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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Farce with a capital F for fun
Sophie Harrison gives Rob Broadhurst a ticklish
moment in Hotel Paradiso. Hotel Paradiso The Nonentities Rose Theatre, Kidderminster ***** WELL, hooray
for the company that can make a Feydeau farce even funnier after more
than a century – by riding triumphantly over a slight oversight in
furniture-shifting by the backstage department. A 20-minute interval on the first night ended with a small desk and a padded pink box seat, which had furnished the study in the short first act, making an unscheduled second appearance, somehow undisturbed and prominently established in the hotel at the start of the second act. But hooray again – for Richard Taylor, leading
light, as Boniface, in the rib-tickling turmoil of Jen Eglinton's
splendid production. He picked up the desk and the seat in turn and
carried them smartly into the wings, to deserved applause. Nothing was
going to get in the way of what was already turning into a triumphal
evening. His prime responsibility, nevertheless, is to
ensure that the laughter is related his efforts to see that Boniface has
a naughty night with a willing lady, and he achieves it magnificently.
He brims with energy, physically and vocally. And when he stands still,
he sometimes stands frozen into a backward curve as he reinforces his
emotion of the moment – though there is nothing motionless about his
anguished jugglings with the stone hot-water bottle which he suddenly
finds is in his charge. Nor was there a first-night problem in detecting
a momentary deviation from the script. “Bugger!” he said. “Now back to
the plot.”
This is a performance of unwavering confidence,
conceived in inspiration and carried out with aplomb as Boniface talks
his way out of one problem after another – but it is no more than the
rest of the company deserves. This is a romp that has to be well-served
at its centre, but every one else also pitches unreservedly into the
improbabilities, with Tori Wakeman, as Boniface's wife Angelique,
successfully playing the straight bat that is always necessary on these
occasions. Louise Fulwell (Marcelle) scores resoundingly as
the object of Boniface's desires, underpinning a natural comic talent by
unfailingly substituting a W for every R in a way that is weally wib-tickling. Martin Copland-Gray turns up as Cot – pompous,
exuberantly moustachioed, morning-suited, ample of figure, with a top
hat that completes an unnerving evocation of the late Sir Gerald Nabarro,
MP for Kidderminster and scourge of Purchase Tax, who always sported
this particular headgear on Budget Day. Stuart Woodroffe is one-man mayhem as Martin, the
citizen who can either speak normally or stutter – depending on the
weather – and possessing a leg that is liable to kick out in moments of
verbal stress. Sophie Harrison brings us a French maid who is a delight
without the sauce that such a role customarily implies. There are three schoolgirls in identikit
costumes, an energetic hotel manager who is a joy of
incomprehensibility, and two young men – one an hotel employee with an
obliging brace-and-bit and one who makes his own unpredictable
contribution to the inanities around him – plus a small but inevitably
amusing police force. It is a wonderful, wacky evening, with bonus
amusement deliberately attached to the flickering electric candles that
are among the 1910 hotel's accoutrements. It's a joy: full-blown farce
to tune up the tummy muscles. To 16.04.11. John Slim |
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