Going Barefoot into the new season
Barefoot in the Park: Katy Campbell and James Marlow-Smith are at the centre of the action as Hall Green Little Theatre opens its new season with the Neil Simon romantic comedy
HALL GREEN Little
Theatre
follows a well-trodden and successful trail in opening its new season
with Barefoot in the Park, the romantic comedy written in 1967 by
Neil Simon.
It was last staged at Hall Green 1970
in
a production by the late Alan Moore and is one of the repeats being
revived by the theatre, to celebrate its diamond anniversary year. It
runs from September 24 to October 2.
For the second successive season, the opening production is directed by
Margaret Whitehouse, a
longstanding member of the group. It was with Butterflies are Free,
by Leonard Gershe, that last season was launched.
Barefoot in the Park centres on newlyweds Corrie, played by Katy Campbell, and Paul (newcomer James Marlow-Smith), who have just moved into a cold apartment at the top of a New York building, which also houses some unusual tenants, including bohemian Victor (Roger Warren), whom they try to match up with Corrie’s loopy mother (Lyn Neal).
Hall Green Little Theatre (Veitch
Theatre – main house)
Pemberley Road, Acocks Green,
Birmingham B27 7RY
'ello 'ello 'ello is that a red carpet looming?
IT’S the Old Bill on
a budget. The Force is with us as never before. It’s
Inspector Drake, The Movie,
its shooting now nearing completion and its creator clearly having a
whale of a time but shying like a startled jack-rabbit if you happen to
ask whether his experience so far as film producer, director and writer
has yet prompted him to start thinking about a second venture.
“Now steady on! I’m still in
shock!”
David Tristram’s previous
ventures onto the silver screen – is it still called a silver screen, in
all its kaleidoscopic glory? – have all been in making corporate films.
This one is different, decidedly so, as 2½ lunatic minutes with the
trailer and his crackpot constabulary are liable to convince anyone who
pauses to be persuaded.
The hope is to complete the
filming, which he is editing piecemeal as it progresses, by the end of
September. Such is its nature, he finds it hard to think of an
accidental funny moment – because they all tend to be in the script,
which is a po-faced cross between the Goons and Inspector Clouseau.
He says: “We’re plodding on
with it and we shall probably need until January to do a proper launch.”
Plodding
hardly does justice to the
madder moments, like the archery shot that pins a fish to a tree trunk,
or the Sherlock-Holmes spy-glass that becomes one of those puzzles
requiring you to pass a ring over a wire without its coming into contact
with it.
The film
When the time comes to plan
showings, he will be checking what facilities for films exist in
theatres. His company, Flying Ducks, can provide a screen and projector
if these are not available in an otherwise suitable venue. It is likely
that the première will be in his theatrical “home”, which is The Theatre
on the Steps, Bridgnorth. Sutton Coldfield’s Highbury Theatre, three of
whose members are in the film, is an obvious target, and the Strode
Theatre in Street, Glastonbury, one of the most successful of little
theatres in terms of films, is another.
Quite casually, largely
because he doesn’t seem to get over-excited about anything, he mentions
that he has already got the New Zealand première sorted out. This is
because the Drake plays are known and admired all over the world – so
Inspector Drake, The Movie
will have an early screening at the 120-seat New
Plymouth Little Theatre, on the West coast of North Island, where
Drake’s misadventures have been successfully portrayed on the stage.
Workshop plan
for busy Stage 2
THREE members of Stage2 are planning a special general drama workshop.
Annabel Smith, Charlie Reilly and
Emma Staunton have been active members of the Birmingham youth group for
many years and have been involved in numerous projects and productions.
All three have accredited LAMDA qualifications in acting, with
distinctions at the highest levels (Grades 6-8).
They have also
individually undertaken other theatre work: Annabel has recently spent
two months in Florence, where she worked with Florence International
Theatre Company on a production of The Vagina Monologues. She has
also been involved in projects with other Birmingham-based theatre
companies and is currently involved in a production of Top Girls
with Halfway House Theatre Company.
Charlie, 18,
has also worked with other groups in Birmingham such as Paradigm Shift
Theatre Company on a production of Kennedy’s Children and is
studying English literature and drama at the University of Birmingham.
