Russell Kane Clip
March 9th, 2010
Russell Kane: Friday 14 May 2010 at 7.30pm
Tickets: Band A £16.00 / Band B: £14.00
Clip taken from a recent tour, may not be representative of current tour.
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Billy Liar Review
March 4th, 2010
Billy Liar: 2 – 6 March 2010
It’s a stage and film classic —Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s first collaboration fits in beautifully in an intimate theatre like the Coliseum.
We almost feel to be in the Fisher’s claustrophobic front room, watching the typical northern family of the 1960s spend a Saturday at home.
Judging by the age of the audience at last night’s opening, most would have been the same age as the eponymous Billy in the early 1960s and felt instantly at home in the era.
Based on the book by Keith Waterhouse, “Billy Liar” charts how a young man’s excess of exaggeration lands him in hot water — with three girlfriends, one engagement ring, an irate father, exasperated mother and a teenage workmate who is losing patience with his fibbing friend.
Billy is a compulsive liar, but without malice, because he either fibs to impress or get himself out of a sticky situation.
Played by Nathan Hannan, dreamy Billy misses his Saturday shift, unsuccessfully tries to end one engagement to the dopey Barbara (Julia Mallam) to start another with the common Rita (Janey Lawson), but really wants to escape with the exciting Liz (Lucy Evans).
TV star Helen Fraser (“Bad Girls” prison officer Sylvia Hollamby) plays Alice, Billy’s long suffering and exasperated mum, the northern matriarch, capturing brilliantly the houseproud figure desperate for her son to get a grip and make something of himself.
Hannan looks the part — remember Billy is not of age, not 21, and still under strict parental control, making his flights of fancy and imagination one way of escaping the tedium of home life.
Most of the time he’s quick and clever, but sometimes has a tendency to slip into sulky teenager mould, when he’s almost irritating.
Yet he’s good in director Michael Lunney’s staging of his fantasy world, when the action halts and Billy’s dreams fleetingly fill the stage bathed in a rich red glow.
Blustering dad, James Morley, has a good stab at the put-downs which bring Billy back to earth, but there is a gem of a performance from Sally Sanders as Gran, from her crepe stockings and bandaged legs to her rummages in her handbag the way old ladies always do.
And the set for Middle Ground Theatre Company’s touring production ticks all the boxes — three-piece suite, wallpaper, sideboard, fireplace, cocktail cabinet and portable radio are straight out of 1962.
It’s a period piece alright, and that’s no lie.
Huck Review
February 18th, 2010
Huck: 23 – 24 February 2010
I always feel that putting a novel about a river journey on stage, especially such an ethereal novel as Huckleberry Finn ( Twain said persons attempting to find a plot will be shot) is quite a challenge – what do you leave in? what do you leave out? And how do you give an impression of movement and water on such a fixed medium.
Shapeshifter are an innovative company that like to push the boundaries . This was an ambitious attempt to weave a play from a number of different theatre mediums and most of the time this company pulled it off. The set, a very impressive landing stage, was adapted to become (among other things) a raft, a house and a prison. A movable truck to the side served not only as an instrument/prop repository but became a stage for a lovely pastiche of David Garrick performing a very mixed Shakespeare monologue.
Simple props such as planks and logs were used to create rooms, boats, coffins and floating houses and with the addition of blue grass music performed by the cast the story of the outcast boy and the runaway slave was brought to life in an interesting, expressive way, even if sometimes the pudding was a little over egged.
The plot such as it is follows the journey of Huck and Jim south down the Mississippi as they attempt to change their lives and fortunes. The cast of seven worked hard to create a variety of characters but the central pairing of Graeme Dalling as Huck and Joe Speare as Jim was especially strong and held together what was a very eclectic mix of a show. This is essentially a book about racism – and this was sensitively dealt with. Jim was very believable as the trodden down slave with a big heart. Huck was maybe a little too clean,and 21st century to be a Mississippi urchin but was very personable as the boy who just wants to be free.
I missed the wit of Mark Twain which failed to come through this James Graham adaptation, but what this play lacked in humour it made up for in innovation. It would certainly make you want to go read the book – and as an introduction to a genius author as well as an interesting evening of original theatre it is well worth a watch.
Whats On Stage
And A Nightingale Sang Reviews
February 11th, 2010
And A Nightingale Sang: 11 March – 3 April 2010
And A Nightingale Sang in currently entertaining audiences at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme before it moves to Oldham Coliseum Theatre on 11 March 2010.
Take a look at what the critics think so far:
CP Taylor’s gentle, nostalgic saga of life on the domestic front evokes a world of make do and mend, casualties in foreign climes and the sound of Dame Vera Lynn, which seems as long ago as … last September, actually; the recent return of Dame Vera to the top of the charts makes this a canny time to revive a play filled with many of her best-loved songs.
Not that Taylor’s drama belongs to the world of cash-in musicals. It began life in the 1970s as an oral-history project commissioned by Newcastle’s Live Theatre, and the music forms a natural part of the fabric of life in the days when families made their own entertainment.
