Bronte Review

"Bronte" begins with the three actresses playing the three Victorian novelists addressing the audience directly about the three people they are about to portray. There is a faint whiff of the animated lecture here but once the costumes are on and the actresses become the characters, we are off on a whirlwind journey through their lives. We become so attached to the three sisters that we feel their struggles, their emotions and their triumphs keenly and deeply. Charlotte Bronte (Kat Corrigan) dominates the stage through her physical and emotional presence, very much as the real Charlotte must have done in the Bronte family. Charlotte had the ambition to be "forever known", to "create something of one self that would live outside one's own body", and was consumed by the desire to write from her childhood. She quarrelled with her younger sister, the elemental Emily (Francesca McCrohon).: "You are fascinated by me, but I am the hardest to find out about..." We were fascinated by Francesca's performance as the creator of "Wuthering Heights". Francesca captures the strangeness of the woman who is only truly at home striding relentlessly and endlessly across the moors. We also believe in her as a remarkable poetess.
The third sister, Anne (Lorraine Galliers), is portrayed clearly and passionately as an early Socialist and prototype Suffragette. She finds herself as the meeting point between her two sisters and Lorraine makes her a rounded and believable character.
The three women are joined by the ghosts of Cathy Earnshaw from "Wuthering Heights" and Bertha from "Jane Eyre". Both ghosts are played by the same actress (Lynda Fleming). For me, the play lifts off on the first appearance of Miss Fleming and she differentiates between the two characters magnificently. I loved the way she interacts as the characters with the two authors. The vaginal slit through which the characters enter is a striking symbolism of the set and I wondered if it was intentional. I would wish for a greater variety in the entrances themselves but Miss Fleming gives a beautifully nuanced and highly physical interpretation of two key parts.
Then we come to the two male actors. Callum West, making only his second appearance for the Bench Theatre, manages to capture the vainglorious brother on whom the hopes of the Bronte family were built. He sketches in the promise of the early youth and the disillusionment of the man. He is convincing as the man driven to the drink and as the man who loved too well if not wisely. Callum also manages the difficult feat of convincing us as Heathcliff, one of the most passionate creations in English literature.
David Penrose is rightly dubbed one of the "Bench stalwarts" as he has appeared in many roles for the Bench Theatre. What I liked here was his subtleties as he moved from character to character, sometimes in a split instant. I believed in Patrick Bronte, the patriarch. The scene between David as Heger, the Belgian teacher, and Charlotte Bronte explodes at the end into a prose aria and a wonderful sequence of young unrequited, desperate love. It is as Rochester with Charlotte playing Jane Eyre that David wrings the withers and made me want to see that play (also written by Polly Teale). The scenes between Charlotte and Arthur Bell Nicholls though warm the cockles of the heart.
The direction by Ingrid Corrigan is light of touch but clear in its aim to extract a performance of "imagination" to live long in the memory. I felt I experienced a great deal of the lives of three remarkable English writers and caught a glimpse into the pain and cost of the creative process. This production is a reminder of how good the non-professional theatre can be in the hands of such a cast and director.

Bronte production photo

This is Charlotte Bronte (Kat Corrigan) in the Bench production of Polly Teale's "Bronte", which opens tonight, Thursday April 24th, at the Havant Arts Centre. The production runs until this Saturday April 26th, and then again from next Tuesday April 29th to Saturday May 3rd.

(The photograph is the copyright of Dan Finch)

God of Carnage

One of the recent delights at the Bench Theatre was appearing in "Art", which subsequently won the Best Production of the Year Award sponsored by the Portsmouth News. I loved the play and the production with old chums, Pete Woodward and Tim Taylor, directed by beautiful young Robin Hall.
I needed no persuasion, therefore, to see a matinee of "God of Carnage" at the Gielgud Theatre. It has a limited run of 10 weeks only because the stellar cast includes Ralph Fiennes ( a man with a backlog of filmwork to get back to), with Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott. Ken Stott was part of the original cast of Art by Yasmina Reza. God of Carnage is also translated by Christopher Hampton who did Art. The director is Matthew Warchus who also directed Art (and also directed Speed the Plow, reviewed below).
The play is set in the Parisian apartment of Veronique (McTeer) and Michel (Stott). It is a wonderfully red interior with minimal but classy furniture. They are being visited by Alain (Fiennes) and Annette (Greig). The visit is occasioned because the two eleven year old sons of the two couples have been involved in a fight in a local park. The visitors' son has hit the other boy in the face with a stick. The two sets of parents are trying to work out a way an apology can be made.
It isn't long before the carefully constructed facades of the quartet start to crack and split asunder under the strain of being together. Ralph Fiennes' wonderful laconic lawyer, permanently attached to his mobile phone trying to dampen down a prescription drug drama, has a great line in black comedy and produces some real belly laughs from the audience. Tamsin Greig does a wonderful turn when chundering all over Veronique's precious books. Michel the self made entrepreneur of domestic goods (Stott) begins seemingly supporting his wife's attempts at a civilised solution but capitulates when the going gets tough. Before the end we see the paper thin veneer of civilisation disappear from the quartet and the Parisian apartment.
At the end silence reigns as the four retire to their separate corners, no longer able to communicate between the two couples, or indeed with their partners in the couples. Reza is telling us that the dividing line between civilisation and brutality remains so very thin.
The playing is consistently good and the teamwork extraordinary. The production is sure footed and swift - the 90 minutes playing time is delivered with pace, attack and brio - a hallmark of Warchus' direction (especially after having seen "Speed-the-Plow"). I was riveted throughout and really enjoyed the performance. I am not totally sure I was convinced by Reza's thesis at the end but it was certainly delivered in a stylish and thought provoking manner.
A production I would heartily recommend for all parents and teachers!

