REVIEWS HOME
Kinver and Stourbridge
theatre groups take
the bows
NEW Kinver Players, with ‘Audience’ by Michael Frayn, have been voted
the Overall Winners of the Worcestershire Theatre Festival by
professional adjudicator, Jane Levan, at the end of a contest that saw
11 drama groups compete against each other with 13 one-act plays over
two days in front of a live audience at the Swan Theatre, Worcester.
New Kinver Players also won the award for Best Comedy, received two
commendations in the Best Actor category and one for Best Actress.
Mike Galikowski, chair of New Kinver Players and also the director of the winning play commented “When the adjudicator announced we’d won the award for Best Comedy, we were very,very pleased, but then to win the overall contest just blew us all away. The local support we receive when we perform in Kinver twice a year is always exceptional, and it’s this support that propelled us to compete at this year’s Festival.
“So, many thanks to our loyal supporters for giving us the encouragement
to go further. It’s really
paid off!”
Stourbridge-based group - Mayhem Too - received the Runners-up award
with Bar & Ger by Geraldine Aron, with actor Emma Francis awarded the
trophy for Best Actress.
Stourbridge Theatre Company won the Best Play award for ‘A Small Family
Murder’ by Simon Brett, with actor Alex Long receiving the Best Actor
award.
Another Stourbridge-based group - Side-By-Side Theatre Company - were
awarded the trophy for Best Original Piece of Theatre and were also
granted the Adjudicator’s Award for director Susan Wallin’s adaptation
of the Greek myth, Prometheus.
“The level of talent from Stourbridge and Kinver-based theatre groups
speaks for itself” said Chairman of the Worcestershire Theatre Festival,
Roger Seabury. “The standard
of all 13 plays was extremely high this year, so for four local groups
to win some of the top awards really says something about the quality of
local theatre in the Stourbridge area.”
New Kinver Players and Mayhem Too now go through to the Quarter Finals
of the All England Theatre Festival in Sutton Coldfield on 10th
April.
The semi finals are on 8th May at the Evesham Arts Centre,
culminating in the All-England Theatre Festival Final in
The All-England winner will then compete with the winning amateur
dramatic groups from
The list of competitors and winners from the Worcestershire Theatre
Festival were:
Joint Best
Director: Chris Jaegar
Swan Theatre Youth Group with ‘What’s for Pudding?’ by David Tristram
Best Play
Best Actor: Alex Long
Adjudicator’s Award
Best Original Piece of Theatre
Best Set
Runners-up
Best Actress: Emma Francis
Overall Festival Winner
Best Comedy
Joint Best Director: Nicky
Smith
Best Youth Play
Choir launches church building
plan
The choir will deliver a varied programme,
including arrangements of music such as Bring Him Home, The
Impossible Dream, Hallelujah and I
Am a Small Part of the World.
Taking the plunge with
Pinter
NIGEL HIGGS shares his thoughts about directing Highbury Theatre Centre’s production of The Birthday Party.
THE Birthday Party, at
Highbury Theatre Centre from March 16-27, was Harold Pinter’s first
full-length play to be staged in
It has been a joy to work on. Pinter has
provided us with a complex and richly crafted script where the
characters make their way through 24 hours of their lives – and, it’s a
fairly action-packed 24 hours. What Pinter deliberately didn’t provide
us with was a plotline, and any back story he wove into the characters’
dialogue is made blurred and contradictory, so we have had immense fun
working our way through the motives and meanings, both within the
characters and the play.
I had my own preconceptions about the
play’s being quite dark and complex, so it was a joy to find so much
humour emerging. This balances the darker side as it explores how one
person’s needs can allow others to play power games, so I’m glad to say
that although it wasn’t quite as dark as I remember, the complexity was
still there in the script.
I have been blessed with a group of
actors who have immersed themselves in the characters and have thrown
themselves into the challenges placed in front of them from within the
text and from me. With the weather throwing freezing conditions at us
during January and February, it’s been fairly cold in our rehearsal room
at times: we thought the heating wasn’t working properly, but it turned
out that we seemed to have a ghost who didn’t close the windows fully
after opening them. Probably Pinter trying to take us back to the late
1950’s – pre-central heating.
It’s been fun working with Barbara
Garrett (Meg) again – I recall her wonderful foul-mouthed nun in
The True Life Fiction of Mata Hari,
a truly shocking experience and my first directing experience at
Highbury. Dave Carey (McCann) is continuing an Irish theme in the
characters he has played after his début in
The Beauty Queen of Lenane and
Rob Hicks is having a lot of fun with the character of Goldberg – a much
more dominant role than he had in the last play I acted in with him.
