Reviews

Towngate Theatre, Basildon
22-23 May
Cramphorn Theatre, Chelmsford
19-20 June
The Theatre, Brentwood
25-27 June
Mumford Theatre, Cambridge
17 October
The Playhouse, Harlow
23-24 October

In one way Stephen M Hunt’s play Impossible Steps has an affinity with Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade – what happens when the lunatics take over the asylum? The key difference is that you know where you are with the latter right from its beginning. The Hunt play keeps you mystified until two-thirds through. And there’s more than one way to be mystified. Read more »

Mercury Theatre, Colchester
to 9 May
Theatre Royal, Norwich
29 June to 4 July

Victoria Wood’s comedy series ran on BBC television from 1998 to 2000 and was immensely popular. David Graham has adapted the scripts to fashion a two-hour play which will certainly please the fans of the original though I’m not sure that this Comedy Theatre Company tour will appeal so much to those who never saw it when screened. Read more »

News

Norwich’s Theatre Royal have some interesting ways of marketing their shows. The latest concerns the new touring production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita (reviewed on 27 April). Businesses across the region are being invited to see what happens backstage. Read more »

It opens on the first of May and runs until the 16th this year with an international line-up of performers across a wide range of performing arts and making use of some imposing venues. From the 8th to the 16th of May these include the Spiegeltent. Read more »

Interviews

What’s your job title and what responsibilities does it entail?
I’m the arts programmer and artistic director for the Rhodes Arts Complex in Bishop’s Stortford. This involves programming a diverse range of work including theatre, contemporary dance, music – everything from the classics to tribute bands and jazz – and cinema. Read more »

Which is the most recent show that you have been working on?
The new adaptation of Jerome K Jerome’s comic novel Three Men in a Boat which is on tour in the region and then at the Theatre Royal until 23 May before going on a four week national tour.

What other Theatre Royal productions have you directed or been otherwise involved in?
I directed the rural tour of Art by Yasmina Reza (spring 2008) and Twelfth Night for the Theatre Royal and Haymarket Theatre in Basingstoke (March 2009), as well as three evenings of rehearsed readings for our Restoring the Repertoire programme.

How did you come to work at the Theatre Royal?
I came to see Black Eye’d Susan in 2007 because I was interested to see the restoration of the Theatre Royal and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Georgian repertoire. I spoke to Colin Blumenau (the Artistic Director) and told him I’d love to get involved somehow and he was generous enough to let me!

What were you doing before, and where?
I’m a freelance director so I work all over the country. In the last year I’ve directed a tour of Oliver Twist for Love and Madness as well as an outdoor Shakespeare production in America , a Hallowe’en production on a canal barge and a sonnet walk in Liverpool.

Where did you train? How relevant has this been to your current career?
I started directing at Oxford University and then trained at Central School of Speech & Drama. Formal training can only take you so far, lots of what I use every day as a director I’ve learned from watching other people’s shows and from working with extraordinary actors and designers.

You’re on record as wanting to re-create the audience/player intimacy of earlier theatre? How realistic is that in the 21st century and what are the best ways to bring it about?
If theatre is going to flourish as a medium then it has to celebrate the live nature of performance. The immediacy and excitement of the actor/audience relationship is at the heart of that and it’s the most natural thing in the world to generate – simply create a space which actors and audience share. This can happen in a promenade performance, out of doors, in studio spaces or in purpose-built theatres in certain configurations (thrust, traverse or in the round). The fact that the majority of larger purpose-built theatres nowadays are proscenium-arch spaces presents a challenge, but not an insuperable one.

Is contemporary British theatre moving on, or is it stuck in a time-warp?
British theatre encompasses many different kinds of work and many talented and diverse practitioners working side by side. It’s in collaborations across different traditions that the most exciting work comes (Warhorse, for example) and that’s beginning to happen more and more.

How do you think that audiences of the future will develop? And for what type of theatre?
I think audiences will continue to find that live theatre can touch, inspire and challenge them more than any other art form and that it is worth tearing themselves away from a screen for, but it’s going to have to be imaginative, engaging and visceral to do that. I hope that people will enjoy the very theatrical and inventive story telling of Three Men in a Boat and get something extra from the communal experience, the charm of the actors and the music that they can’t get from reading the words on the page on their own.

What are the pleasures (and pitfalls) of taking touring productions to non-theatre venues – such as the annual Bury rural tour?
The pleasure comes from the direct contact with the audience that performing in their own space gives (it’s usually the other way round; they visit us in our theatre). Rural tour audiences are incredibly warm, relaxed and open so are great fun to play with in a show like this. I hope they join in! The informality and unpredictability of a non-theatre space can cause trouble if you want to create the illusion of a fourth wall separating you from the audience, but that’s not what we’re aiming for at all. We like the feeling of being at home with our audience.

What are your plans for the future? I’ve just been made an Associate Director at the Theatre Royal and I’m looking forward to the next year working here immensely.

Abigail Anderson was talking to Anne Morley-Priestman