Emma, 20,currently works full-time and was previously a member of
Coleshill Operatic Society and is now a committee member of the Company
of the Curtain.
They now hope
to use their varied experiences and ideas in creating a fun-filled
workshop that explores the core of drama – instinct and imagination.
Each week will be varied, examining different creative drama forms such
as storytelling, writing, devising, costume and props and scripted work,
using stimuli such as poetry, art and music.
The workshop
will run throughout the autumn term, which is from Saturday, September
18, until Saturday, December 11. Stage2 meets at Millennium Point in
Birmingham every Saturday of term time. The group stages full-scale
productions every term, latterly at the Crescent Theatre. This term,
alongside the workshop, there will be productions of Claire Dowie’s
Arsehammers and The Year of the Monkey and Roahl Dahl’s
James and the Giant Peach .
There is no
audition to join the group. The only auditions are those for the main
casts of the productions. All members have the opportunity to be in the
chorus of the group’s productions without auditioning. Stage2 also
provides a range of other opportunities such as backstage work – every
production is completely crewed by members – and encourages members to
learn a variety of new skills.
More
information is available from Annabel Smith at
annabel.smith2@btinternet.com
Big Bug Day is going to hit the town
SUNDAY, September 12 going to be Big Bug Day in Birmingham
city centre.
That’s because it’s Artsfest time again,
and Stage2 is planning on making a big splash there. The festival
is taking place from Friday to Sunday, September 10-12, to demonstrate
the great variety of the arts that the city can produce.
The Stage 2 youngsters will have their stall in their usual place
on New Street, at the top of Ethel Street, all day on both the Saturday
and Sunday, and they hope that anyone who is passing will stop for a
chat.
On the Sunday, watch out for James and
the outsize insects from James and the Giant Peach parading
through town as a foretaste of what may be in store when they take the
stage at the Crescent Theatre in the first week of the New Year.
Open day at the Crescent
BIRMINGHAM’S Crescent Theatre is staging an open day
on September 5 to give visitors the chance to talk to directors, actors
and behind-the-scenes staff and find out what makes a produciton tick.
It will run
from 10 am-4 pm and a bar and coffee bar will be available.
The Crescent
opens its season on September 11 with A Doll’s House, after which
there will come Company, followed by The Birthday Party
and Mary Stuart. Its Christmas Wassail at Highbury Hall is
sold out, but it will be repeated at the theatre from December 19-21 –
after Dad’s Army and before Danny, The Champion of the World.
Stage 2 set for a double Dowie
COMBINE the off-the-wall works of Claire Dowie with the talents of
director Liz Light and the scores of youngsters whom she directs for
Stage 2, and what you are guaranteed is theatre with a difference.
The playwright, who is Stage 2's patron, has happily seen her monologues
- Why Is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? and Adult Child, Dead
Child - transformed into scripts for scores of the young people who
compose the group that is based at Birmingham's Millennium Point.
Now, there is to be a Dowie double bill - of Arsehammers and
The Year of the Monkey. Arsehammers is about the mishearing that
made a young boy think his parents were whispering rude things when they
were discussing his grandfather's Alzheimer's.
And Liz Light says that The Year of the Monkey, like the other
Dowie works that Stage 2 has tackled - and, indeed, like everything else
that has received the Light touch, from Les Liaisons Dangereuses
and Lord of the Flies to Shakers and Spoonface
Steinberg - gives tremendous scope for imaginative movement, choral
speaking and direction and is a text that offers ample scope for
imaginative movement, choral speaking and direction.
She says: "TheYear of the Monkey and Arsehammers are both
short plays which will work well as a double bill and we can enter them
for the Annual Birmingham & District Theatre Guild Short Play Festival
in February. The subject matter of The Year of the Monkey is
great for teenagers: it's all about being passionate and dynamic and
having gall and spirit.
"Both plays expect people to have have the confidence to challenge
things and not just blindly follow and accept. Claire gives us her
permission - and trust - to do what we like with the script. The
production is from January 12-15 and will be the premieres of the
monologues as plays, which is very exciting for our kids."
