This was not just five actors standing and delivering the lines – the stage not only came alive with the energy on display but it almost disappeared as we were drawn closer into the action. If Charles Mnene, as The Fear dominated the proceedings with charm and emotion mixed with just the right amount of threat then his was the central voice. Michael Elkin, The Fight, was an earnestly believable policeman trying to bring understanding to the crazed world that he has to patrol by watching Natural History TV programmes but also showing that if cornered he could be very nasty indeed. Gabeen Khan was, possibly even more threatening as The Wolf, the charming historian and social-commentator whose ornithological observations in the park were pure social poison Gabeen Khan held plenty of venom in reserve only letting it out when we thought he’d lulled us away from imminent danger. Steven Elder, Silver Tongue,  was convincing too as everything we dislike about our current batch of PR politicians pushing our capacity for sympathy to an extreme when we were asked to feel sorry for this posh kid sent to boarding school an a very impresionable age.

Akiya Henry genuinely sparkled as The Sparkle, the lone female voice in this mostly masculine-voiced play. In many ways she had the most difficult role of all, vulnerable, sassy and funny, she also had to bring the most intense sense of fear to the proceedings and had to convince even when the play moved into its least convincing theme.  She tells us that her fear is limited by her sense that her life already feels dead. Here Archie Maddocks tried too hard to win it both ways when we felt that The Sparkle’s sparkle, in spite of her perceived frailty, would never willingly be snuffed out. Perhaps Mr Maddocks was too ready to make the only woman in the piece the most obvious victim but Akiya Henry’s charisma carried us over several awkward bumps in a script that is mostly weaved with inspired and golden threads.

The production was a huge success for all involved and it deserves a wide viewing so if there is any way that you can get to see it, book now – sadly it has, for the moment, only a week to run. For details of the Orange Tree Theatre look at my LINKS column on the right of this blog.

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks
Directed by Henry Bell
10 – 14 July 2012
Orange Tree Theatre.

Photos © Mawgan Gyles

The post Mottled Lines at the Orange Tree Theatre – the riots come to Richmond. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I have to declare an interest here as Henry Bell is a relative, that doesn’t make him any the less talented as a theatre director and shouldn’t stop me writing about how much I enjoyed my visit to the Orange Tree Theatre on Saturday morning for his lively and entertaining production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a slimmed down but fully poetic realization of the play aimed at primary school children and a few discerning adults.

When it comes to Shakespeare, there’s no harm if we all search out our inner primary school kid and try to respond to his plays like children because the, mostly, young audience were enthralled and undaunted by this show without the production altering the text (apart from shortening it, of course)  or losing any of Shakespeare’s power or magic.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is extraordinarily receptive to highly visual and physical interpretations and it came up shining again on Saturday.

These Orange Tree Theatre education productions of Shakespeare have always been lively and responsive to the new world that belongs to this generation’s children and are thus devoid of any pomposity or grandiose pretensions and full of visual gags – Old Will would have approved.

With a cast of only four professional actors doubling up most of the principal roles, there were also acting opportunities for some of the smaller members of the audience who have a few important lines to deliver as some of the acting “mechanicals”  and fairies and whose participation was always hilarious as much for their incongruous casting as from their acting skills. I particularly liked the 8 year old King Theseus, cast minutes before “curtain up” complete with his very trendy spectacles and intensely serious expression.

The old pros, well they weren’t that old, had a very busy time. Demetrius, the hapless Athenian lover (Will Dickie) was also an athletically physical Oberon King of the Fairies and a wonderfully subtle Peter Quince, the pedantic, earnest but passionate “rude mechanical” responsible for bringing the play-within-a-play to performance in front of the King and Queen. Helena (Victoria Grove) was the “tall” and much put upon of the two Athenian women and was perfect for the part and equally perfectly contrasted by the  “short” Hermia of Kate Kordel. Their row, always a highlight in this play, couldn’t have been better cast.  In this show though, Helena was also a raunchy as well as a truly proud  Titania, Queen of the Fairies and Hermia, sweetly girly at first but then frantically confused made some rapid but also complete transformations into a mischievously enthusiastic Puck- the ultimate eight year old primary school kid. David Ajao was the romantic Athenian lover Lysander but also a very visceral Bottom who lived up to his name with these productions customarily childish joy in bodily functions whilst also keeping his preposterous dignity as an ass with a wonderfully exaggerated vocal performance and elongated over-acting when Bottom stars in the “play-within-a-play.”

