Monthly Archives: October 2011

Grand Guignol – Exeter Alternative Theatre

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With Halloween fast approaching, where better to turn than the Theatre du Grand Guignol, where horror and perversion was once the order of the day. Exeter Alternative Theatre return to Exeter’s Barnfield to present three short plays that give different twists on the style. Performing on 28, 29 and 31 October 2011, this is a rare chance to have a taste of the bizarre and macabre on the local stage.

The evening opened with a clear warning of what we were to experience, and the Barnfield Theatre was the perfect location in one of those rare moments where the presentation made you feel like you were stepping back in time.

The Torture Garden by Pierre Chaine and Andre de Lorde in a translation by Richard J Hand and Michael Wilson was the first chapter of the night, directed by Geoff Nicholson. This production is itself adapted from the 1899 novel by Octave Mirbeau. It is a tale that takes the audience on a boat to China, where a haunted young lady captivates all on the ship on a journey that ends in a mixture of murder and lust. Once the story reaches the mainland, the Westerners find themselves in the middle of political intrigue and double dealing, where torture is not confined to the prison grounds.

For lulling the audience into a false sense of security, John Ormond and Larry Blackshaw are to be commended for performances as Muller and Smithson, two men on the voyage who set the scene splendidly. Together with the Captain of the ship, played by Malcolme Littler, a mystery was established in the form of passenger, Mrs Clara Watson.

Elisabeth Bennett gave a haunting performance as Mrs Watson, as she seduces everything she comes into contact with. Together with Al Wadlan as Jean Marchal, they were a central couple that dragged the audience through murder, sex, madness and physical brutality.

Once off the ship the only calm came from Louis Ravenfield as Han, whose measured menace left you doubting the motivations of everybody, as he encourages Mrs Watson to visit the Torture Garden, despite knowing the effect it will have, then asking her to betray Marchal as she has others in the past.

Highlights included Sarah Prentice as Annie, a girl locked up at Mrs Watson’s behest, with a suggestion she was mad when appearances suggested otherwise. Appearances can be deceptive and Prentice delivers the most horrific breakdown of the night. In terms of horror, Kate Copley’s performance as Ti-Bah set the tone for physical and sexual abuse playing both sides of torture leading to a devastating conclusion.

Lighting and special effects were well handled during scene of graphic abuse. It was uncomfortable viewing, but that’s really the point, and the power of the closing is strengthened by the normality of the opening scenes.

The second chapter of the evening was The Weekend Cottage by Frederick Witney and directed by Jac Bevan. This script came from the 1940s London revival of Grand Guignol, and for the Jolly Lion, was the most effective of the evening’s three offerings.

A four-handed one act play opened with Laura, played by Nicky Crew, preparing for the arrival of her lover for a dirty weekend. Instead she finds Butch and Nobby, played by Mark Chawner and Leigh Steedman, turning up to disrupt her plans and eat the meal she has prepared. As they start to take more and more, events grow more sinister, until Arthur, played by Louis Ravensfield, arrives to find Nobby, rather than Laura, greeting him with a smile.

The piece had a beautifully dressed set, with fine dark comic performances from Chawner and Steedman. In particular, the way Steedman paced the set fiddling with furniture, eating and drinking was a clever distraction from what we knew was going on in the other room. Perfect pace and great characters, with nice use of lighting and sound when weapons were used. Not everyone gets out alive, and you are left wanting to know what happens next.

The final chapter of the night was a home grown affair, written and directed by EAT members Rosie and Midge Mullin, An Eye For An Eye, is the result of a challenge thrown down by the group after their 2010 Grand Guignol presentation. Could somebody within the group create something to add to the 2011 playbill?

A striking opening as a masked figure danced before some lighting that cast a magnificent shadow up to the ceiling of the Barnfield to the sound of African tribal rhythms. Immediately, a new location was again established, with a tone for the mystery and horror behind the third play.

Professor Alistair Rodwell, played by Ben Rodwell, is an anthropologist who has cut short his studies of an African tribe to return to England. One of his team, Tom Sullivan, played by Mike Gilpin, is marrying Rodwell’s daughter Lizzie, played by Elisabeth Bennett. His father insists that she wear her mother’s ring, but at the wedding the provenance of the ring is thrown into question. As Rodwell is taken ill, so Sullivan tries to uncover the truth of the origins of the stone in the ring, wanting to return to the African tribe to complete Rodwell’s studies.