Claire Dowie makes no secret of the fact that she is looking forward to
it, too. She says: "I am always impressed by Stage 2's productions and I
particularly enjoyed their imaginative staging of Adult Child, Dead
Child and Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? I am now
looking forward to seeing their versions of The Year of the Monkey
and Arsehammers. They are a brilliant company and I am proud to
be their patron."
The double bill runs from January 12-15 - by which time, the group will
be preparing another of its enlightening excursions into Shakespeare -
this time, from April 20-23, Romeo and Juliet, destined to close
on Shakespeare's birthday. And there will still be more to come, as yet
unannounced and again in the main house, from July
It's a busy-busy life at Stage 2.
Lots to celebrate at the Grange
WALSALL’S
Grange Players member Josie Rattigan was awarded the Kath Bullock Shield
– named after the group’s founder, who was always committed to helping
young people’s efforts on stage – at the Players’ annual meeting.
She is going to go to Bristol to study drama with £500 from the Players to help her on her way.
Josie,
who was presented with the
shield by Players' chairman Dexter Whitehead,
has also worked with The Crescent Theatre and Aldridge
Youth Theatre, played Carrie in the Players’ production of
Carrie’s War and in September
will be in their opening production of next season – Alan Ayckbourn’s
Game Plan.
Longstanding member Peter Smith said, “Josie has an outstanding future
and we want to send her on her way with our very best wishes.”
And
no, the young lady
(left)
featured in the season’s brochure in confident mode, aided by micro
skirt, stocking tops, braces and a high chair, is not Josie. The picture
has been imported to give a flavour of things to come.
Forty-eight hours before the annual meeting, Peter and his wife
Elizabeth Smith, who is also a prominent member of the Players,
celebrated their ruby wedding at the Grange Playhouse, with the
celebrations including stand-up comedian Dan Smith – who just happens to
be their son – plus the Nero string quartet and a disco which saw some
90 guests dancing the night away.
It’s looking like a mummers’ summer up
PENNY PLAIN Theatre Company is performing its new Summer Mummers show this year at festivals across the North of England.
Following the popularity of the company’s winter tour of the past four years, with its members in their familiar personae as a dishevelled bunch of travelling 19th-Century thespians known as Hardcastle’s Men, this year’s summer show is based on the same format with a summer rather than Christmas theme.
Performing a pastoral selection of Victorian folk songs, dances and a mummers’ play whose origins have been traced to Linton-in-Craven, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the company appears in its familiar guise as the troupe that arrives tired, hot and grumpy to perform somewhat reluctantly for ‘the hat’ – the hat, that is, on which its members purport to rely for their income and which is in fact Penny Pain’s main source of revenue for this particular show.
MAYPOLE SHAMBLES
The show transports its audience to a bucolic Victorian summer’s day, showcasing talents from a breathtaking rapper sword dance to a maypole shambles, with traditional folk anthems and summer spirit – of the alcoholic kind of course.
Ripon Festival, Saltburn Folk Festival and Fylde Folk Festival are among the venues on the tour list. Local venues wishing to play host to the troupe this summer should contact Andrew Jackson on 01756 752695.
More details on the show and performance dates are at www.pennyplaintheatre.co.uk.
Mime and mask at Wolverhampton
AN award-winning Black Country youth theatre is offering young people with special needs or disabilities a chance to acquire mime and mask skills in their summer holidays – totally free of charge.
Wolverhampton's Central Youth Theatre (CYT) is holding a summer school from Monday to Friday, August 2-6 (10.30 am-3.30 pm daily).
Young people will work with professional tutor Mollie Guilfoyle, who trained at the famous Le Coq Mime School in Paris. It will be their opportunity to learn how to use their body to express themselves through comedy and mime.
There will be a British sign language worker to support the week, as well as care workers.
The school, at the Newhampton Arts Centre, Dunkley Street, Whitmore Reans, Wolverhampton, is again supported through Wolverhampton City Council's short breaks programme.
Booking is through CYT director Jane Ward at Central Youth Theatre (01902 572091 or 07941 922580) or by email at jane@centralyouththeatre.org
Fred
Karno is coming to the Old Rep
SUTTON
COLDFIELD-BASED From The Top Theatre Company is preparing to present the
world première of
Khaotic – The Fred Karno
Story, a home-grown
musical that tells the story of Fred
Karno, one of the greatest showmen of the British
music hall age.
