Theatre, play and drama reviews 2012

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Reviews of plays and drama in 2012

On this page: | Twenty Something | Without Decor | Tony Ward | DNA at Curve | Funny Peculiar | The Rat Pack |

Tuesday 17th April

The Butterfly Lion, Curve, 17th April

The Butterfly Lion is on at Curve, 12th to 21st April

Review by Trevor Locke; photography by Robert Day

You never quite know what to expect at Curve, especially in the studio. I knew I was going to see something about a Lion, Butterflies and a boy. That was it, pretty much. I tend to work like that sometimes. I just turn up and see what happens. Not always of course, but sometimes surprise is the way to go.

I was pleasantly surprised. Michael Morpurgo's story about a boy who rescues a lion cub in the African Veldt (adapted by Daniel Buckroyd) might appear on the surface to be a drama aimed at children. In some respects it was like Born Free meets ET, a love story with animals. It was indeed a tale of love and betrayal, of life and death, of freedom and captivity - the kind of dramatic content that does get into children's fiction but which is frequently the meat in adult dramas.

Bertie finds his white lion cub Curve photo © Robert Day

The storyline is fairly straightforward: a boy saves a special lion cub, it grows up and they become life long friends. He loves the lion and it becomes a focal part of his life. Like all good mystery plays it has a twist in the ending.

Like all good stories, it's the way you tell them. This is where the show was full of surprises. Mounting a play where many of the key dramatis personae are large savannah animals can present challenges to small theatre stages, in a way not associated with films. Director Daniel Buckroyd (New Perspectives Theatre Company) thought creatively about how to spin a yarn in which large animals play a prominent part.

The solution he came up with was simple, if not obvious: puppets. Not your familiar papier mache dolls on the end of wires but a variety of creatures cleverly brought to life on the end of thin sticks (used frequently on a lot of TV puppetry series) or by having the models held by an actor who manipulates their movements by hand.

Millie meets Le Prince Blanc Curve photo © Robert Day

Don't get the wrong impression; this is not a puppet show. It's not a Punch and Judy style session. It's a drama but one that adults will warm to and be enthralled by as much as by children. In fact tonight's full-house audience was composed largely of adults. The silence that descended on the room during the two acts and the standing ovation at the end, bears witness to the fact everyone in the room looked like they were thoroughly transfixed and enthralled. I certainly was.

So, the fact that, at various points in the plot, we were watching actors manipulating dolls and animals that were iconic as opposed to realistic, did not detract from the artistic impact and indeed I have seen life size marionettes used before at Curve, in much more adult productions. There is one point in the first act where actors place plastic animals on a blue table cloth and pretend that they are drinking at a water hole. The action on the table top reflects the story line which is being told and it is exactly what a child would do. The story of The Butterfly Lion is about childhood. It begins with a school boy, moves on to the birth of Bertie, one of the main characters, and later moves on to Michael, the school boy, following that character's life as a teenager and adult. In a play that is about childhood experiences, passions and the realities of growing up, toys, puppets, kites and pets are what you would expect to find.

Michael and the Butterlies Curve photo © Robert Day

The casting was spot on. Joe Jameson had his work cut out playing both a school boy Michael and ten year old Bertie, the characters around which the story revolves. Casting one adult actor to play juveniles, teenagers and later young adults is challenging but Joe looked convincing. In playing a ten year old, Joe Jameson said "I don't want to play like I am an actor pretending to be a little kid." I think he pulled it off magnificently; he got into the portrayal of juvenile mannerisms, facial expressions and movements. There is one point where it faltered a bit. The story is set in Edwardian England (in the second act) but the dialogue sounded too much like one of the characters out of Little Britain. It can be difficult to avoid this kind of anachronism; for the most part, the cast managed to stay in the right time frame but there were slips now and again.

You can watch an interview with Joe Jameson on YouTube, talking about the play.