A story of theft, distrust and the supernatural, there are some fine set pieces including a scene of childbirth performed in silhouette, and a few beams of light that cast across Rodwell after he has dug through the walls to try to find the source of the noises that trouble him. Another haunting ending and a frightening conclusion to the evening.

Exeter Alternative Theatre remain a group clear in what they want to achieve and working hard to achieve it. The creativity here is fascinating, and the ability to shock and surprise only grows with each performance. As a celebration of Grand Guignol, this presentation felt like a journey back in time.

For the Jolly Lion this was a welcome break from Agatha Christie and the safe comedies of the amateur world. Happy Halloween.

For more information visit: www.eattheatre.co.uk

Last review from EAT:

Fahrenheit and Celsius – The Bovey Tracey Players

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The Bovey Tracey Players present some home grown drama from James Gillingham in the form of ‘Fahrenheit and Celsius’, a play set in a community facing the arrival of three wind turbines. Something of a family affair, the production is directed by Nigel Gillingham and is performed in the Bovey Tracey Town Hall from 26 to 29 October 2011.

With a tag line telling the audience that there are two ways of looking at most things, it was not immediately obvious how the title of the play related to the content. With fahrenheit and celsius being two ways of measuring temperature, perhaps the intention was that simple – there were certainly scenes that got quite heated on stage, but the Jolly Lion was left wondering what this all had to do with wind.

If temperatures raised during the conflict that came from opposing views on stage, they certainly weren’t trying to achieve the same end – not that this really mattered, as whilst the advertising challenged the audience to consider how you would react if somebody proposed putting up some wind turbines in your village, the author details in the programme notes that the play is not a debate about the merits of renewable energy. Human reaction to change appears to be the key here and the characters certainly have to deal with plenty of that.

David is played by Mark Dunn. He is a landowner who has struggled to make a living farming in recent years. Instead he has applied to have three wind turbines erected on his field, looking to persuade the local council that there is a sound economic reasoning for allowing his development to proceed.

He is supported by his friend Alex, played by David Cartwright. An advocate for the proposed changes, whilst being a figure of light relief during some heavy discussions, Cartwright brings a lovely balance showing the breakdown of friendships on one hand, with some great comedy on the other.

The main opponent to the development is Jerome, played by David Scott. He is shown to carry great anger at the changes as he launches his campaign to encourage locals to stand up for the countryside. The anger brings a performance that involved a lot of shouting at friends and family, giving him a sense of becoming completely unhinged. He was already a man in crisis – dealing with a wife leaving him, having his adult daughter return to the family home, turning to an old flame for help and dressing in a way that all the other characters feel in inappropriate for him. Perhaps among the imbalance, Scott portrays a man who is directing his fight at the wrong people. Rather than saving his family, he is too busy trying to save the countryside. If that is the case, he is a character facing a lonely future.

If there is a tale of redemption, it comes for Yvette, the old flame, a D-list celebrity best remembered on YouTube for a drunken appearance on a daytime talk show. Kirstyn Munro has the hardest task in this production, finding a sympathetic character under the bitterness and hunger for fame. Having to deliver most of her material to the audience directly, it isn’t until she drops out of the campaign that she starts to come across kindly. In some light flirting with Jerome, she reveals why she doesn’t want to rekindle the old romance, providing a moment of depth to a character that has been all about putting on a brave face for the audience.

Finally there is Laura, Jerome’s daughter, played by Jenny Connelly. Society has not allowed her the level of employment she had hoped for, nor the lifestyle she thought she would have. She has a relationship with David, but neither of them want to admit to it because of the impact it would have on each other and the wider community. A love story that was buried before the play began, when they are together they appear bored by each other’s company, as though they’d been together for years and things had grown stale. At no stage has this been sneaking around for excitement, more because of a fear of upsetting the apple cart. Connelly has some great dry one liners and a very natural delivery. Together she and Dunn made a very convincing stagnant couple.