Fred was a national
phenomenon, with shows that toured for 30 years all over the world. He
was the father of slapstick comedy – but he was also a hard task master
who had a turbulent private life. He discovered Charlie Chaplin and Stan
Laurel, who both first went to
The story spans nearly 70 years from
the late Victorian era of Empire, through the First World War and into
the golden age of
Fred’s personal story is a
stormy, dramatic and often sad tale, but he was the undoubted King of
Comedy in 
The show is a rollercoaster contrasting the ups and
downs of life on the road with the hilarity of the great comics of the
time. Songs include some of the best-known music hall songs of the day
along with some less familiar gems.
Dave Crump, from
With the professional revival of many classic
musicals it is now difficult for amateur societies to find available
shows to perform and very few opportunities to produce new material.
Dave’s ‘home’ society, the From The Top Theatre Company, were looking
for such a project and had been tempted by both Mack and Mabel (the
story of Hollywood mogul Mack Sennett) and Underneath the Arches – the
story of Flanagan and Allen.
Dave realised that Fred Karno’s story is effectively
the ‘pre-quel’ to both of these stories since it was his Karno-trained
comics who helped Sennett establish the Keystone studios in the early
days of silent movies, and in 1932 he was instrumental in putting on the
first Crazy Shows which were the nursery of the Crazy Gang including
Flanagan and Allen.
Dave has spent a year
researching the show and has been in contact with experts on Chaplin and
Laurel and Hardy all over the world. He is now working on a new
biography of Karno to be published next spring – which is why he goes to
The subject is timely
because this year marks the centenary of the fateful Karno tour to
Dave joined forces with Pete
Smith, long-time musical director to many amateur societies across the
Midlands, and together they have written many new songs for the show
which are interspersed between classic music hall songs of the time such
as Waiting at the Church, The Boy in the
Gallery, It’s a long way to
-
More information is available from Dave Crump on 01283 791745 or 07875 763221. Email: crumpy@supanet.com.
From the Top Theatre Company
details can be found at
www.from-the-top.co.uk
The show is at the Old Rep,
Fred Kitchen – the forgotten comic
THE name at the end of the second paragraph in the report above may well
have prompted a degree of uncertainty. Fred Who? Fred Kitchen? Never
heard of him.
This is understandable – but he was a very popular music hall comedian in his day and he deserves a belated introduction. His most famous role was as Perkins in many Karno sketches, the best known perhaps being The Bailiffs, where he made famous the catchphrase 'Meredith - we're in!' This found its way into everyday use but it has since disappeared.
Karno made a film version of The Bailiffs in 1932 with Flanagan and Allan in the leads as Meredith and Perkins.
Fred Kitchen, with his painfully slow speech, ungainly walk and oversize boots became an overnight star in Karno's first comic play His Majesty's Guests.
When he died aged 78 in 1950 Fred Kitchen had 'Meredith, we're in' on his tombstone. He also played Sergeant Lightning a character in the Karno Show His Majesty’s Guests – but unlike most of his contemporaries he did not make the transition to film so he is largely forgotten.
While Chaplin was working with Karno, he cited Kitchen as the man who taught him his trademark trick of throwing a cigarette over his shoulder and kicking it up in the air. There is a popular belief that Chaplin stole the big boots worn by his Little Tramp from Kitchen's Perkins character. Kitchen certainly thought so.
He appeared in the revue, Look Who’s Here! At the London Opera House in 1916, when he was described as ‘a newcomer, come to stay’, with ‘an extraordinary voice that pipes and whistles.’ Apparently, the surprise of the evening came when he was involved in a genuine acrobat act – carried out with aplomb because he and his partner, Billy Merson, were both former circus performers.
photo: E. Hutton & Co Ltd/Daily Sketch, Manchester & London, circa 1916
The arras explained
A REFERENCE to
Behind the Arras in the newsletter of the Lapworth Players explains:
“The dictionary
definition of arras is ‘Tapestry: screen of this hung loosely round
walls of room.’”