That was Neville’s Island,
where his character ended up sitting in a tree in his underpants.
Malcolm Robertshaw (
I hope our audiences enjoy our production as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to the stage. I’ll be the one chewing my finger nails at the back of the auditorium, muttering such things as, ”Slower! Deliver the line slower!”, and “You’ve left the chair too far out”, and ‘Whose idea was it to have those sound effects?”
Roberta jets in from Philly
Batting on: Director Roberta Morrell, back from Philadelphia, and Dr Donald Hunt OBE, director of music, are the team leading Great Witley Operatic Society’s production
ROBERTA
Morrell, a former principal of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and
director of more than 80 operettas and musicals in the UK and USA, has
returned from commitments in Philadelphia to direct rehearsals for Great
Witley Operatic Society’s production of Die Fledermaus.
It is a comic tale of parties, seduction, disguise and revenge. Take one practical joke, add one wife, one amorous tenor, a social-climbing maid, bored aristocrats, bubbling champagne and Strauss tunes to set your toes tapping.
The music of Johann Strauss II will be under the direction of distinguished local and international musician Dr Donald Hunt OBE, who says he is delighted to renew his association with the group after a lapse of a couple of years.
“Die Fledermaus is a particular favourite of mine: it is full of good tunes, with scintillating rhythms, and exquisite orchestration – a true Viennese romp! The rehearsals are going well.”
The production, by arrangement with Josef Weinberger Ltd, will remind you of where all those waltzes come from.
Pictured right are Caroline Causier and Martin Jones, as Adele and Eisenstein, in the production of Die Fledermaus which is to be performed in English at the newly refurbished Swan Theatre, Worcester from Tuesday to Saturday, March 23-27.
Tickets are £11-£13 from Worcester Live Box Office, 01905 611427.
Contact: Christine McManus 01905 426948 email: mcmanusk@talktalk.net
The
Crescent prepares an open day
There
will be theatre tours every hour, with hundreds of costumes on view, and
props, books, scripts and DVDs for sale. There will be ticket offers –
and under the heading of “theatre games” come diversions for youngsters,
with board games and things like
Twister. Last year’s open day featured face painting.
It will
all be happening between 10 am and 4 pm.
It’s a Peberdy Princess for Tenbury
GILBERT & Sullivan’s Princess Ida comes into the calendar of Tenbury AOS Musical Theatre & Light Opera – one of the longer names among groups in the region – for the second time in April. And Brian Daniels directs it this time, just as he did 18 years ago.
The production, from April 12-17, is at the Regal Theatre, Tenbury Wells – they could have put the Wells into their name and made it even more substantial – and includes 11 members of the original cast, ten of whom are playing a different role from last time. The lady who is not for turning is Elizabeth Weston, reprising the role of Melissa.
Princess Ida is played by Eleanor Peberdy, King Gama by Derek Price, and King Hildebrand by Huigh Wood.
Brian Daniels, presumably guided by his previous encounter with the operetta, says he thinks it is perhaps the most complicated of all the G & S works. It is the only one in three acts, it is written in blank verse and it lasts just over two hours 25 minutes.
He has set it in the medieval costume for which it was intended, with three full sets of armour, plus swords, axes, halberds and banners.
COLOURFUL SHOW
He says: “It is a most colourful show with lots of humour and an excellent orchestra. It contains some of the finest music Sullivan ever wrote.”
And he reports what he calls the operetta’s “moment of glory” broadcast by the BBC immediately before Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s historic declaration of war on September 3, 1939.
“The BBC broadcast a recorded selection of music from the opera, fading out just after the words Order comes to fight, ha ha , Order is obeyed.”
As may well have been expected, the run-up to the production has had to put up with Health & Safety diktats – with the result that, after consulting the police, the players will not use their swords for the fight scene. It will be settled on the basis of brawn and bare fists.
There’s a great Dane in Upper Dean Street
BIRMINGHAM’S Crescent Theatre is hitting the streets – with a huge display advertising its forthcoming production of Hamlet.
The 96-sheet poster is on the corner of Pershore Street and Upper Dean Street, near the Arcadian. Pete Smith, who is taking on the massive role, could not quite believe it.
“I thought taking on one of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters was scary.. but this is something else”, he says – clearly knocked sideways at finding himself featuring so prominently in what is the first campaign of its kind that the Crescent has staged.
The production runs from March 13-20, with matinees on Sunday, March 14, and the final Saturday.
