Annie
Lowestoft Players
Marina Theatre
Review published in Lowestoft Journal, 23 May 2014
Multi-award winning Lowestoft Players have revisited an old musical favourite for their latest production, complete with orphans, US President Roosevelt and a dog.
11-year old livewire Annie (Kitty Taylor and Jessica Tovell) is taken from an orphanage to spend Christmas with a billionaire. It’s her opportunity to find her long-lost parents. For him she is the key to a reconnection with humanity.
Things don’t turn out as she’d dreamed but it’s still a heartwarming ending when the baddies are caught. The song ‘Tomorrow’ is the best known.
The whole show is slick with professional quality commitment from everyone – on stage, orchestra, back stage and front of house. They make the audience feel free to just sit back and enjoy.
The company are a good mix of different performing experience with boundless energy, focus and commitment who collectively make for a compelling, must-see performance.
The ensemble of children are a delight throughout but the cute little dog steals the show!
Filed under: Reviews
Long Live the Little Knife
Fire Exit at
Loddon & Chedgrave Jubilee Hall as part of Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2014
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 13 May 2014
In a little story in a play doing the rounds of city and county venues, Long Live the Little Knife sees two performers playing minor league con artists/art forgers hurtling through a range of emotions that leave everyone swirling!
David Leddy’s piece is a lively romp through the travails of the underworld carrying some well crafted comedy too – ‘champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.’
Wendy Seager and Neil McCormack brilliantly play the couple, happily together yet not, switching voices and personas with breathtaking speed as the characters face up to their misfired plans.
They – ‘we tell lies for a living’ – are the embodiment of the fake yet real, the whole yet damaged people we all identify with. The castration scene and the miscarriage moment are handled sensitively yet are dramatic and devastating.
That it breaks new ground is an understatement. It mixes some surrealism with verbatim theatre with direct address and physical theatre and gruesome props with clever lighting twists which make for a stunning hour or so.
Filed under: Reviews
Ray Davies
Ray Davies
at the Playhouse
Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2014
review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 12 May 2014
Ray Davies, the man behind the influential Kinks band, sat relaxed on stage at the packed Playhouse talking about his life, work and fifty years of music.
As it was the literature section of the festival under the auspices of Writers Centre Norwich he was interviewed by author Peter Blegvad. He didn’t need questions to open up.
He read from his book Americana: The Kinks, The Road and The Perfect Riff to set the scene for a musician, writer, artist and film enthusiast who’s seen and done it all, including being shot in a mugging in New Orleans.
Never far from his working class north London upbringing, Ray has written and sung about Englishness for Britain and America all his career, ‘fighting for his origins’, being true to his unique and authentic voice.
Calling himself an outsider, a ‘fan of music’, he modestly acknowledged success while being self critical and affirming that ‘everyone’s got a story to tell.’
He finished with singing Rock and Roll Cowboys to confirm the power of song, lyrics, movies and his long journey to find his evolving identity.
Filed under: Reviews
Woman in Mind
Woman in Mind
Open Space Theatre, Beccles Public Hall
review published in Eastern Daily Press, 12 May 2014
Despite being almost 30 years old, this play resonates today with its ideas, characters and that bitter-sweet comic/tragic life commentary we expect from Alan Ayckbourn.
Susan (mesmerisingly played by Yves Green) is a woman of a certain age going through a mental breakdown. She has created a fantasy life that becomes ever more real and gradually merges with her banal ‘normal’ world.
Her husband (Geoff Cadman), her real son (Jake Kubala), her sister in law (Gill Mullen) and the hugely eccentric, comic doctor (Simon Evans) are cleverly interwoven with the idealism of her parallel family.
The oily fantasy husband (Paul Baker), his brother (Steven Phipps) and the daughter she always wanted (Emma Martin) see and despise the real people and offer her an escape into warmth, love and joy.
Action is in the garden with the audience on three sides, close to Ayckbourn’s beloved in-the-round approach, which involves everyone closely in her delusions.
Director David Green has surpassed himself with this one, achieving consummate performances from all his actors and creating a moving experience for all.
Filed under: Reviews
Peddling
Peddling
at the High Tide Festival, The Cut, Halesworth
Review commissioned by Eastern Daily Press, but not published by them through their administrative oversight! April 2014.
Remarkable drama sets tone for national festival
Halesworth’s High Tide Festival with its reputation for new, experimental and unexpected work is in its 8th year and running till 19th April.
Only able to catch one from a tempting catalogue of new, homegrown and visiting acts, Peddling came up for review in an afternoon showing.
An inspired choice as it turned out. Steven Atkinson, co-founder of High Tide and child actor Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, wrote and performed this remarkable drama about a young offender peddling household goods door to door in London.