It continues: “A
learned friend informs me that it appears in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, where Polonius is hiding behind the arras to eavesdrop on a
conversation between Hamlet and his mother. Hearing a noise and
mistaking it for the presence of a rat, Hamlet draws his sword, ‘makes a
pass through the arras’ and slays Polonius.”
Little known fact No. 216: Of all the myriad deaths in the plays of Shakespeare Polonius is the only character to be dispatched by being stabbed behind the Elizabethan equivalent of the Laura Ashley.
Backs to basics . . . KO
YOU never know what you are letting yourself in for if you are on an official tour of a building site and the contractor supplies reflective jackets for the occasion.
A party of pilgrims in the Potteries was visiting a site where a theatre was gradually rising towards completion. A councillor was observed with “FIRST AIDER” on her back. She learned this from an informant bearing the legend “NODDES”. The thoughtful contractor’s name was Seddon. And the visitor was wearing his jacket inside out.
Hall Green comes looking for laughs
HALL GREEN LITTLE THEATRE plans to start and end next season with a chuckle or two.
It begins in September with Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park – a pipe-opening ploy not entirely unknown to people with seasons to plan – and it ends next July with Outside Edge, the Richard Harris cricketing comedy.
Between-times come the pantomime – Mother Goose – in December, Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers (the play, not the musical) at the end of January, The Unexpected Guest, the Agatha Christie twisty mystery (which will mark Hall Green’s 60th birthday) in April, and J B
Priestley’s Dangerous Corner in May. All these productions are in the main auditorium.
There are a further four planned for the studio: Four Nights in Knaresborough, by Paul Webb, tracing the misfortunes of Thomas à Becket (November), a rehearsed reading of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van (January), Straight and Narrow, Jimmie Chinn’s look at family relationships (March) and The Long Road, about a family’s struggle to forgive a terrible wrong, by Shelagh Stephenson (June).
Five days of drama at Aldridge
ALDRIDGE Youth Theatre is staging a summer drama school at its headquarters in Noddy Park Road, Aldridge, from August 16-20.
Subjects include theatre skills, props, make-up, singing and dancing, and stage combat. There will also be the chance to make puppets and masks.
More information is available on 01922 454535.
Hampton Players reach for the
arsenic
COMING up on the area’s
amateur stage for the second time in recent weeks – the joyous black
comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace,
by Joseph Kesselring.
But not just yet. It is the
story of two elderly sisters who poison a succession of men with their
elderberry wine and employ their crackpot nephew Teddy to bury the
bodies in the cellar, where he thinks he is digging locks for the Suez
Canal, and The Hampton Players have it scheduled for November 17-20, at
The Fentham Hall,
But first, there are to be
auditions. There will be a cast of 11 men and three women, and the
Players have opened their doors to seasoned actors and novices alike.
The auditions, like the production, will be at The
Fentham Hall. They are timed for 7.30 pm on July 15. More information
may be obtained at 01675 442432 or at mail@thehamptonplayers.co.uk.
Charlie at the Custard Factory
A DRAMA summer school based on Charlie & The
Chocolate Factory and hosted by professional actors and directors will
be held by Class Act Drama Centre at The Custard Factory, Gibb Street,
Digbeth, Birmingham, from Monday-Friday, August 9-13, 10 am-3 pm.
Tutors and directors are looking for enthusiastic youngsters who would enjoy the week and who want to improve their confidence through drama.
The week will culminate in an adaptation of the show
during the afternoon of the final day.
The workshops are high-energy and are designed not only to be fun but as a way to learn about stage technique and performance skills.
Although acting is the main focus of the week,
optional dancing and singing are available. The cost is £55 per child
and places will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis.
The week is designed to be open to everyone and all
abilities from the ages of seven to 14. A non-refundable deposit of £20
is payable by Friday, July 23. Parental consent and insurance documents
must be signed to attend.
Booking is via Marian on 0121 244 3214 or classactteam@aol.com
Planning
ahead – for 100 years ago
ANYONE hearing that a
brand new musical theatre group is busy arranging a production for
April, 2012, is likely to be impressed by such efficiency – and even
more so, when it becomes clear that its launch show will be one of the
most expensive it could choose.
But there’s more. The show is
Titanic –
and it won’t be just any old Titanic.