It would seem only Yvette gets a happy ending here, and even then it comes with a great sense of looking back at what went wrong. Whilst everyone is forced to accept a level of change, they are all left to make the best of what they have been given.

The production makes a good use of split staging for different rooms together with projection onto the back wall, particularly effective for a sunset and the turning of the sails on the turbine.

In the end, despite some good jokes along the way, there is little to take pleasure in here. Whilst the characters were strong, they were not sympathetic, so with nobody to relate warmly to, it was difficult to care what happened to them. This could be for the best, as even those who got something from the campaign lost something more important, leaving thing more bitter than bittersweet.

The Jolly Lion became one of those people that Jerome gets angry with – the people who turn up, don’t understand how important it all is and leave in complete indifference to go about their business as normal. Well staged with strong performances, but naming a play about a wind turbine after two means of measuring temperature left me confused and somewhat cold.

For more information about The Bovey Tracey Players visit: www.boveytraceyplayers.org

Last review for The Bovey Tracey Players:

Ladies Who Lunch – Dawlish Repertory Company

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A new season opens for the Dawlish Repertory Comedy with a comedy by Tudor Gates, “Ladies Who Lunch”. Directed by Liz Wedlake, the production ran from 18 to 22 October 2011 at the Shaftesbury Theatre, Dawlish.

Social messages ahoy, the play opens with nice use of multimedia, as a big screen at the back of the set plays a short recorded insert telling us the moral of the story and introducing the key players over the next two hours. The recording was a very effective way to open the play, well put together and compiled as though watching any standard television news broadcast.

We are introduced to three women who are the wives of some of the world’s wealthiest men. Coming together from different sides of the world, they aim to raise money for their chosen charity on a scale like never before. £10 million is the target, which can be easily achieved by insider trading, using information they steal from their husbands. Putting liberty and marriages on the line, they are forced to consider blackmail, murder and money laundering, but why worry, after all, it’s all in a good cause!

The production is staggered across three continents as we visit the UK home of Lady Amelia Sasson, played by Linsie Kemp, the Australian home of Joane Stocks, played by Jane Cleave and the American home of Rachel Milchan, played by Karen Allen. These three ladies are the central performances, whilst Kemp provides the solid scheming brains behind the operation, Cleave benefits from the funniest lines and Allen revels in the most comic household.

Each gets their best material when they’re apart and we see them with their husbands. Nicholas Perrott delivers a wonderful performance as Harry Milchan, a man who can never find the words to describe how bad the situation is becoming. Will Clark plays Ken Stocks, the womanising Australian businessman with Peter Macklin playing Sir John Sasson to complete the UK partnership.

The husbands get one scene together that was something of a highlight in a production that really belongs to the wives. The confusion on their faces as they begin to realise the betrayal is great fun, with nobody being quite ready to accept they’ve been outplayed by a girl. They react in different ways, and the implications for each woman brings the play together for three tidy endings.

Also of note were two cheeky performances from Elaine Harvey as investigator Ms D. I. Wallis and Sophie Brimacombe as Geraldine ‘Gerry’ Sasson, the wayward daughter, falling in love with the wrong man at the drop of a hat.

With three countries to cover Liz Wedlake made great use of the set to reflect the different locations. The screen that opened the show doubled as a window for the performance, and the image out of the window changed to show which country we were watching. A nice touch that they changed with the time of day to get darker in evening and night scenes.

Each home was furnished on one wall of the set, with different art and furniture to show three takes on the interior design of the rich. By lighting the appropriate wall with the change of location, cleverly completed with nice swift scene changes to move just a few items of furniture.

The one item of furniture that was being moved between the three homes was a settee that was lovingly dressed with a throw and changing cushions as the venue changed. Whilst it was a very effective way of changing the set, the Jolly Lion was reminded of ‘Frasier’ and the chair his father brought into the flat that didn’t live up to the expensive surroundings. Perhaps all three households had a father hidden away who had insisted on bringing his favourite chair.

As the scene changes came thick and fast so the number of bodies on stage changing the scenery increased, the break between scenes was never too long, and the changing of the cushions became quite fascinating. There were also plenty of costume changes, and the ladies were always very well turned out.

A strong opening to the season that brought global issues and travels to a corner of Dawlish with great success.