The plot is about a young boy who rescues a lion cub after his father shoots its mother. They cub is pure white. When the animal grows up it is sold to a Circus where it becomes the star attraction. The young boy, Bertie (Joe Jameson) grows up and in the second half we seen him the trenches of the First World War. After being wounded he is taken to a french hospital to recover where he is joined by his childhood sweetheart, Millie (Gwen Taylor) who nurses him back to health and then helps him to find his long lost lion friend, which is still being cared for by circus owner Merlot (Msimisi Dlamini). The pair take the lion back to Millie's estate in Wiltshire where they marry and the three of them live out their days.

Millie and Michael Curve photo © Robert Day

If you are thinking of taking the kids to see this, bear in mind that the second half of this 120 minute long production is rather dark and frightening with scenes of soldiers being killed and wounded in the trenches of World War One. Well it frightened me! There are also scenes which some young children would find disturbing. Fortunately none of tonight's kids in the audience started crying in the middle of the show, but I could imagine that happening. The Butterfly Lion is not a dramatical soft cuddly toy. It's a strong tale of human passions, changing fortunes and has its darker moments. Michael Morpurgo also wrote the novel that formed the basis for the film Warhorse. Or should I say 'scenes that senior citizens might find disturbing.'

I am not going to reveal the surprise twist at the end of the show. I will leave you to find that out yourself. This is a remarkable piece of theatre and even if you think 'it's not really my sort of bag', I would still recommend you to see it. It's a moving, heart warming, heart rending story that is well casted, superbly acted and cunningly presented. It's a children's story told for both kids and adults.

See web site for The Butterfly Lion | Find out about White Lions | The Butterfly Lion runs at Curve until April 21st

See the trailer for this show on YouTube

Twenty Something, The Cookie Jar, 18th March

The cast of Twenty Something on stage Photo © Harjinder Ohbi

Twentysomething is one of the best new pieces I have seen this year. Performed by students from the East 15 Acting School, the play portrays the lives of a group of friends who meet up for drink in a bar-cafe in Leicester. Set in the venue where the play is performed, the six actors delivered a convincing drama about six very distinct characters who get together to talk about University life and being young people and to drink.

The group of student friends, seated on sofas on the stage, talk amongst themselves about their experiences, their hopes and aspirations and their attitudes to each other. As the evening wears on and the bottles of wine are emptied, the group's relationships are revealed and unraveled. What made this drama so engaging was the characterisation and the sharply funny, quick-fire dialogue.

Jessica-Lee Hopkins from the cast of Twenty Something on stage Photo © Harjinder Ohbi

Written by Adam Colborne and Yasin Shomalzadeh (two of the actors) with the help of Rosie Marsh, the dialogue portrays six characters, in their twenties, who are instantly recognisable.

The action is kept moving by the constant comings and going of members of the group as they gather together on the stage, leave to go to the bar or go out for a smoke, return and work through a variety of situations based on their lives as students. The number of people on the stage is constantly changing.

One of the girls, Jess (Ella Gamble) explains to the group that she had applied for an internship with the New York Times. Her application was unsuccessful but later (in Jess's absence) we learn that another member of the group, Patrick (James Palmer) was the lucky candidate who had in fact bagged the job. This sets the scene for Jess's return and a variety of comments being made by Patrick about how lucky he was to have beaten all the other candidates for the internship. The mood changes as the group realises the impact of the comments that Patrick is making (unawares that Jess was the unlucky looser.)

The cast of Twenty Something on stage Photo © Harjinder Ohbi

The dialogue is peppered with some crackin' lines of humour and hilarious one-liners, bitchy remarks, innuendos and gratuitous nastiness to which individuals react in a variety of ways - some trying to laugh it off as a joke, some laying in to the perpetrator, others trying to diplomatically paper over the faux pas in the interests of group cohesion.

Whilst all of the group are seated on the stage, a singer performs a song at the back of the room, bringing the plot of the drama in to the reality of here and now. She is one of the friends, Kate (Jessica-Lee Hopkins), who has just returned from a trip to India. Kate proceeds to swathe the conversation with endless stories about her time in the sub-continent, illustrated with photos on her mobile phone.