This will be a
Titanic
with its last night on April 14, 2012 – 100 years to the night since
that maiden voyage ended in a collision with an iceberg.
And there’s still more. The
far-sighted group is one that until now only its intimates have heard
of. It’s OOPS. It sounds as if it should have an exclamation mark, but
it’s OOPS – short for the One-Off Performance Society, formed
specifically for a five-night run in just under two years’ time and
destined thereafter to sink most appropriately into the history of
musical theatre. Art imitating life, and all that.
It was
in 2008 that Worcester Operatic & Dramatic Society (WODS) won the
National Operatic & Dramatic Association’s award for the best musical in
its
So along came OOPS. Steve and
Jacque Cook, who were in the award-winning production – he as stage
manager and she in the role of Alice Beane, the passenger who wanted to
move from second-class to first-class. Word of mouth was sufficient to
attraact interest from a wide area of Worcestershire and into
Gloucestershire. Steve manages a scenery hire firm in
It was Jacque’s daughter,
Hayley Hayes, who is 27 and married to another Steve, who came up with
the name – which Jacque says took her all of 20 seconds. Then more than
40 people turned up at a meeting in
And Jacque’s son, graphics
designer Ben Barnes, has designed the poster.
Rightsholder MusicScope has
had enquiries from all over
There is no
suggestion of a split from WODS. That
would be too much of an Oops!
for loyal WODS members who
are simply anxious not to miss saluting Titanic’s fateful centenary.
Those involved include Gill
Saunders, who will be “call boy” for the production. Her grandfather was
the cousin of Henry Spinner, from Worcester, one of the 1,517 who lost
their lives in the disaster. He was a glove-cutter at the Fownes factory
in City Walls Road, Worcester and had paid just over £8 for his ticket.
He was planning to find a job at the glove-making centre of
Also
involved is John Clay, who will be reprising the role of Captain Smith
and who was seen onstage at Birmingham Hippopdrome in early June when
he repeated the role of Holy Joe which he has made his own since
And the reason for no
exclamation mark with OOPS? Because that would make it sound as if
everybody involved had suddenly realised it was all a mistake – and
because the last thing in anybody’s mind is to appear to be trivialising
the disaster that inspired Peter Stone and Maury Yeston’s
poignant musical.
The show runs for 2½ hours – which is about the time
it took Titanic to sink. Steve Cook said, “At the end of the run, if we
have made any money, the profits will go to a water-based charity
and we shall say we’ve had a lovely time – thank you very much, and move
on to the next one.”
Look out for the crochet at Kinver
NEW KINVER PLAYERS
– overall winners of this year’s Worcestershire Theatre Festival – will
be performing Michael Palin’s The
Weekend from July 7-10 at the Edward Marsh Centre, Kinver.
The comedy was
launched in
Director Carol
Drinkwater says, “It has touches of Alan Ayckbourn in its delivery,
through a combination of laugh-out-loud humour and layers of pathos.
To say we’ve had fun rehearsing would be an under-statement.
The play brims with one-liners which frequently halted rehearsals
in the early stages, as did the very realistic crocheted item sitting in
the middle of the stage at the beginning of one of the scenes.
Watch carefully and you’ll see what I mean!”
Looking for Mrs Muller
The play is set in a Catholic school in the
The role to be filled is that of Mrs Muller, the student’s mother, who
is in her late thirties.
Director Paul Viles is inviting interested actresses to email him at
grangeplayers@talktalk.net
with their age, telephone number and brief details of experience.
The play will run from March 10-19, 2011. Twice-weekly rehearsals will
commence in January at the Grange Playhouse from 7.30pm.
The Nonentities are thinking
ahead
THE NONENTITIES were playing an
interesting game during the run of
The Dresser at the Rose Theatre, Kidderminster.
Notices in the foyer announced: “We hope
that purists may forgive the fact that one or two of the music tracks
were recorded a little after 1941, when
The Dresser was set.”
Put it another way. “We don’t want you to
think we don’t know what you think we don’t know.”
Meanwhile, The Nonentities have announced
their season for 2010-11.