Head of the household George (Simeon Truby) keeps rushing in with the latest piece of sheet music, though with a family like his you can’t blame him for trying to drown out the noise. Taylor had a poet’s ear for the cadences of his adopted north-east, and each scene is a clamour of competing voices. Devout mother Peggy (Katherine Dow Blyton) makes shrill supplications to Our Lady; daughter Joyce (Anna Doolan) frets whether her husband’s leave date tallies with the arrival of her child; while Grandpa Andie (Ged McKenna) staggers round with a noisome sack containing the remains of his beloved whippet.
Sarah Punshon’s production has a hearty atmosphere and is well grounded in the observations of Laura Norton, as the narrator and elder sister Helen, who keeps her composure while all others lose theirs. And the accents are so convincing you have to remind yourself that, though this is Newcastle-under-Lyme, you’ve come to the right address.
The Guardian
Great plays weren’t the thing with Cecil Taylor, the Glasgow-born writer who spent most of his life around Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His best play by mainstream standards was his last, Good, about a decent German’s slow immersion in Nazism, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mostly, Taylor wrote highly effective dramas that spoke to people locally in a language and method they could take to. That language isn’t only a matter of local meanings (“wife” we soon understand in old soldier Andie’s mouth means ‘woman’, though doubtless most of the ‘wife’s were wives too) but a matter of cultural expectations.
Nightingale follows the Tyneside Stott family from 1939 to 1945, as they hardly let the War interrupt their concerns. After initially diving for protection against bombs, before realising the apparent air-raid siren is a whistling kettle, they stick to what really bothers them.
For dolled-up Joyce it’s making-up her mind and dealing with a loveless marriage. For mother Peggy it’s the demands of a life based on stern Catholicism. Which creates difficulties for husband George when, on a tide of wartime confidence, he joins the communists. ‘Old soldier’ Andie sees wartime vicissitudes in terms of a spare room for him and his extensive luggage.
Wartime ballads, including the title one, stand for these folks’ mix of sentiment and resilience, appearing throughout thanks to George’s pianism. Singing and playing alike are strong, especially Laura Norton’s Helen, the narrator who crosses time and space, introducing her family and telling her own story of wartime romance as she emerges from the resignation with which the character waits for chronological middle-age to catch up with her lack of self-confidence, via lipstick and make-up to the confidence in which she can take the revelations of reality that bind her lover.
Fine young director Sarah Punshon makes each point clearly on Helen Goddard’s spare set, silvery barrage-balloons hanging above the family table (fulcrum for major arguments) and flagstone floor. She can’t turn this assemblage of wartime incidents into great drama, but she ensures it speaks with resolution and humour of the people, to the people, loud and clear.
Reviews Gate
All too often, family dramas set in wartime Britain overdo the tragedy or the never say die Blitz spirit, or both. How refreshing, then, to have a reworking of CP Taylor’s bittersweet story of family life on Tyneside during the Second World War that is free of overt sentimentality.
Under the careful direction of Sarah Punshon, the family members at the centre of this play are allowed to tell their collective and individual stories in a down to earth and often hilarious way. They suffer uncertainty and hardships while trying to get on with their lives. And yet, amid the laughter, the painfulness of war still ebbs through in every line.
The New Vic has joined forces with the Oldham Coliseum for this production and it is clearly a successful marriage. Laura Norton has the immense job of not only playing the part of crippled daughter Helen but simultaneously narrating – a task in which she succeeds admirably.
The rest of the cast is well up to the mark, too. Katherine Dow Blyton makes a fine god-fearing matriarch Peggy, opposite Simeon Truby as her piano-playing husband George, while Ged McKenna generates most of the laughs as mischievous grandad Andie.
As an added bonus, the cast perform some of the best-loved songs of the period, including The White Cliffs of Dover and, as you might expect, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. All in all, an honest-to-goodness musical play that tells an engaging story in a most satisfying manner.
The Stage
A Week Less Ordinary
February 11th, 2010
February half term sees the anniversary of the nationwide A Night Less Ordinary scheme which is the free ticket initiative set up by Arts Council England. The offer has been taken up by theatres all over the country including Oldham Coliseum Theatre.
A Night Less Ordinary allows theatres to offer free tickets for anyone under the age of 26. The anniversary week, A Week Less Ordinary, will celebrate the first year of the scheme and its success.
Oldham Coliseum Theatre has seen a great response to the scheme with over 2600 people registered and 2250 free tickets already processed. During the week the Coliseum will be promoting A Night Less Ordinary at half term activities throughout the borough.
Actors Steven Pinder and Samantha Giles who are starring in the current Coliseum production, Absent Friends, showed their support for the free ticket offer in a video where thy discuss their first theatrical experiences.
If you’re under 26 and are yet to take advantage of this offer then why not come and celebrate the anniversary with the Coliseum and see Absent Friends for free in its final week, closing on Saturday 20 February.
A Night Less Ordinary will run right up until February 2011. To find out more about what productions are included in the offer and details of the terms and conditions call the box office on 0161 624 2829 or visit www.coliseum.org.uk and click on A Night Less Ordinary.