The funniest extended gag also worked brilliantly in bringing over Shakespeare’s meaning when the two Athenian men’s affections are magically transformed. Here they wake up with canine attributes, hilariously sustained but also vivid illustrations of Shakespeare’s ambivalent opinion of blind passion.
I laughed a lot.

We were all required to be woodland effects, humming, hooting, or whispering when the court-scene changed to dream-like wood. Again a truly Shakespearean moment created by our mumbles, a stage tree and some fairy lights. Minimal forces and maximum imagination – the essence of Shakespeare in the round.

The production continues to tour schools in the Borough of Richmond until it returns for one more show at the Orange Tree Theatre on Saturday 23 June. Go find your inner kid.

The post Finding our inner child with Shakespeare at the Orange Tree Theatre appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Hoping that you enjoy looking at this painting by Sir Joseph Paton, I’m rushing for a London train. The picture is a glorified theatrical crowd scene,  somewhat over-crowded perhaps, from William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I’m off to see my close relative and friend Henry Bell’s educational production at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.

He has reduced the cast to four actors who are more than doubling up – I think I shall enjoy his version more than Sir Joseph Paton’s, I hope so. To me at least, Shakespeare’s plays come up shining and inspiring no matter what you do to them – no matter what Henry does to them too.

Of course, if I hate it, I shall have to be nice to Henry because I’m celebrating his birthday too.

The post A Midsummer Night’s Dream in May appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Clive Francis (centre) with Stuart Fox (left) and David Oakes (right)

There are three short plays in this rollicking evening using the talents of a fine cast of six actors, headed by and, dare I say starring, that king of farce, the multi-faceted Mr. Clive Francis, who all appear in multiple roles.

David Oakes

 Slasher and Crasher (1848) which sends up Victorian gung ho spirit with as much charm as it ridicules  the lily-livered young man (David Oakes playing “against character”  – possibly, snigger – but in a performance as brilliant physically as it was in its characterisation) who rather than defend his honour with a duel, rather sensibly prefers to settle down with a nice jar of gooseberry preserve. When all Hell does finally get let loose, then the intimate space that is the Orange Tree is truly electric.

Edward Bennett

Then comes A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion (1849) where the highly enjoyable life of a Victorian patriarch (Clive Francis at his virtuosic best) left alone for the day by his female companions, has to endure the invasion of his peace when his garden fish pond is sought out as a possible watery grave for a neurotic young man who won’t take no for an answer (the charismatic and verbally unstoppable Edward Bennett who is almost certainly a star in the making). This is a two-hander that really should become a part of our  permanent theatrical repertoire and Messrs Francis and Bennett gave it the best possible rebirth. The final farce is Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw (1851) which has plenty of those truly farcical ingredients where the whole company of actors are involved in multiple entrances and exits through a variety of different doors whilst getting more and more confused about each others’ identitites. All of this ladies and gentlemen, plus the splendid Mr. Daniel Cheyne, a ginger-haired ukelele playing minstrel who acts as our sardonic host for the evening. So yes, I laughed – a lot.

They say:

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STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post Henry Bell comes of age with Three Farces by John Maddison Morton at The Orange Tree Theatre appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

If I hadn’t been invited by my friend and relative, Henry Bell, I might have  skipped the new play at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. Reading Hebron by the Canadian writer Jason Sherman is a dramatic, semi-documentary play about the Commission of Inquiry into the Hebron Massacre of 1994 when a jewish settler called Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians and injured at least 125 more whilst they were praying during Ramadan at the Tomb of the Patriots in Hebron, Israel.

I would have missed out though on an absorbing evening at a time when we are all thinking about the new and complex developments in the Middle East because Sherman’s play is no mere reconstruction of a judicial inquiry, it is as much a psychological study of a well-meaning, liberal-minded no-Israeli Jew, Nathan Abramowitz, who is trying to sort out his own personal and cultural problems by his own manic research into the documents, newspaper articles and books covering the subject. Like many a neurotic and confused student before him, he is brought to the verge of despair by his obsessive delving into the words of others.  The conflicting attitudes, contradictory opinions and statements and the seemingly irreconcilable differences between Israel and Palestine, Arab and Jew, Israeli and non-Israeli jews and within Nathan himself who tries to justify modern Israel’s Palestinian policies within in his liberal conscience.

Nathan (played in a passionate, earnest and flamboyant performance by David Antrobus) is haunted by the voices  – from judicial reports, from polemical  books by the likes of Naom Chomsky and Edward Said, from  a crazed and paranoid terrorist wannabe in a book shop, from his mother, well this is a Jewish play,
his ex-wife, a range of eye witnesses to the massacre, various unsuspecting consular and library officials and his own frenzied conscience. All these  and many more are handled with dizzy-making changes of character by just four very hard-worked actors (Ben Nathan, Peter Guinness, Amber Agha and Esther Ruth Elliott) who are directed by Sam Walters who obviously relishes his escape from this theatre’s admirable recent Shavian tradition.