(I think I owe Matthew Warchus an apology as I think I kept calling him Marcus in a previous posting)

Speed the Plow

David Mamet, the Hollywood writer, has written a play about Hollywood and Matthew Warchus' production is populated by two Hollywood stars, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum. This is high octane stuff. The writing is brilliant and the performances are electric. Jeff Goldblum plays a newly promoted head of production in a studio and the opening of the play finds him installed in his brand new office still littered with step ladders and paint pots. Into the office bounces - and I mean bounces - Kevin Spacey as Charley Fox. Charley is an old time buddy of Goldblum's characetr, Gould, and doesn't really resent the fact that he has been promoted over Charley's head. His resentment is tempered because Charley has a fantastic package, a prison movie, a script that can't fail because it has worked so many times before in other movies and a star in full ascendancy as part of the package. The exchanges between Goldblum and Spacey are delivered at such speed and clarity. The two actors obviously had a ball in rehearsal and in this performance we were invited to the ball as well. At one stage Spacey is doing physical exercise with fag in mouth and still keeping the dialogue going at breakneck speed. Not once was clarity lost and it is the audience who almost end up breathless not the actors. There are touches of the Marx brothers in the glibness and comedy of the dialogue.

The final conclusion to the deal has to be delayed to the following morning but eh, it's a done deal, ain't it? Enter the third character, Laura Michelle Kelly's Karen. She plays Goldblum's temporary secretary. Charley Fox, so high on the adrenalin of the big deal he is going to be part of in the morning, makes the mistake of betting Gould he can't lay his temporary secretary this very evening.

The second act takes place at Gould's apartment and is virtually a monologue by Karen, with sparse interposes by the Goldblum character. It centres on her trying to sell him the idea of making a film out of a worthy but very abstract book. Her main premise is that making the film of the book would be so much more than a moneyspinner. It would make him a film maker rather than a studio hack. Laura Michelle Kelly is believable even though Mamet's dialogue sounded much more clonking than it had in the first act. I couldn't believe in the book, which was something to do with radiation death of the planet, and struck me as pretentious gooblydook. I am not sure still whether this was Mamet's intention or not.

It was with relish that the third act returned to the office the next morning and we awaited the reaction of Charley Fox. If the energy levels of the first act had been breakneck, they went up several more notches in the third. The arguments battered backwards and forwards, with nary a stop for breath. We had violence, male insecurity at its worst, male jostling for position and power, resentment, anger and desperation. This is acting at its finest. Language is used not as a tool of communication but as a weapon to batter and beat others into submission.

Hollywood is the dream factory but inhabited by these denizens it sounds like a nightmare place to be. The Laura Michelle Kelly character is much more subtle than that of the Spacey and Goldblum ones. Is this because Mamet is more at ease with the male characters than the female one? I was interested in my own reaction as part of the audience though. I was rooting for Charley throughout and grudgingly grew to like Gould but wasn't interested in the saving of mankind as proposed in the book supported by Karen. Why is that? Am I sold on the glamour of Hollywood? I was certainly seduced, excited and intrigued by this play and these performances; a wonderful production by Marcus Warchus.

Bronte

This is the flyer for the Bench production of "Bronte" by Polly Teale. It opens at the Havant Arts Centre a week this Thursday, April 24th. It is directed by the Bext Beloved, the Firstborn is the Stage Manager and Kat appears as Charlotte Bronte.

It has a great cast and should proudly take its place amongst the Bench's finest. Please come and see it if you can! (Details on the flyer)