He wakes in some sordid field and journeys back from a ‘long list of yesterdays as the concrete sets’ and his life, world and future emerge into uneasy focus. That is no mean feat in an hour and his energy, tribulations and breaking new ground are deeply moving.
Set in a square see-through tent, finally the screen drops revealing the vulnerable man close up. Nothing is typical of High Tide. If you can catch any of it, you’ll be spoilt for choice in thoughtful entertainment, performed beautifully.
Filed under: Reviews
Phantom of the Opera
Norfolk Youth Music Theatre, at Norwich Playhouse
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 12 April 2014
The increasingly ambitious, hugely talented Norfolk Youth Music Theatre team excelled in their magnificent, confident Phantom, which is a big show by any definition.
Whether in the dramatic solos and duets or the entire ensemble on stage, this was a smooth operation allowing the music, singing and Marina Bill’s tight choreography to drive the emotions in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dark love story.
Never easy musically, the orchestra under Mark Sharp’s expert baton sounded so good somebody near me thought it was a professional backing track. Norwich School of Dance delivered glorious ballet routines.
Adrian Connell, stage and musical director, should be proud of his performers and know that he is guiding many future stars. Hyoie O’Grady donned the Phantom’s mask with tragic aplomb, Emma Seamarks’ powerful, rich voice soared the heights as Christine, the Phantom’s iconic muse.
Calum Black pitched his love role just right and demonstrated how to lead and be part of the ensemble. A wide range of ages performed with infectious enthusiasm and joy. ‘Music of the Night’ indeed, that lingers into dawn.
Filed under: Reviews
Hitchcock Blonde
Hitchcock Blonde
at the Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 22 February 2014.
Playwright Terry Johnson doesn’t write about famous people so much as use them in his own intricate fixation dramas.
This intriguing work runs two parallel obsession stories. The superbly loathsome Alfred Hitchcock (John Mangan) and his nameless, underestimated blonde (Gemma Johnston) play dangerous games with cameras, a knife and her darkly silent man (Dave Myers).
On a Greek island, working through the chance discovery of rotting reels of early Hitchcock celluloid in rusty cans, middle-aged university lecturer Alex (Edward Wallis) tries it on with his not so naive blonde student (Libby Waite) so that she becomes more infatuated with him than the film.
It’s Educating Rita taken to a different level. It’s obsession with consequences while unpicking human frailties with well-written faction – that is, fact and fiction mixed beautifully. All the players star in their own and each other’s life and human condition movies.
For an evening of high quality performance and some very funny lines, grab a ticket to the Maddermarket before 1st March.
Be warned, though, it’s quite racy in parts and strictly adult fun, but really well worth it!
Filed under: Reviews
Nocturne
Voice Project Choir, Norwich Cathedral
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 16 December 2013
A nocturne is a picture evoking the night, lyrical, dreamy music. Ten songs from the Voice Project Choir filled the Cathedral’s chapels, cloisters and nave, evoking every emotion in the human heart.
It was a promenade concert, the audience subtly guided by the call of a new piece in the near distance to move on to a fresh experience. Cloaked singers with candles lined the way, sustaining a haunting, repeated motif.
Sharon Durrant, Rebecca Askew, Sian Croose, Helen Chadwick, Katherine Zerserson, Dave Camlin and Jon Baker, who also wrote much of the music, led, took solos and the intimate harmonies.
In the opening chamber they were scattered among the audience, making us part of the performance, sharing the night of memories, prayers, inner silence, joy and nature that followed.
Spooky shadows from dark, cold corners contrasted with warm, creative light patterns completing winter’s sensual atmosphere.
This 100-voice choir are amazing, creating such soaring harmonies, so many variations of the most versatile instrument of all, the voice. Conductor Sian Croose is outstanding, creative, magnificent.
She has raised expectations for their summer work to an all-time high.
Filed under: Reviews
A Christmas Spectacular
Lowestoft Players at The Bethel
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 11 December 2013
This is the season of pantos and Christmas shows and The Lowestoft Players bring their own ‘Thursford’ to the warm intimacy of their theatre building.
They have established this spectacular entertainment as an absolute highlight, a traditional Christmas variety with new angles.
It embraces the audience in loving arms and sweeps them along in a range of songs, dancing, sketches and readings, each one given the Players’ treatment of quality, style and meaning.
The show plays on memories of Christmas past, the child-like innocence of the season while dipping into the catalogue of great Christmas classic melodies to create a feast of pure entertainment.
One minute we are laughing, the next we have a lump in the throat. The sequence from children of the Louise Elizabeth School of Dance was delicious icing on the cake.
It’s a show where people sit back and enjoy themselves, with an all-age company relishing it fully. Lights, music and staging are magic.
The only difficult thing to remember is that they’re amateurs. Many professionals would love to be in a show as good.
Filed under: Reviews