Jason Sherman’s play is a wizardly galop through the themes, prejudices, beliefs and horrors of the Israel-Palestine conflict and, apart from the rather thread-bare and now rather obvious American TV quiz pastiche that forms the centre-fold of this long one-acter, I was caried along on the crest of his energy even if I cringed at moments when he romps just a little too far at the orthodox seder (Passover dinner) but – what do I know – jews do tell the best Jewish jokes and Sherman’s play is as funny as it is moving.

 I will take this ingenious digest with me whilst I try to unravel what is going on in the Middle East as I am writing this. A few angry members of the audience left without clapping at the end which made me think that the theatre is far from dead.

The post Reading Hebron – the controversial play at the Orange Tree Theatre appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I have a friend and relative called Henry who works at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, Surrey, England, and he invited me there for the first night of a new play. Oddly enough, I nearly went off the idea whilst sitting on the train from Lewes to Clapham Junction because I had the misfortune to be sitting near to a man in his late middle age who had the voice of unreconstructed luvviedom.  It soon became apparent, as there was no hiding place from his booming mobile phone conversation, that here was a playwright talking through the ending of his masterwork with a long-suffering theatre director.

“If you think it will work then of course it will work for me. I rely on your interpretation, of course I do. I just don’t think that ending with a realistic party scene is what I was imagining when I thought of this scene. It is more a question of the main characters going off into a magical world of their own imaginings. They have all been on a journey, and, at the end, they need to internalise where they have arrived. I don’t want to impose my views though but do you intent to fade to black at the end………”

And so on and so on. When the conversation finally drew to an end, the great man gushed: “Well, I am sure it is going to be wonderful, I just can’t wait to see it.” If his potential audience had been party to this phonecall then I fear, he would be sitting in the auditorium on his own.

I nearly rang Henry to tell him that I had suddenly gone off the idea of theatre but, luckily, I was not scheduled to see any of the masterly works of my odious travelling companion. I know there is a possible conflict of interests here and maybe I shouldn’t attempt reviewing a performance where I was an invited guest but, hey, here goes.

The play being premiered at the Orange Tree was The Company Man by Torben Betts, a youngish Alan Ayckbourn protege who, in an interesting interview printed in the play’s programme, claims to write in two different styles, social realism that “follow the laws of probability” and “other plays”…where “anything happens at any time, much more theatrical….characters can go on and say anything and they don’t need to have a back story.”

The Company Man, disappointingly I thought at first,  is one of his social realism plays and is concerned with a dysfunctional family coming together for the final days of the mother’s life as she struggles with the distressing effects of motor neurone disease and faces up to the bitter realities of a life endured under the thumb of a bullying and insensitive husband with two emotionally damaged children. Not a bundle of laughs then, this play, but it is powerful stuff and worth seeing, if for nothing else, for the magnificent performances of Isla Blair as the mother and Nicholas Lumley as her lifelong friend and would-be lover, James. Whenever these actors are holding the stage, the electricity is both exciting and tear-jerking in the most “social realistic” of ways. If these performances were seen in the West End, I would be looking for some awards going their way but, sadly the theatrical world is not like that these days.

The playwright has some personal experience of the terrible progress of wasting diseases and he finds his truest voice when dealing with the mother’s heroic and distressingly honest view of her life.

Elsewhere, I was less convinced by the writing. Ostensibly, the play centres around the over-bearing father-figure, William, here played by the always energetic Bruce Alexander. William is a self-made man who rams his views and his achievements down the throats of anyone who is listening, or not as the case may be. Unfortunately, for me anyway, Torben Betts manages to under-write the character by giving him too many words. His catch-phrases repeated too often for easy laughter,  grate after a while, his observations, intended to be insensitive and unattractive, often come over as just boring and when he is supposed to be boring to his family, I found myself switching off altogether.

Torben Betts’ social realism touches, with William as his mouthpiece, on such issues as capitalism, religion and repressive middle class values but too often William’s speeches caricature the most obvious generalisations of the so-called silent majority. I suspect the writer is much more interesting when he is writing in that other style that he refers to, where he is not so much of a slave to the “laws of probability.”

