of one of the most impeccably middle class of all children's books was a one-time Bolshevik sympathiser as well as the Manchester Guardian's man in Moscow. But, for all the piquancy of its origins, Arthur Ransome's 1930 novel was never part of my own childhood landscape; so, coming to this new musical version relatively fresh, I was pleasantly surprised, if not by the tale then by the manner of its telling.
Helen Edmundson's adaptation keeps the period flavour of the story in which the four well-bred Walker children take a boat and camp out on a Lake District island. She also underscores the point that mundane reality is transformed by their active imaginations. Not only do they see themselves as brave nautical adventurers: encountering the Blackett sisters, the four treat them as piratical rivals and then as allies in their war on an ill-tempered houseboat owner, Captain Flint. As a story, it lacks the robustness of Treasure Island or the melancholy of Peter Pan. But Ransome captures the willing surrender to fantasy of children for whom all adults are "barbarians".
Seizing on this central fact, Tom Morris's production and Robert Innes Hopkins's design allow the audience to enter the same imaginative conspiracy as the children. A multicoloured feather duster becomes Captain Flint's parrot, with a pair of pliers for the beak. Black bin liners turn into flapping cormorants. Even the crucial boat, the Swallow, is composed of little more than a central pole, some rustling blankets and an old cabin trunk. The same economical ingenuity is applied to the music, which comes entirely from on-stage actor-instrumentalists. And even if Neil Hannon's serviceable score only achieves real takeoff in a group number called Let's Make the Best of It, his lyrics show a refreshing tartness: it was good to be reminded, for instance, that the daredevil Amazonian Blackett sisters are the products of a suburban villa.
This also comes across vividly in performance. Celia Adams wittily turns the domineering Nancy Blackett into a tomboy tearaway whom you can easily foresee turning into the local Tory candidate. And among the Walker children, also played by adults, I warmed most to Akiya Henry as the venturesome Titty, who at one point bravely dives into the waiting arms of fellow cast members, and to Stewart Wright as the not-so-jolly Roger. Not even the efforts of Stuart McLoughlin and Rosalie Craig can reconcile me to the goody-goody John and Susan, but the evening has an imaginative consistency and inventiveness that should appeal to even the most hydrophobic children.
Macbeth
Rarely can Macbeth’s usually unnoticed line “I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun” have resonated so effectively as it did on the sweltering afternoon, the hottest so far this year, at this thoughtful and entertaining Macbeth “re-imagined for everyone aged six and over”.
Trevor White as the title role in Macbeth re-imagined for ages 6 and over at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre Photo: Alastair Muir
A sinister romp under nature’s own spotlight in the sky, this fine show impresses from the high paper backdrop sporting graffiti to continuously update the story to the three huge swan puppets which invert to become hideous, bony witches.
Josephine Butler’s Banquo, first resolute in combat gear, then gentle with Fleance - here a baby in arms - puts an appealingly fresh feminist twist on the play. She is also delightful as a kilted, bespectacled composite character which subsumes Ross and Young Siward among others.
Like all the actors in this cast, Butler speaks the verse with admirable clarity and makes it very easy for Shakespeare newcomers to follow.
Trevor White’s Macbeth speaks with an American accent, the incongruity of which soon ceases to register. White is good at making the subtext very plain for the audience in, for instance, the scene in which Duncan names Malcolm as his heir, and during soliloquies
Harry McEntire gives us a convincing and boyish Malcolm who has a central, quasi-narrative role in this production. Eamon Boland is good value as the self-important Duncan and later as a toadying, manipulative “cream-faced” Seyton.
Golda Rosheuvel’s Lady Macbeth is deft and disturbing, especially during the sleepwalking scene and Simon Trinder digs out Macduff’s anguished revenge with, eventually, near pantomimic satisfaction.
In a show full of innovation, the spell scene in which things - fillet of a fenny snake, tooth of wolf, ravin’d sea salt shark and the rest - are flung into the huge bubbling on-stage pond, accompanied by a spurting fountain of baboon’s blood, is particularly impressive.
In a full-length production for adults such excess might, like the filmic sound effects and background music, have been laughably over the top. In this context it works perfectly.
Into the Woods
A slotted spoon doesn’t hold much soup but it can catch the potato, we learn over the course of Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical that folds such classic fairytales as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood (as well as a glancing reference to Sleeping Beauty) into a parable about faulty parenting and the dangers of wish fulfilment.
Beverly Rudd as Little Red Ridinghood in Into the Woods at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre Photo: Catherine Ashmore
But the Open Air Theatre’s new production of this complex musical is full of both meat and potatoes, and turns out to be the most satisfying and revelatory version of this show I’ve seen since Richard Jones’ brilliant London staging in 1990.
Part of the charm, of course, this time is to actually see it outdoors, against the living, looming backdrop of real foliage of the Open Air Theatre, wittily pressed into service by designer Soutra Gilmour, who even creates a high bird’s nest of a treehouse for Rapunzel as part of an actual tree.