To see the poster going up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
More laughs along with Quilter
DUETS,
newly published with both amateur and professional rights
available in the UK, is the latest rib-tickling comedy by Peter Quilter,
pictured below, author of
Glorious!, Curtain Up and other plays which keep
the funny-bone in working order.
There are, in fact, four “duets” – four pairs of people facing crucial
moments in their relationships. Jonathon and Wendy are on a blind date
and hoping to get it right this time even though neither has ever got it
right before; Barrie is not really interested in women but Janet
sees that as no reason to stop trying; Shelley and Bobby have decided to
holiday in Spain to finalise their divorce while never letting a
cocktail feel lonely; and Angela is marrying for the third time amidst a
barrage of bad omens, to the dismay of brother Toby and with a wedding
dress resembling a parachute.Duets
– described as an hilarious tribute to the strength and madness of the
human heart – is published by Samuel French.
Glorious!
opened in the
It was just a “dirty old picture” – but
it
packed a surprise for the Players
MEMBERS of
Staffordshire’s Newcastle Players were intrigued to see an old oil
painting, twice used in their productions at the Mitchell Memorial
Theatre, Hanley, providing the background during BBC1’s
Bargain
Hunt – twice.
The painting, entitled
Idol, daughter of S E Letts, Esq,
was nearly dumped during a general clear-out of their 19th-Century
Grade 2 listed workshop in the village of Hartshill in Stoke on Trent in
readiness for its refurbishment, but member Rob Vaughan decided that it
might possibly be worth something to the Players – and it later produced
£880 at auction.
It was on view in the background for
several minutes in two programmes filmed last September and shown in
January, when Bargain Hunt
presenter Tim Wonnacott and auctioneer James Lewis, seen above, were discussing items
selected by contestants aiming to make a profit by selling at auction
antiques that they had previously bought at a fair.
Delighted though Players members were at
the unexpected boost to their funds, they were brought back to earth by
a newspaper reference to Idol
as “a dirty old picture, used as a stage prop by a theatrical company.”
Dreamed up on demand: on view at the Crescent
Rona Munro wrote
The Indian Boy when the RSC
invited contemporary writers to respond to Shakespearian texts. She took
the magical forest from A
Midsummer Night’s Dream as the setting of her tale, which follows
the central character as he strays into the real world from the fantasy
world of the woods.
Each character is in some way affected by the Indian boy’s presence as
actions and emotions run out of control.
The Indian Boy
had six performances by the RSC in 2006
and now runs from March 6-13
in the Crescent Theatre studio,
Musical evenings at Aldridge
Aldridge School Band and Orchestra is presenting a spring concert on March 7 at 8 pm at the Youth Theatre in Noddy Park Road.
The school has earned an enviable reputation for its music and its musicians are donating the proceeds for the upkeep of the theatre and the drama work there.
Then on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 25-27, at 7.30 pm the Youth Theatre’s Senior Group presents a not-altogether serious look at courtship and marriage.
Wooing,
Wedding and Repenting, devised and directed by Neville Ellis,
includes extracts from Anton Chekhov, Alan Ayckbourn and Josephine
Niggli and songs from sources that include Cole Porter, George Formby,
the
On course for creativity
MAVERICK Theatre is preparing An Introduction to Creative Producing – a seminar claimed to be unique, to be held at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London on Saturday, March 20.
It will look at everything needed to put on a show or start a production or theatre company, from the local pub, to a national tour, to the West End of London. The seminar will be led by Nick Hennegan, Maverick's artistic director, who is creative producer of Nicholas Hennegan Limited.
It is aimed at anyone who has ever felt a desire to create events. It looks at the pros and cons of commercial production, setting up a small scale theatre company and local and national touring. It covers legal issues, contracts, the challenge itself, commissioning new works, choice of production, copyright, fund-raising, pitfalls, securing rights and investing in theatre,. It will also be useful to anyone who is just curious about what a creative producer does, and no previous knowledge is assumed.
Nick Hennegan has been responsible for more than 65 productions and live events for blue chip and theatrical clients throughout the UK, the USA and Europe and has worked with some of the top theatre industry figures. He has attended numerous producing and touring courses with the Independent Theatre Council and is completing a Master of Arts in Creative Producing and Live Performance at Birkbeck College, University of London.
The cost is £120 for the day, including documentation and tea and coffee. Lunch is not included but will be available at RADA. The workshops will run from 11 am-6 pm with an hour break for lunch, 2-3pm. Further information will be provided on booking at http://www.mavericktheatre.co.uk/107015.html.
ABOUT THE COURSE http://www.mavericktheatre.co.uk/107015.html
Many arts funders and organisations now encouraging artists to 'have a go' at mounting their own work and in effect become their own producers. And over the last few years a new title has come about - the Creative Producer. But what is really involved? This unique seminar was born of a perceived need for Creative Producer training in the UK.