For more information about the Dawlish Repertory Company visit: www.dawlishrep.com

Last review from the Shaftesbury Theatre: They Came From Mars And Landed Outside The Farndale Church Hall In Time For The Townswomen’s Guild’s Coffee Morning

Cash On Delivery – The Exmouth Players

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Friday night was farce night as the Jolly Lion headed over to Exmouth to catch the penultimate night of ‘Cash on Delivery’ at the Blackmore Theatre. A popular comedy by Michael Cooney and directed by Daphne Fensom, the show ran from Monday 10 October close this evening on Saturday 15 October.

The story revolves around the day Eric Swan, decides enough is enough, after years of fraudulent dealings with the Department for Social Security, he is going to terminate all of his claims. The decision coincides with visits from the Department and other agencies, looking to provide extra benefit, and also with his wife arranging a secret meeting with a marriage guidance counsellor, leading to a full house, and lots of confusion behind opening and closing doors.

With Norman Warne as Swan and Tim Othen as his lodger, Norman Bassett, the production was in safe hands. The men worked tirelessly through the evening, in a delightful mixture of energy and exasperation. The inventiveness of the script as each man delivers barely credible explanations of what is happening when each new character asks is a joy to behold, and they must share the acclaim in this splendid display of teamwork. The tenuous grasp of what is happening is passed between them, each a joy when dealing with a third party, but most enjoyable when they are both there, muddling through as best they can.

In support Mike Killoran puts in a great performance as Mr Jenkins the man from the Department, a master of bureaucracy, playing everything by the book. Reciting lists of all the benefits Swan has claimed and summarising the plot at pace at various intervals, he is the wrong end of some wonderful gags throughout.

There were also notably fun performances from Reita Sargeant as Sally Chessington and Iris Searle as Doctor Chapman, visitors to the house getting caught up in the confusion. Also Juliet Roache should be commended for a nice performance as Linda Swan, the only part in the play that doesn’t get a tremendous scope for comedy, as really the madness is going on around her.

This was a production that never sagged, with only one glorious break, as one character slammed a door on the final entrance, with such force it came off the hinges. Cast reaction was wonderful as just a further example of what could go wrong for the characters, but the audience lapped it up.

Only shame of the night was a very enthusiastic curtain. Having been at some shows where curtain calls have been milked, I was amazed what a fleeting opportunity we were given to praise the cast. Perhaps the constant laughter through the evening was all the appreciation they needed.

For more from the Exmouth Players, visit: www.blackmoretheatre.co.uk

Dracula – Shiphay Amateur Dramatic Society

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As the dark autumn nights draw in, the new season opens for the Shiphay Amateur Dramatic Society, presenting Liz Lochhead’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. A small community group, the SADS perform at St John’s Church Hall, Cadewell Lane, offering three plays and a pantomime every year. With ‘Dracula’ the younger members of the group are given centre stage in this production that runs 13 – 15 October 2011.

Under the direction of Jonathan Waterworth, the gothic tale is brought right up to the turn of the 21st Century with the use of laptops, camera phones and staged in modern dress, whilst maintaining a faithful palette of reds and blacks with plenty of darkness as one would expect. The script doesn’t quite allow for the modernisation, but the intention is clear, and for the first half of the play, it all holds together quite well.

With seating against three walls, the action spills from the stage out across the floor down through the main body of the hall. A table is fixed in the centre of the room, whilst a cage is set at one end, containing Renfield, played by David Jackson, who taunts the audience as they arrive, and sets the rooms with a difficult atmosphere. Jackson is always working, and the cage is quite captivating, as he watches the play unfold, never distracting but always there. When he gets to join the action his performance is extraordinary.

At the centre of ‘Dracula’ is the relationship between young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, played by John F Shorter, and Mina Westerman, played by Natasha Eyre. Engaged to be married, the couple must endure separation as Harker visits a client overseas, the Count Dracula, to assist with some conveyancing. Dracula is buying a house next door to the asylum where Renfield is caged and Harker’s old school friend, Dr Seward, played by Barnaby Tuck, is running the asylum.