There are various life-style details in the dialogue which ring true. At one point, someone says that they forgot so-and-so's birthday. To which someone comments "Oh dear, I should have checked on Facebook." The life-style of today's young people is illustrated with a variety of comments about Facebook and the omnipresent mobile phone and its text-messages, suggesting that these technologies have not just enabled people's social lives but have some to drive them and define their real life interactions with each other.

What engaged the audience so much was not just the spoken dialogue but the expressions on the faces of the actors as they listened to the comments, the way their lives have been wrought by previous relationships with each other and how they duck and weave between the back-biting, complements and complaints that are the stuff of their evening together.

At one point one of them asks "Are we adults?". Being 20+ is like being on the borderline between adolescence and maturity and you see a group of people whose identities and status have been defined by their passage through the education system, from school to University. Their endless discussion about which University to go to portrays them as making life choices that will determine (in their eyes) the kind of adults that they will become.

The cast of Twenty Something on stage Photo © Harjinder Ohbi

The groups conversation wades through all the things that pre-posses the lives of young people: relationships, education, sex, ambitions, failures, regret and hopes and fears. They are at times supportive, destructive, cynical and diplomatic. What makes the drama so convincing is that each of the six characters portrayed on the stage fitted the actor like a glove. Given that two of them were also the playwrights, one wonders if they were acting out a work a of fiction or just role-playing themselves.

The obvious comparison about this work was that is was just like an episode of Friends. From what I can remember of the few time I have watched the TV sitcom, there are a lot of similarities: the action takes place in one room, it's all about the narrative of social relationships, careers and the ups and downs of friendship.

I have to say I enjoyed today's live performance very much more than the television production. The quality of the play writing however was well up to the mark of the television shows. I liked the way the play was set in the Crumblin' Cookie, where it was being performed and the way various references were made to familiar places in Leicester where you could see the characters going: Mosh nightclub, The Rainbow and Dove bar, etc.

I thought Twentysomething was brilliant. Funny, moving and insightful, it was a very fresh take on drama and the cast of six delivered it with a considerable measure of vitality.

Twentysomething, directed by Tom Binns, performed by members of the East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, goes to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

The Cookie Jar website | Twentysomething play on Twitter |

Performance Without Decor, The Y Theatre, 11th March

Off The Fence Theatre Company put on tonight's drama at The Y. The production drew its name from the idea of minimal use of props, costumes and lighting, stripping the drama down to its essential core - the plot and the spoken dialogue.

This was the second play by Gary Phillpott. It's plot was a story about a man and his family covering four decades of the twentieth century. At the Y, full house settled down for the first scene as a sole actor, the leading character, went around the stage with an electric vacuum cleaner, picking up pieces of material, in between looking out with a bored and lost expression.

The action opened in Egypt in 1952, as six actors performed drill moves; the leading character was in the army, a pivotal element of the plot. Scene two switches to 2007 where we see the man and his wife at home. In his old age he is experiencing dementia and the plot works through the impact that his had on his family.

Scene two hops back to 1955 and the couple's wedding reception. The storyline unfolds in flash backs and jumps forward, so it takes some time before the full picture of the lives of the family becomes clear.

Jumping to 1961, the couple now have two children. In another unusual technique, pieces of action and dialogue are repeated, two or three times. Fast forward to 2008 and we see the old couple at home. Flash back to 1979 and we see the daughter talking about getting married. The play progressed, jumping around in the family's timeline and this is how we get to understand the context and plot of the life of the man and his wife.

The man's death is portrayed. The family is sitting at home watching the television; the father leaves the room to do something but suffers a heart attack and falls down dead. In the first portrayal of this event, his lifeless body is found by his daughter who then proceeds to tell the corpse all the things she was never able to say to him when he was alive.