Where do you start? What is the difference between a Creative Producer and a 'normal' Producer? What about Finance, the law, choice of plays or musicals? Then there's employing actors, working with creatives, commissioning new works, copyright, contracts, fundraising, investing in theatre, parties and pitfalls!
WHO IS RUNNING IT?
Nick is a vastly experienced producer. Having set up Maverick in 1994, he was selected to attend the S.O.L.T. (Society Of London Theatre) Commercial Producers Workshop and the T.M.A. (Theatrical Management Association) 'Taking Steps' National Touring Seminar. He has attended numerous producing and touring courses with the I.T.C. (Independent Theatre Council) and is completing a Master of Arts in Creative Producing and Live Performance at Birkbeck College, University of London.
He has produced over 65 productions and live events for a number of blue chip and theatrical clients throughout the UK, the USA and Europe and worked with some of the top theatre industry figures.
WHO IS IT FOR?
Anyone who has ever felt a desire to create events. This introduction looks at the pros and cons of commercial production, setting up a small scale theatre company and local/national touring. It covers legal issues, contracts, working with creatives, and securing rights. It will also be useful to anyone who has considered investing in theatre or is just curious about what a Creative Producer does! No previous knowledge is assumed.
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
The cost is £120 for the day including documentation and tea and coffee. The workshops will run from 11 am - 6pm with an hour break for lunch, 2pm - 3pm.
Further information will be provided on booking.
Places are limited. Secure, on-line booking at http://www.mavericktheatre.co.uk/107015.html
For travel details to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, see www.mavericktheatre.co.uk and click 'directions'.
“Producers may be just the people to help build a British theatre culture that won't just survive but thrive in the 21st century.” Lynne Gardener, The Guardian.
Straight
faces are the signs of office
No, Dudley Little Theatre’s John Lucock has not been moved into the
borough’s mayoralty.
But he is borrowing the robes and the chain of office that belonged to Halesowen before it was subsumed into Dudley Borough – and they will be seen when Dudley Little Theatre presents An Inspector Calls.
John was clearly not presenting his more familiar sunny face while he modelled the chain as he prepared to become Mayor Birling in the J B Priestley classic, but he reports that he was acting under orders to bring a touch of due solemnity to the role.
Come to think of it, the robes are wearing pretty straight face, too.
The production, which runs at Netherton Arts Centre from March 10-13, is co-directed by David Hutchins, who is being given his opportunity at the helm by working alongside Maurice Felton as part of the group’s policy to give members interested in direction the chance to team up with more experienced colleagues.
Turning up trumps at the Grange
THE two companies who stage their productions at Walsall’s Grange Playhouse have each received a nomination from the National Operatic & Dramatic Association, the body that oversees Britain’s amateur theatre.
The Grange Players, who run the Playhouse, have been chosen for Carrie’s War, and the Fellowship Players, the theatre’s regular visitors, for Treehouses.
The awards will be made at NODA West Midlands
Region’s annual conference in April.
Hennegan riding high on Hancock
Nick Hennegan, whose involvement in theatre goes back to his days with Hall Green Little Theatre and was later involved in radio with BRMB, BBC WM and more recently on national rock station The Arrow, has formed a new company which has exclusive rights to a comedy-drama about Birmingham’s bygone Tony Hancock.
Under the banner of Nicholas Hennegan Limited, it will be looking at national and international touring and the West End with medium and large-scale productions. It starts with Hancock's Finest Hour, by Colin Bennett, to be launched in May and starring Paul Henry as Tony Hancock.
Hennegan took charge of a production for the first time in 1992, then established his Birmingham-based Maverick Theatre in 1994 and presented successive shows at the Billesley Pub in Kings Heath, with the specific aim of attracting new audiences to the arts before it began touring nationally and internationally. Maverick is now developing theatre workshops in London and Birmingham.
He apologises for the formality of his name as it appears in the label of his new venture.
He says: “It’s not very inventive, but I was always Nicholas when my mother admonished me as a child. It keeps me humble!”
No, it’s not a bustle and a hump
BIRMINGHAM’S Crossed Keys Musical Theatre Company is extending an open invitation to the city’s theatergoers to come on, boogie down and do the Hustle and the Bump.
The group will be at the Old Rep in June with four nights of Boogie Nights, the musical that tells the story of Roddy, a jack-the-lad with a life of birds, booze and boogie is about to be turned upside down.