Strange though it sounds, the very fact that his main character manages so often to lose our attention, means that the play doesn’t sink under the weight of its central theme, which is, after-all,  a well-worn one. It gave me the opportunity to enjoy the play’s imagination and emotionality brought across with some clever cross-cutting techniques. There are some inventive uses of time and space where the characters step out of one period in their lives and walk seamlessly into another and these are handled smoothly by the director Adam Barnard who, on other occasions, maybe, muddled his geography when we had to imagine, within the simple set, that we were in the house or the garden. There were also some imaginative juxtapositions when different pairs of dialogues took place simultaneously on different parts of the stage and, even though, the production never quite synchronised them tightly enough, I, for one, was moved by the suffering of the other characters whilst poor Bruce Alexander was reciting his vast acreage of lines which, in the end became mere aural wallpaper.

Maybe this is what Torben Betts means by social realism. Certainly, we were left in no doubt that it would have driven anyone into depression, alcoholism or despair to have to live with this father from Hell.  Sadly though, the writing of William’s inability to express his feelings to his family or to stop talking generalities, makes him a superficial character for us too.

Enough quibbling though because, after the emotional onslaught of this play, any small problems in my own life evaporated into insignificance and that, my friends, is one of the functions of theatre. In the intense atmosphere of the Orange Tree’s theatre-in-the-round, I was truly drawn into the writer’s bleak vision by two performances which are still playing in my head. Isla Blair and Nicholas Lumley, I salute you and cried with you.

So forget my niggles, you don’t need to tell me, OK, I know I am just as monstrous as the play’s main character so don’t let me put you off.  The important thing is that here is a brave theatre company putting on new work by a young writer with a cast that could not be bettered anywhere. If you like theatre, get yourselves a ticket.

The Company Man runs from 6th October until 6th November 2010.
http://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

The post The Company Man is an emotional onslaught at the Orange Tree theatre appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It was a great day to catch a train, yesterday. the sun was shining at Lewes railway station and the open rail which runs all the way up to London, about an hour away, was inviting me to go off for some fun. I was heading up for the opening night of a play at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, a rather superior borough that sits south west of the capital and does very well for itself as a good place for rich city types to spend their down time.

Between Lewes and Richmond, on a moderately full train,  I and most of my fellow travellers were submitted to a protracted conversation between two members of a section of English society that has always been misnamed as “the silent majority.” A man and a woman, of a certain age and set very firmly in their image of middle class life in Middle England, carried on a conversation in penetrating voices about inconsequential matters laced with self-concsiously dropped titbits like “when I was church warden” or “darling, what would you do if you didn’t have me to tie your bow ties?” it was the noisy and rather hammy delivery style of these remarks that gradually let everyone in the carriage, lucky enough to own an iPod to, one by one, put on their headphones to cut out the blabbering.  I went for Joni Mitchell’s edgy album Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and soon I was transported to a better place. I changed trains at Clapham Junction where I always think of the great Victorian playwright Oscar Wilde who was forced to stand one of the platforms in chains awaiting his transfer to prison after his notorious trial and where he would have been sniffed at by many a bow-tie wearing English church warden. Some things stay the same.

I was going to see a play by a lesser writer than Wilde, the once highly fashionable Arthur Wing Pinero (1855 – 1934) at Richmond’s charming theatre in the round, the Orange Tree which I first visited when they were doing a season of plays by one of my favourites, George Bernard Shaw.

It was the first night of the new season and the play was The Thunderbolt (1908), described by Pinero as “an episode in the history of a provincial family.” Not unlike, I feared, those ghastly people on the train.

Some time ago, I saw a good production of Pinero’s most famous play, The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893) which definitely has its moments but I am with Shaw on this one. He labelled Pinero “a humble and somewhat belated follower of the novelists of the middle of the nineteenth century.”

The Thunderbolt was more enjoyable than I expected even if its plot involving rather stock characters from a Northern English town took some time to engage me.  Pinero was at his best when expressing simple outbursts of emotion and there were some fine moments last night. In the end, the things that shocked middle class audiences in 1908, now come across as a lot of fuss about nothing. Except the question of money, of course, which is central to the story…..that will always be with us.

I was there at the invitation of my good friend Henry, a young theatre director who is currently working at the Orange Tree and, who not only got me a ticket but also insisted on buying me a pint of excellent London beer and an exceptionally traditonal ham roll in his local pub after he saw my envious expression when he arrived devouring a take-away snack.

The main problem with Pinero’s plays is that they are very very long. after three hours of Edwardian drama, I had to run for my train but miss my connection. That long wait on East Croydon station, watched by a curious mouse, was made much more palatable by a repeat hearing of Joni Mitchell’s wonderful album.

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