It begins and ends with classics
separated by two decades – Bill Naughton’s
Alfie (1943) in October, and
Noel Coward’s Present Laughter
(1963) in June. The rest of the programme consists of
The Maintenance Man, by
Richard Harris (November), Danny,
The Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl (December),
Christmas Entertainment
(December),
Look out for drunks in Sutton Coldfield
HIGHBURY Theatre Centre will start its 2010-11 season with Alan Ayckbourn’s The Things We Do for Love, about a drunken dinner party and the people who find out more about each other than they wanted.
The season will also feature Bronte, Polly Teale’s look into the lives of the Bronte sisters, and Spring and Port Wine, the Northern comedy by Bill Naughton; Move Over, Mrs Markham, the farce by Ray Cooney and John Chapman; The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams; Death Trap, the corkscrewing thriller by Ira Levin; The Female of the Species, which led to a stand-off between writer by Joanna Murray-Smith and feminist Germaine Greer about whether it is taking a swipe at Greer; Six Acts of Love, by Ioanna Anderson; and William Nicholson’s Shadowlands, the story of the relationship between C S Lewis – he of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – and the American poet, Joy Gresham.
And at the appropriate moment, Highbury will launch into Goody Two Shoes, by Paul Reakes – continuing its alternate-years approach to It’s-behind-you. Its last pantomime, Hickory Dickory Dock, was in the 2007-8 season and Aladdin was two years before that.
Highbury trio help the
return of Inspector Drake
THREE Highbury
Theatre Centre members are involved in a film that will be exciting news
for legions of David Tristram fans –
Inspector Drake, The Movie.
The playwright, who lives in Highley, Shropshire,
and bases his business activities at Coven, near Wolverhampton, has
written more than 20 plays and a comic novel – but now he is going right
back to the start of his success story in the mid-1980s by reviving his
very first important character. And Alan Birch, the man through whom the
profoundly stupid police officer burst into life, is reprising his role
as Inspector Drake.
The Tristram approach is unashamedly unlike
Hollywood.
“I am shooting and editing it as I go along. It
might take nine months to a year, but technology has moved on so much,
with video cameras getting good enough for little independents like me
to be able to make something of reasonable quality and perhaps not using
£100,000 cameras and a crew of 80.”
He is also financing it himself, using actors who have impressed him during his years in theatre and who are supportive enough not to want paying – though he agrees that this will have to change if his venture achieves lift-off. Meanwhile, he says his hands-on approach is bridging the gap between the funding he could have and the funding he does not have.
It is a quarter of a century since I sat in
Birmingham’s Old Rep and, like the rest of the audience, was reduced to
hapless laughter by Inspector Drake’s Last Case – with Alan Birch
as a sort of po-faced Inspector Clouseau trapped in The Goon Show. But
the film is not going to be a re-run of any of the Drake farces.
David Tristram explains: “It’s a specially-written
script, but obviously it does pinch some jokes from the plays – some of
my favourite little gags. It concentrates on things you couldn’t
possibly do on stage. There’s a little bit of camera trickery, but there
are scenes in the forest, scenes with tractors, scenes all over the
place that you couldn’t do without a huge budget, and there are lots of
visual gags you could not pull off on the stage.”
He started writing the script last autumn, filming
began in March and there is a snippet on Facebook.
In the last 25 years, he has been making video
programmes, mainly for conferences and the corporate market, and writing
plays, but it is only now that films and plays are coming together – and
the notion is one that has a special appeal for him.
“I know a play is in print for ever, but once it’s
done on stage it’s gone. I thought it would be rather nice to have
something to put on the shelf, using friends and colleagues and some of
the people I have met over the years in my plays and who have impressed
me one way or another. You know – take on Hollywood with a budget of 2p.
“I can't compete with blockbusters, but it’s
possible to compete with humour. Maybe in a simplistic way you can make
it work at your own level.”
That is his hope and right now he intends to find
out. Inspector Drake, the Movie will centre on Inspector Drake
and Sergeant Plod and will have about a dozen other main characters plus
a few bit parts. Highbury Theatre Centre’s three representatives are Rob
Phillips, who says his role is “the mad forensic scientist”; his wife
Denise, as the lady of the manor; and Brian Portsmouth, as the captain.
They are scheduled to spend some time filming near
John Slim
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.