It is the show that features disco classics such as You Sexy Thing, I Will Survive and Sugar Baby Love – and defies its patrons to remain seated for YMCA while they are transported back to the 1970s.
Boogie Nights will be at the Old Rep from June 9-12.
WODYS go way beyond their years
WORCESTER Operatic & Dramatic Society Youth Section (WODYS) is going to launch a rollercoaster ride through a glittering landscape of flares and platforms – a decade of 30 years ago that members of the young company never experienced.
Disco Inferno is set in the summer of 1976, when Jack is working in the eponymous London night club and meets Lady Marmalade, a femme fatale who just happens to be the Devil’s disciple. In the best Faustian tradition, he trades his soul to fulfil his wildest fantasies.
This is a musical of many hits and director David Humphries will lead the cast of 65 eight-to-18-year-olds as they sing and dance their way through it at the Swan Theatre, Worcester, from August 3-7, including a Saturday matinee. Jane Whittle is musical director and Rachel Price is the choreographer.
Orpheus in the
offing
ERDINGTON Operatic Society has decided to
take a break from Gilbert & Sullivan this year and stage
A romp from start to finish, it includes
lots of well-known music, culminating in the ever-popular
Can-Can. The show will run at
Anyone interested in appearing in another
first-rate production should contact the producer of
Orpheus on 0121 355 2542, or
simply turn up on rehearsal nights which are held every Wednesday
evening at Blackwood Road Methodist Church, Streetly, from 7.45pm to
10pm.
These STAMPS are
not for licking
IT is more than 30 years since St Alphege Gilbert and Sullivan Society was formed under the baton of the then Rector of Solihull – but after some years of success it became apparent that G & S did not seem to be the attraction that it once was and there were problems in recruiting young people to the ranks.
There was a name change to St Alphege Amateur Operatic Society but this did not seem to help. Having both amateur and operatic in the title was clearly still a turn-off.
Happily, a second change of name, about four years ago, seems to have done the trick. St Alphege Musical Production Society now has a fair share of youthful members – with the bonus of being able to call itself STAMPS for short.
From March 16-20, the group that has refused to be
defeated will present The Pirates
of Penzance in the Oliver Bird Hall,
Fancy
a short season at Evesham?
ERIC JONES is seeking a man
for a season – a very short season, with only two
performances – to complete his cast for
A Man for All Seasons.
He is directing Robert
Bolt’s classic play about the conflict between Henry VIII and Sir Thomas
More as the Evesham Festival Players’ outdoor summer production, due to
be staged on July 16 and 17 in the Tudor garden of the Evesham Almonry
Heritage Centre.
Also in the Great Outdoors,
the group staged The Canterbury
Tales in 2008 and Treasure
Island last year, both of them at
Eric says: “The play is
almost cast but I would be pleased to hear from any young man – or an
older one – who might be interested in one of the roles. He has to
be within striking distance of Evesham, for rehearsing of course.
Rehearsals
are on a Monday at Badsey, just outside Evesham, and sometimes
a Thursday – but we shall not be meeting at all in February and then
starting again on March 8.”
More information is
available from Eric at
ericjones@draaed.freeserve.co.uk and at 01386 48788 and 07973
802285.
Busy MOSkeetos,
busy Weekend – and the Lady Mayoress makes a comeback
THE MOSkeetos of
Moseley have lost the Lady Mayoress. Only for the time being, of course,
but with Coun Michael Wilkes the current Lord Mayor of Birmingham, his
wife Vivienne – who is habitually keenly involved on the amateur stage –
does have other matters on her mind at the moment.
MOSkeetos is the
youth group formed ten years ago as another MOS to have emerged from the
dormant Moseley Operatic Society – the first was Music On Stage, which
has also been rather quiet just lately – and Vivienne was involved with
the youngsters when she led several productions and workshops. By now,
there are members who have reached their 18th birthday.
MOSkeetos
is actually run under the banner
of the umbrella heading MOS
Theatre – now, there’s a surprise! – which also
encompasses Rat Productions
(the drama section) and
Shire Productions. Shire
Productions – again headed by Vivienne Wilkes – has
performed various J R R Tolkien works, including The
Lord of the Rings
and The Hobbit at Sarehole
Mill, Moseley, at the annual Middle Earth weekend which is held every
May. This year’s will be on
Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16.
With the
Lord Mayor – who heads the Birmingham Tolkien Group which aims to
promote the connection between the city and the author who used to play
as a child at Sarehole Mill – Vivienne will make an official visit to
the Weekend, which always features literature, music and drama alongside
many hands-on activities. It will be a busy time for friends
and
former members of Moseley Operatic Society, who are involved in
organising the event.