The same scene is then repeated, this time with the son finding the body and also talking about experiences, emotions and thoughts that he, we assume, had not opened up with his father before. In the third repetition of this scene, the man is found by his wife, who then proceeds to reflect on their marriage and life together.

The whole play was about 40 minutes in length and despite the constantly jumping around in time, helpfully explained by a back projected screen showing the date in which the scene was set, some of the scenes were ponderously slow. Even so, there were some illuminating insights into what we would call the work/life balance of the father, how his employment in the army dominated his life experience and most of his closest friends being soldiers. The tensions between the couple, exacerbated with his increasing dementia, are deftly portrayed.

The six actors played their parts well and brought the story to life, using only a collection of chairs and hats, as indicators, in an otherwise empty stage space. There were moments of humour and pathos to highlight a tale about an otherwise ordinary and unremarkable family, leading a fairly familiar life over four decades. The actors' challenge was to portray the same character over that span of time without actually looking any different.

The second half saw a short piece in which two actors, a man and his girl friend, were in a hotel. A perplexing sketch with lots of surrealistic imagery conjured up in the dialogue, it was a brief but intense drama that was even less easy to follow than the previous play. The dialogue was disjointed, as real life conversations often are and the style of the dialogue was often clipped and rather Pinter-esq. We see the two characters talking at each other for most of time and they work their way through their weekend at the hotel. The substance of the plot was delivered both in the dialogue and in a series of monologues in which each of them think aloud about their relationship and their experiences of the weekend's stay.

Words are used as ordnance in the relationship, the couples firing salvos of accusations at each other. As with the previous play we see the male figure's current situation grounded in his previous life, this time referencing his time in a prison (rather than in the army.)

It portrayed two people whose current relationship could not escape their previous and separate life histories - the here and now being a product of the past.

I like the work being done by Off The FenceTtheatre, having seen their earlier production Market Forces, a play that took place amongst the market stalls of Leicester's city centre. The company has added a vibrancy, to the drama scene in this city, that is very welcome.

Off The Fence Theatre Company | Our review of Market Forces

Tony Ward

Tony Ward, passed away last year, due to liver disease and throughout his life and even his final two years of life was an active member of the theatre community in Leicester. As an actor most of his life, performing all over the country, Tony was also a member of the board at The Little Theatre and The Haymarket Leicester.

Tony Ward's grand daughter, Jessica Ward, is running the 2012 London Marathon in honour of her grand father. She told us " I would really appreciate it if you would be able to circulate my page to as many people within the acting community as possible who may have knew Tony and therefore want to help with a small contribution."

Jessica's marathon run is in aid of the British Liver Trust.

Jessica Ward's page on Just Giving

22nd February

DNA at Curve, 22nd to 25th February

By Trevor Locke

Give eight actors a small space, minimal props and see what happens. The eight young actors who performed Dennis Kelly's DNA tonight at Curve did an excellent job of bringing to life this one-scene dark comedy/thriller.

Set in a small English town, the plot was simple enough. A group of school students were having a laugh when one of them - Adam - accidentally falls into a deep hole. The rest of the group believes that he has been killed but also feel themselves to be culpable for his demise.

After this event, the full group of kids talk about the tragedy and one of them - Phil, the lead male role in the group - hatches a plan to cover up the event. One guesses that teenagers (being immature) fail to work through whether they really were responsible for Adam's death. The point is that they collectively believed themselves to be guilty of bringing about this unfortunate accident.

Phil's plan was to make it look like Adam had been killed by a stranger and orders members of the group to lay down evidence that will lead the police to a suspect, which Phil dreams up. Unfortunately, a real person is apprehended by the police and charged with Adam's murder, a consequence that Phil's plan did not intend. Why they did this one can only guess because even at this stage Adam's body had not yet been found. It was the fear of someone finding his remains and an investigation being launched that drove them to perpetrating the outlandish cover-up. Phil wants to protect the group of which he is the head and leader.

[spoiler alert]

The group returns to their normal state of harmony, until something completely unexpected happens which gives the whole plot its surprise twist.