The asylum is well drawn, staffed by nurses and orderlies all played by Pat Cook and Chris Meacock. These characters, who display a range of interest in their work and their care of Renfield offer some black comedy to the evening. You can’t help but look forward to their arrival, and enjoy subtle changes to costume and performance that indicate a difference in character. Towards the end of the night, Cook enters as two of the nurses and has a conversation with herself, nicely handled and quite disturbing in the context of her workplace.

In the Westerman household there are three nice performances from Eyre as Mina, Rosanna Wilson as Lucy, her sister and Jemma Carlin-Wells as Florrie, their maid. Whilst Mina is comforting to her sickly spoiled little sister, Lucy is man hungry and tries to be as slutty as she is able given her declining health. These three together offer some of the plays most effective sequences, getting a warm reaction from the audience during a scene about the menstrual cycle, where Carlin-Wells delivers a old wives’ tale with great maturity.

James Loxham plays Dracula with a strong confidence opposite Shorter’s nervous Harker. As you would expect, he is involved in the plays nicest set pieces, getting four very different and very effective entrances always stalking the stage with a disturbing charm, though not always lit so that you can see him. Meanwhile, his nemesis Van Helsing, played by Steve Stapleton, cuts an imposing figure, with some disturbing scenes of hypnosis, well supported by Eyre and Shorter.

Lucy’s deterioration towards the undead was well realised, a combination of good characterisation from Wilson and nice work with make up. Once she has gone and Seward has returned to his workplace, there is a great confrontation with Renfield and some of the nursing staff that is very powerful.

Realistically, this production was trying to push the facilities of the venue to the limit and would never quite be able to reach the director’s vision. Even so, the second half lost its way in the dark – and it was very dark. Interesting intentions, uncomfortable viewing.

Katherine Howard – The Teignmouth Players

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There’s plenty of romance and politics at the Carlton Theatre this week, as the Teignmouth Players present ‘Katherine Howard’, a play by William Nicholson about the (divorced, beheaded, died, divorced…) fifth wife of Henry VIII. Directed by Wendy Hayden Sadler, this production runs until Saturday 15 October.

Quite wonderfully, there has been a change in pricing at the Carlton for this production, to encourage the audience to come forward rather than grouping together at the back of the room. It’ll cost you more to hide away at the back, and nicer for the performers if they don’t have to look over a few rows of emptier seats to get to you.

Whilst I’ll accept that Tudor history isn’t for everyone, we’re fortunate in the amateur world that Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Henry VIII from TV series ‘The Tudors’, has brought the period back into fashion, as well as letting us turn a blind eye to questionable casting when it comes to the ages of characters. On television, they were all too young, in our theatres very often the reverse is true, but we don’t let it stand in the way of a good story.

Staged with very little scenery, the costumes are given the chance to shine against the blank backdrops, and with little else to distract you, the play hangs very much on the performances.

At the centre of the story is a romance between an aging crippled Henry VIII, played by Ken Hayden Sadler, and young Katherine Howard, played by Kate Edis. The script gives them some quite beautiful material to work with, as the king considers his younger years before she was born, and how a man must change his approach to attracting a wife as they get older and less appealing.

They are ably assisted by some good use of lighting at times of realisation within their relationship. So much of their coming together is based on looking and the way they perceive each other. The lights drop and raise at one point, clearly giving a moment that the penny drops for Katherine, she knows that Henry is a man that she can love.

The chemistry between the two is something very special and as things start to fall apart for the pair, you can’t help but hope there’ll be a different outcome. Sadly, whilst some liberties will be taken with historical accuracy in playscripts, the ending will always remain the same.

There were strong supporting performances from Kevin Booker as Thomas Culpeper and Angela Healy as Lady Jane Rochford. In his stage debut, Booker’s delivery is clear, confident and warming – the sort of actor that you could happily listen to and look forward to seeing again. Healy’s role is a joyful mix of comic and scheming in the first half, before finding herself undone and vulnerable in the second, a welcome mentor to the Queen of the day, whilst keeping an eye on her own interests.

Rather than a heavy trawl through history, this is a witty script with lots of good jokes to keep the audience amused. Whilst Henry and Katherine have some nice banter, it is Anne of Cleves, played by Tracey Burton, that gets the bulk of the laughs. She squeezes every last laugh out of the material she is given.

