Reviews

Milton Keynes Theatre

Date reviewed: 12th May 2009

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are perhaps the most influential writers of American musicals in the past half century. Who? Well, they wrote The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast for Disney, and before Ashman’s untimely death at the age of 40 in 1991, they had turned round the company’s fortunes and almost single-handedly revived the glory days.

Little Shop of Horrors had been their first major success back in 1982, based on a Roger Corman B movie and later transformed into a cult film itself. Now it’s touring the UK again in a production that originated at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, which is fast building a reputation as the home of imaginative, revitalising revivals of half-forgotten classics. Read more »

Curve Theatre, Leicester

Date reviewed: 6th May 2009

Be Near Me is a morally ambiguous, controversial play, which tackles the biggest ideas head on, whilst never offering a judgement or scarcely even an opinion. And it is this lack of moral judgement that is both its strength and weakness.

The play is based on Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker Prize long-listed novel and is adapted by and stars Ian McDiarmid. It centres around a priest assigned to a new parish in a deprived Scottish town on the Ayrshire coast. Oxford-educated, cultured and foppish, Father David is ill-suited to the post, quickly alienating himself from the people of the town. Read more »

News

The new RSC production of As You Like It may already have opened, but there is still a chance for members of the public to contribute a little something to designer Tom Piper’s set.

Michael Boyd, RSC Artistic Director and director of the production said: “Can you write better love poems than Orlando?  He plasters his lyrics all over The Courtyard Theatre in our production, and we would like to invite you to help him out with some words of your own.”

The winning entries will be chosen by a judging panel consisting of members of the As You Like It creative team, with the winning poems being written out by hand by the RSC’s props department to feature in the set. The selected poems will also appear in a video on the RSC’s website, being performed by Jonjo O’Neill, who plays Orlando in the production. Each winner will also be offered two tickets to see a future production at the RSC and an As You Like It programme, signed by the director and members of the cast.

Submitted poems must be no more than 14 lines long, and include a maximum of 140 words.  There are five categories in the competition: age groups 12-16, 17-30, 31-45 and 46 and over.  The final category is for anyone aged 18 or over who wants to send an entry using Twitter, meaning that the poem can be no more than 140 characters long.

The closing date for all entries is Monday 22nd June 2009. More information on the competition, on As You Like It and other RSC productions in Stratford and further afield can be found on the RSC website.

- Philip Holyman

photo: Alastair Muir

As Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s revival of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money prepares to open (previews from May 8; press night May 12), Whatsonstage spoke to company member Lex Shrapnel, recently part of the RSC’s award-winning Histories ensemble and, latterly, the eponymous bodyguard in Channel Five’s revamp of Minder. Shrapnel last appeared at the REP in 2003 as Laertes in Calixto Bieito’s Edinburgh International Festival co-production of Hamlet.

WOS:  What kind of research have you carried out as part of your preparation and rehearsal for playing Billy Corman?

LS:  We spent the first two weeks of rehearsal in London, so we were able to go to the London Metal Exchange and watch trading there on the open-outcry trading floor - one of the last of its kind, I believe. Trading was an area in which I had very little previous knowledge, so the first port of call for me was Trading for Dummies. There are various films which were also useful to watch, as well as a good excuse to revisit some 80s classics, such as Wall Street and Trading Places. Gordon Gekko was a good model for me, as is Sir Alan Sugar.

WOS:  Has Caryl Churchill been involved in any aspect of the rehearsal process?

LS:  Caryl was with us for the first couple of days’ rehearsal, and [director] Jonathan Munby had spent time with her before we started. As well as it being an honour to have met her, it was also very useful to know who her models were at the time of writing the piece. She was also very open to changing the text in places, but there were times when even Caryl was unable to help - namely the complicated trading scenes. She had extensive notes which she made at the time, and which unfortunately have since gone AWOL.

WOS:  Why do you think now is the right moment to stage a revival of this play? What do you think audiences will make of it in the current financial climate?

LS:  I think the play is very timely. Our present economic situation shows that unfortunately we seem to have learned very little since the mid-80s, and that history has a tendency of repeating itself.

WOS:  How accessible is the play for actors and for audiences, given that large sections of the text are in rhyming couplets full of trader-speak?

LS:  The rhyming couplets in the text should assist in the understanding of the trader-speak; it’s very rhythmic and percussive on the trading floor and the verse helps to get that across. And, like in Shakespeare, I don’t think it’s neccessary to understand every word or line to get the sense of what is happening.

WOS:  The original Royal Court production was supposed to have been enormously popular with yuppies at the time. Is there a danger that the targets of the play’s satire won’t be hit very hard by Churchill’s attack on them?

LS:  At the time it did attract the people it was satirising. I think now they might be more aware of the attack on them, and that the public in general are more aware of corporate corruption. There have been a number of large cases in the news over the past couple of decades, like those involving Nick Leeson, and Enron, to name a couple.

WOS:  Has it been difficult to adjust to a relatively short working process after having been on the RSC’s Histories for two years?

LS:  I thought the Histories would be the hardest thing I’d ever do. I’ve been proved wrong. I’m used to eighteen weeks’ rehearsal, not four!

WOS:  What do you think Archie Daley would make of Serious Money?

LS:  Archie’s warehouse is near Bishopsgate in the City of London, so he’s surrounded by ’suits’, and has a few nice ones himself. He could see himself in an office at the top of the Gherkin, but he’s possibly too dodgy even for the dodgy dealers of the city.

Serious Money runs at Birmingham Repertory Theatre between May 8-23.

photo: Channel Five

Interviews

What do you get when you cross stand-up comedy with magic with science with theatre with multimedia edutainment?! A pretty good time; as WOS* finds out from Matt Pritchard; whose Futurology Live!  show will be featuring as part of the Birmingham Comedy Festival in October Read more »

Unless you’ve been living underground for the past few months, you’ll be aware that Dr Who has landed in the West Midlands.

From July 24th to November 15th the latest Time Lord has put to one side his travels in the tardis to tread the boards at the RSC as the Bard’s most complex hero; Hamlet, as well as playing the part of Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Read more »