Look away now if you don't want to know what this is!

Adam was not killed and comes back from the dead. This throws the group into another state of chaos. They now feel they are subject to a double jeopardy. They have perverted the course of justice and sent an innocent man to prison for a crime he did not commit. Ring leader Phil decides that members of the group should murder Adam and hide his body so that the real situation will not be discovered ... thus preserving the integrity and harmony of the group in the face of dire adversity, even though evil had to be committed in the name of collective good.

Well that is certainly a familiar issue in today's world of terrorism. It's a simple enough storyline. What Dennis Kelly does is to use this plot to explore some weighty questions about the ethics of truth and falsehood. He unravels the chemistry of loyalties and conflicts within the group of teenagers. The impact of events on personal relationships are worked through. The stuff of drama.

The play was produced by Hull Truck and is currently on tour around the country, having opened in Plymouth on 1st February. The play debuted at the National Theatre in 2007. Director and Designer Anthony Banks has done a pretty good job of concentrating attention on the spoken dialogue, giving the actors a fairly small area in which to perform. "It's a very oral play", one cast member commented. There are few props and the stark atmosphere of the scenes is conveyed by projected backdrops of woods and clouds moving across a sky. Like a lot of modern productions, the audience has to imagine the scenery and settings to the story.

As James Alexandrou explained, "The area in which you perform can be considerably smaller than the space allowed by the stage. On TV, your performance area can be the area of just around your head." Good insight for us outsiders!

The play opens with a dramatic audio piece by composer and sound designer James MacKenzie who also brought in some sound effects to mark the breaks between scenes. Tonight's audience included a large proportion of teenagers. They responded warmly to the play and one suspects they are doing the book of the play as part of their English courses. Not something I have to cope with; I just turned up, saw the show and went home to write about it. What attracted me, in the pre-show blurb, was the idea of the drama. That's what motivated me to go and see it.

I was not disappointed. The actors did a satisfactory job of bringing the characters to life. They had to interpret what the playwrite intended. Each of the eight parts was distinctly different and it was up to the cast to figure out how to portay each of the roles. The lead role of Phil was very ably performed by ex East Enders star James Alexandrou (who played Martin Fowler in the long running BBC soap opera.) The 27 year old actor managed to portray a character who would have been around 15/16 in the play; in fact all of the cast (in their middle to late twenties) managed to portray convincing teenage parts. His portrayal of the taciturn and calculating Phil was strikingly offset by the volubility of the constantly talking Leah (Leah Brotherhead).

The pair sit on grass mats, at several points in the play, and as Phil munches his way silently through his lunch Leah engages in a stream of consciousness monologue about the world, life and the situation she finds herself in. I said it was a thriller and yes it was as far as the plot was concerned.

Kelly artfully introduced moments of comedy to either relieve or enhance the tension of the scenes. The pace was like a ballet: quickly moving scenes being interspersed with the languid monologues of Leah and Phil's lunch breaks. The plot winds towards the shocking denouement in which we see relationships collapse, people questioning what has happened, individuals coming to terms with the gritty and challenging consequences of their actions ... people do bad things but does that make them bad people? A rather abrupt ending in certain respects but one that made you move back from the edge of your seat, sit back in your chair and begin to ponder on the significance of the hour or so you have just spent. I like plays that do that.

A thought-provoking drama delivered by a sterling group of actors.

Find out what's on at Curve

21st February

Funny Peculiar at Curve 21st to 25th February

By Karen McCandless

Funny Peculiar was not only funny and a bit peculiar, but also downright barmy, as Bill Kenwright brought the production to the Curve, Leicester. Mike Stott's West End hit combines slapstick humour with mischievous pranks and sprinkles in some word play and unfortunate misunderstandings.