In the second half, Laraine Lynch received an impromptu applause for her cameo as Mrs Hall, interrogated as part of the investigation into Katherine’s exploits. A great comic role that she played surprisingly straight right up until the wonderful crescendo – not something you expect in a play about the Tudors.

A special mention must go to the King’s Old Retainers, David Potter and Cliff Raymont, who spent the evening shifting props and staging in remarkable period costume – a treat that kept scenes flowing nicely, whilst adding to the momentum of the humour in the script.

For me, the love story had a far better pace than the political intrigue, but in the court of Henry VIII you simply can’t have one without the other, and the central performances make it a splendid show.

The Players will also be taking this production to the Brixham Theatre on 2 and 3 November 2011.

For more information visit: http://www.carltontheatre.com/

Last review from the Carlton Theatre: Travels With My Aunt

Last review for The Teignmouth Players: Hi-de-Hi!

Available from Amazon: Katherine Howard (Acting Edition)

The Female of the Species – TOADS Theatre Company

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A new benchmark has been set for TOADS Theatre Company with this week’s run of ‘The Female of the Species’, a satircal farce from Joanna Murray Smith and directed by Stephanie Austin. In a season of ten productions at the Little Theatre there will be some safe choices that will be crowd pleasers or something for the masses, but this is staging a play that saw its West End Premiere in 2008 and is not the usual fare from an amateur company. Whatever audiences make of the subject matter, coarse language and references to Pokemon, the script is straight out of the Nick Hern Books catalogue of great challenging modern plays.

Challenging, because the audience is offered the study of an intellectual, a feminist who has travelled through post-feminism, paid the mortgage writing about post-post-feminism and is looking to write her next groundbreaking bestseller. I was content that for every joke and reference I did understand (Derrida deconstructing a child’s breakfast had me laughing) there were half a dozen passing me by.

Our intellectual is Margot Mason, author of ‘The Cerebral Vagina’, who spends the entire play on stage and the most part of it handcuffed to a chair. From her opening words on the telephone to her capable removal of a bra without pausing mid-conversation, the tone was set. Maggie Campbell’s performance as Mason dominated the evening, seemingly controlling every character who appeared in her study, offering delightful commentary on each arrival and never quite caring about the seriousness of the situation as long as she can share her thoughts with everyone.

Mason is handcuffed after falling foul to a hostage situation. When student Molly arrives, played by Hannah Samuel, there is plenty of fun to be had exploring the differences between the older writer seeking inspiration against the young student, who dropped off her course because Mason told her she couldn’t write – here found to be using expressions that inspire Mason to start her next book. One by one she throws Mason’s bestsellers across the carpet, highlighting the dreadful inconsistencies in her career and forcing her to consider the impact her writing has on the lives of others, whilst allowing the writing to trip up new arrivals both literally and figuratively.

When a series of further uninvited guests arrives the farcical nature of the piece takes hold, the hostage situation deteriorates and Samuel shows a wonderful downward spiral as a gun-toting maniac who cannot control the room because everyone has too much to say about why they don’t agree with what Margot writes. The play is not a debate about feminism, merely mocking interpretations of the feminist writings until just before the subject starts to sag, at which point another character enters to lift the conversation again.

Liz Loly appears as Mason’s daughter Tess about half an hour in, and she offers the most intriguing of the three female leads. Her feminism is a backlash to her upbringing, away from the media whore that is her mother, she looks to the other extreme and settles to be a wife and mother. Tess travels from exhausted through a sudden realisation to finding what she really wants in the short space of the day, yet the transformation seems physical, she could be a different woman, revitalised and alive by the end of the evening. Loly gets the bulk of the physical comedy, throwing herself around the floor, but it never seems overdone because of the celebrity circles Tess grew up in, yet pushes against.

At this point, and let me declare a *spoiler* – my favourite joke of the night is a moment where Tess fleetingly considers lesbianism, causing Molly to tug at the bottom of her skirt, trying to make it reach her knee, as if this sudden decision would make her jump on the first woman she sees.

The males only appear after the interval, with Tess’s husband Brian arriving, played by Paul ffitch. A man caught up in the world of trading, he is forced to consider how he views his wife as the harder working of the couple, and offers his own lovely take on feminism. Never quite bright enough to realise how profound he is being, he’s the hunter gatherer at the water cooler and yet perfect in an apron preparing soup.

