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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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Family kick up a storm of a show
Family fortunes: Tony O'Hagan
(left),
Christine Bland and Kevin Lowry in Roger Warren's production of Straight
and Narrow Straight and Narrow Hall Green Little Theatre **** THE most
memorable moments of Roger Warren's busy production come at the end of
the first act. This is when the studio theatre is filled with the
biggest racket I have heard – apart from a 60-strong youth group company
– made by voices unaided by musical instruments or explosions in more
than 40 years of pretty assiduous theatregoing. It's the family having
its say. All at once, in strident Northern tones. Pretty impressive. Interestingly, Roger Warren himself has appeared
for the first time shortly before the eruption. He turns up as Arthur –
quiet, unassuming Arthur, who certainly would not have dreamed of
organising noise on such an impressively alarming scale and who finds
himself drawn into a full-scale family row, no holds barred, almost
straight away. Vera (Christine Bland) is the family matriarch,
the mother who is quick to take offence and just as quick to realise
when she has gone too far; the woman who is full of high hopes that turn
to disappointment; who fails to realise what's going on between her son
Bob the carpenter (Anthony O'Hagan) and his workmate Jeff the plumber
(Kevin Lowry). AMUSING LINES It is to her that some of writer Jimmie Chinn's
most amusing lines fall. “I've seen more attractive lumps in gravy.” “If
your father were alive, he'd turn over in his grave.” They are not of
themselves rib-ticklers, but this is a Bland who is most appropriately
po-faced and who somehow improves them in the telling. Bob – he is the one who cooks and cleans and Jeff
is the one who goes jogging – keeps stepping out of the action to
address the audience, which implies that there's more to be said than
can be easily fitted into conversational dialogue, though he finds time
for mock-disappointment with the patrons: “You're supposed to be on my
side – remember?”
The increasingly irritable Jeff has been
distracted by a woman whom he and Bob met on holiday. The gales of
laughter disappear when he opens his soul after the interval to
soliloquise about feeling alone and about his hitherto unsuspected
paternal longings. These are a heartwarming few minutes and he handles
them beautifully. But then, this is a production in which, apart
from a couple of memory lapses on opening night, everyone has risen to
the occasion. Amanda Grant (Nona) and Diane Lowry (Lois) are in fine
form in a crisis as they see the uncomprehending Vera making more waves
than Bob and Jeff can easily cope with, and Philip Astle is a reliable
Bill, less in the eye of the storm than the other two men and
understandably apt to try to keep his head down, with varying degrees of
success John Slim |
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