In Funny Peculiar, former Coronation Street star Craig Gazey played bored small-town grocer Trevor Tinsley who wants to change his life, go crazy and embrace free love. When his wife fails to share his ambitions, Tinsley falls into the arms of his glamorous and married neighbour. But when the local gossip catches a glimpse of them 'at it' and spills the beans to his straight-laced wife things take a turn for the crazy. A food/washing up liquid fight with the baker ensues. And some possibly unplanned mishaps with blinds threw the cast into fits of giggles in the cast's first night performance in Leicester.

Gazey's performance is the main reason to see this production of Funny Peculiar. He takes centre stage for most of the play, showing depth and character and displaying his emotional range throughout. Suzanne Shaw as Trevor's wife Irene has a great line of facial expressions - from horrified to shocked to disgusted to fake happy - but is largely in the background otherwise. Meanwhile Vicky Entwistle (best known as Janice Battersby in Coronation Street) is a nosy and narrow-minded busybody who shows a surprisingly naughty side and Gemma Bissix is the naughty partner in crime of Tinsley's deeds.

Just a warning for those who are easily offended, you will see more of Gazey than you may have bargained for, and expect some seriously bad language. And if that isn't enough to persuade you to see this, the play ends in a farcical and slightly racy manner, when Tinsley is visited in hospital by a very different version of his wife. Funny Peculiar is old-fashioned, laugh-out-loud comedy at its best.

More details and tickets from CurveOnLine

1st February

The Rat Pack live from Las Vegas, Curve

Curve, 30th January to 4th February 2012

By Karen McCandless

The Rat Pack made a triumphant return to the stage at Curve last night, as they brought a bit of much needed glitz and glamour to a cold Leicester evening.

The Olivier Award nominated production features songs and performance from the legends that were Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr, also know as the Rat Pack. Following a successful West End run, the original cast reunited to take the audience on a trip from Curve all the way to Las Vegas.

Backed by a 15-piece orchestra, the Kings of Swings performed against the backdrop of the historic Las Vegas Strip hotel and casino, Sands Hotel. In fact, it was a fitting venue, as all three members of the Rat Pack recorded live albums there.

It must be difficult to recreate the singing and performances of three such iconic music stars, but to have to portray their personalities and quirks as well is an added challenge. But all three delivered performances that I'm sure the members of the Rat Pack themselves would have enjoyed.

The audience's favourite seemed to be Mark Adams (Dean Martin), not necessarily for his singing but for the life he projected into the whole show. He wasn't just Dean Martin during his individual performances, but for the whole of the time he was on stage, not slipping out of character for one moment. Always with a drink in his hand, and mostly falling over, Adams slurred and charmed his way through the set.

In contrast, Stephen Triffitt (Frank Sinatra) was the picture of control and poise, with the singing and speaking voice of Sinatra perfectly mimicked. George Long (Sammy Davis Jr.) recreated Smoky's charisma brilliantly; it was about performance, performance, performance. Not just an excellent singer, but a great mover too and such a charmer, Long had seemingly unending energy as he danced around the stage, upstaging the two more experienced performers where he could.

The chemistry between the three was one of the elements that really made this show work. On their own they were brilliant, but coming together to sing and perform, they were even better. Frank Sinatra was the seasoned performer, the sensible one you could say. Dean Martin was the unpredictable yet hilarious alcoholic, and Sammy Davis Jnr was the young upstart with the suave suits and performing skills to match. And their battles for the stage and for dominance were so believable. Three big personalities on the same bill - it was always going to happen!

The atmosphere created overall brought the whole audience back to the very era where it all began. At the start of the second half, the manager of the hotel strenuously denied that the performance's financial backer is part of the mafia. No, his business is in waste management. And Frank has never met him, even though they went to school together ... It's details like this that make the show a timeless success.

All the classic songs were in there - Mr. Bojangles, Me and My Shadow, I've Got You Under my Skin, New York, New York, and to top off an epic evening, Frank performed My Way. It brought down the house. At the end of the show, the audience showed its appreciation with a much-deserved standing ovation. All-in-all, a very successful night in Vegas.

Find out what's on at Curve

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