With Frank, played by James Tyler and Theo, played by Martin Austin offering two further takes on feminism before the play concludes, we receive both the tough manly man and the gay man take of Margot’s theories. Tyler gives Frank a great moment of transition between helplessness alongside Brian to taking control of the room in a way that Molly never could. Meanwhile Austin’s performance went beyond the stereotypical gay man into the world of John Barrowman’s ageless Captain Jack Harkness, flirting with men, women and at some point with the furniture and even the food – astonishing!

The production has a lovely pace, with very few surprises once the full cast are assembled, although there is still room for some heart in mouth tension and a little bit of happy ever after…

TOADS often find the productions with strong female roles, and whilst the feminists may not like the tone of this play, there is no doubt that women win out in this production, not necessarily for the content, but certainly for the characters and opportunities this script provides the actors involved.

The Female of the Species runs until Saturday 15 October. For more information visit: www.toadstheatre.co.uk

Last review from the Little Theatre:

One Man, Two Guvnors – National Theatre on Tour

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The Theatre Royal, Plymouth has this week played host to the touring National Theatre. Presenting ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ by Richard Bean, there’s little wonder that the publicity for this show revolves around James Corden’s central performance as Francis Henshall. The script is based on Carlo Goldoni’s ‘The Servant of Two Masters’ and directed by Nicholas Hynter.

The audience joins the production with what seems to be a tone setting warm up act, as Grant Olding leads The Craze through some 1960s soundalike tunes to bed us into the era. As the scene changes through the production require it, they perform before a closed curtain, joined by members of the cast until everyone has taken a turn in front of the microphones before the finale. They help to maintain a pace in a drama that travels from interior sets to street scenes to a climax (of sorts) on the Brighton Pier.

Corden’s Henshall is on a quest for a square meal and girl. He soon has two employers, Rachel Crabbe, played by Jemima Rooper, and Stanley Stubbers, played by Oliver Chris. Crabbe and Stubbers are a couple who’ve arranged to lie low and meet in Brighton before fleeing to Australia after Stubbers killed Crabbe’s twin brother, both feel the need for protection with Henshall as a minder.

In terms of script, the best one liners are given to Oliver Chris as the ex-boarding school posh fellow excitably exclaiming at whatever situation confronts him. Meanwhile Daniel Rigby as wannabe actor Alan Dangle gets some splendid material, expressing his emotions as theatrically as he can (destiny is like a bus) caught in an unexpected love triangle with his fiance Pauline (Claire Lams) and Crabbe, as she pretends to be her late homosexual brother who was promised Pauline in a sham marriage.

For physical performance Tom Edden’s octagenarian Alfie goes through the mill in a scene where Henshall serves both of his employers a meal at the same time, without the other discovering he has two jobs. In a sequence that involved Alfie repeatedly falling down stairs when staged at the Lyttleton, it is interesting to see how the mishaps have been reworked for the tour with swinging doors – just as funny as the original arrangement. This scene in the Cricketer’s Arms is held together by Corden beautifully directing all involved from the centre of the stage, whilst trying to serve two meals, eat on the hoof and build up a stash of food for later. The scene has the biggest laughs of the evening, but an extra was delivered when Corden cut the head off a fish with such momentum the head disappeared out of his sight down a gap in the stage. When he went to retrieve it, even the best efforts of The Craze to assist could not recover a head now festering under the Theatre Royal stage. Corden fought through his own laughter to keep the scene moving and was the one moment you knew the guard was really down.

Credit also goes to Suzie Toase as Dolly, the love interest for Corden’s Henshall. Her character is a glorious sixties liberated feminist, who delivered an interesting take on how the world will be different twenty years on from 1963, at a time she envisages a woman will be running the country, and how much better that will be.

With song, dance, cross-dressing, audience interaction and some playful smut the production acted as a great warm up toward pantomime season. And just when you think it can’t get any better, they make a local joke against Newton Abbot… hurrah! You will struggle to find anything funnier as the winter approaches.

One Man, Two Guvnors will transfer to the Adelphi Theatre, London from 8 November 2011. For more information visit: www.onemantwoguvnors.com