Though Sondheim long ago presaged the current fashion for site-specific theatre by creating The Frogs specifically to be performed inside a swimming pool, this is the most magical space I’ve ever seen this show in.
And Timothy Sheader, co-directing with movement director Liam Steel, gives it a dream of a production, literally so - the show is conjured as a child’s fantasy, with the narrator turned into a little boy playing it out in his head.
This may unconsciously borrow a device that was also used for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, while the first appearance of the Witch also suggests another Lloyd Webber show since she actively resembles a mask-less Phantom of the Opera.
But this musical, which is all about childhood and the painful lessons to be learnt in growing up, responds beautifully to this new narrative invention.
There are plenty of flourishes here, some new, some shamelessly borrowed (the mechanised golden egg-laying hen is a direct steal from War Horse). The stunning ensemble cast is one of the finest in town, with Hannah Waddingham - one of the most glamorous of all of London’s leading ladies - counter-intuitively turned into its initially most hideous as the Witch, while Jenna Russell continues to mine a heartbreaking sincerity.
There are also striking contributions from, amongst others, Hellen Dallimore as Cinderella and Michael Xavier as her prince, Mark Hadfield as the Baker, and Ben Stott and Marilyn Cutts as Jack and his mother.
They are accompanied by one of the best bands in town, too, led by Gareth Valentine who makes the nine players, including himself, go far further than their numbers suggest.
Into the Woods, Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, review
It is an inspired idea to stage this show in the magical, sylvan surroundings of Regent’s Park. Rating: * * *
By Charles Spencer
Published: 1:00PM BST 17 Aug 2010
Published: 1:00PM BST 17 Aug 2010
I always find myself in two minds about Stephen Sondheim, an awkward state of affairs for a critic, especially during the year when the great man is celebrating his 80th birthday to a chorus of approval.
I recognise that Sondheim is a splendidly ingenious composer and lyricist, and that many of his songs are among the finest to have been written in the past half century. But with the exception of his masterpiece, Sweeney Todd, there is often a curious aridity and a flashy, self-advertising cleverness about his musicals, combined with cumbersome and sometimes downright pretentious plot-lines.
Nevertheless for the first half of Timothy Sheader’s outstanding revival of Into the Woods (1987) I was beguilingly bewitched.
It is an inspired idea to stage this show in the magical, sylvan surroundings of Regent’s Park, and designer Soutra Gilmour has come up with a marvellously rickety, adventure playground of a set, all ladders, stairs and elevated walkways, with Rapunzel discovered high up in a tree. I also liked the idea of having the narrator played by a small boy, who has run away to the woods after a family row, and seems to be dreaming the entire show.
With characteristic ingenuity, Sondheim weaves together several fairy stories, so that Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and others all become entangled in the same story. There is also a baker and his wife, who have been rendered infertile by a witch’s curse and long for a child. All of this works well and wittily, with the woods representing the dangerous areas of human experience that we have to enter in order to learn and grow.
There are some great coups de theatre, especially the one involving Red Riding Hood and the wolf, and a truly spectacular appearance by the Giant, voiced by Judi Dench. Up to the interval, the show’s mixture of wit and menace proves irresistible as darkness falls.
But in the second half the musical falls apart. James Lapine’s book becomes an increasingly confused mess of plottage, and after a host of characters have been killed off, the big climactic anthem, assuring us that No One Is Alone seems as dishonest as it is trite, offering the kind of schmaltzy Broadway uplift Sondheim usually scrupulously avoids. At three hours this often repetitive show would also benefit from cuts.
The cast is outstanding however. Mark Hadfield and Jenna Russell are both deeply touching as the Baker and his wife, yearning for a child; Beverly Rudd is a chunky, spunky Little Red Riding Hood who is deflowered as well as devoured by the wolf, ruefully concluding “Isn’t it nice to know a lot ... and a little bit not,” a classic Sondheim line. There’s great work too from Hannah Waddingham, initially unrecognisable as the withered witch with twigs for arms before her transformation into a dangerous, voluptuous vamp.
For all its faults, the strength of the company, Sheader’s witty direction and, above all, the spectacularly-lit woodland location, ensure that this fairy-tale musical casts a pretty potent spell.
Jack and the Beanstalk: The Oxford Playhouse
12:53pm Tuesday 15th December 2009
The Oxford Playhouse maintains its reputation for top-quality panto with a colourful, tuneful and exuberantly entertaining production of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Under the practised hand of writer/director Peter Duncan, who has had charge of the last three Playhouse pantos, the show gives us the much-loved story as expected, complete with Buttercup the Cow, magic beans and the rest. A difference comes after the interval, though, with the introduction of a sci-fi element through the transformation of the terrifying Giant Blunderbore (Richard Stacey) into a one-eyed monster ruling over Cyber City.
Full marks to the technical wizards of Jag Props for supplying such a vast and convincing villain. Naturally, of course, Blunderbore proves no match for the plucky Jack Trott (Chris Carswell).