Talent at the Menier Chocolate Factory

For this gently, if patchily, amusing revival of her 1978 play, Talent, her first major success, Victoria Wood has upped the song count of the original, reshaped some of the smaller characters and added an intentionally gaudy new opening sequence – all big hair and cornea-scalding velvet flares – to reacquaint modern audiences with the world of the cabaret and light entertainment circuit on which she made her name.

These new musical interludes are, however, rather tepid in execution and never quite feel at home in what is otherwise a naturalistic comedy, if a rather slow-paced and structurally muddled one.

The play is set in the shabby backstage area of Bunter’s Nitespot, Manchester, at the tail end of the 70s. Aspiring singer Julie is gearing herself up to perform in a talent contest and her dowdy friend Maureen has come along to provide moral support. The writing, which is weighted with seventies references, to Babycham, Kiku perfume and Hawaiian ham platters, is full of Wood’s now familiar tactic of juxtaposing the absurd and tragic with the banal and highly location/era specific. (This kind of thing: “She had a vaginal prolapse while watching Stars on Sunday and eating some prawn cocktail crisps.” Maybe.)

Obviously Wood’s writing is rather more subtle in construction, considerably so – her career is testament to that – but the skeletons of the jokes are a bit more visible than usual here, which since it’s an early work is probably excusable. Though it seems odd to revive something that provides such a sharp reminder that there is, or certainly was, a formula to what she does.

There are, to be fair, some nicely observed passages of dialogue and the backstage scenes feel as if they have been drawn from real experiences of grotty dressing rooms and repellent, ruffle-shirted competition hosts. This might explain the somewhat episodic feel of the piece; it really lacks a sense of narrative drive and certain strands never take off at all - the arrival of Julie’s former boyfriend promises emotional tension but is just left to wither. Even the key relationship, between Julie and Maureen, is never more than a rough sketch, though the two central performances do quite a lot to steer around this obstacle.

Leanne Rowe and Suzie Toase are both very warm and winning, having been given the unenviable task of taking on roles originally played by Julie Walters and by Wood herself, and Mark Hadfield is amusing both as the splendidly sweaty magician’s assistant and, in drag, as a Bunter’s veteran, receiving a cake for 35 years long service. But the cast can’t quite make up for the fact that the whole thing rather limps along, formless and fuzzy-edged, towards a hands-aloft ‘finale’ that felt almost like parody.

An extended verison of a review written for The Stage.

It also doesn’t always make sense. A whole section is built around the need to find a receptacle to wee into, only for characters to later exit the room saying they were going to the ladies. And on the barometer of cultural wrongness, the sight of former Blue Peter presenter Mark Curry rubbing his implied trouser tent against Julie, sits quite highly. Which probably says more about my age then anything else, and also taps into a key problem with this production: it’s incredibly time-specific. I’m sure there were plenty of references I didn’t get, or at least had to figure out from their context. Usually the decade something was written isn’t a barrier to enjoyment, but this is so drenched in cultural reference points of the era that I felt a bit lost.

A Mad Macbeth and Then The Menier

If you’ve been to the South Bank this week you may have seen that the National have erected a big-fenced off area near the stage door. This is Square2, and for the next couple of weeks it is home to two international former Edinburgh hits, the first is Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?, a condensed al fresco take on Shakespeare’s tragedy full of motorcycles, stilt-walkers and guns, by a Polish theatre company. (There was going to be a rather laboured riff here on the production featuring an abundance of poles – the wooden kind – and Poles, but I suspect that would be scraping the bottom of even my shallow barrel).

We were ushered into fairly large space where the audience were made to stand behind crash barriers and, given that this is open air theatre in London in August, it immediately started to rain. Everyone fiddled with hoods and scarves and brollies in a stoic manner but fortunately it didn’t last long and the residual damp in the air kind of complimented the production’s war-scarred, slightly Mad Max-ish landscape. I was particularly taken with the witches, who strode around the place on stilts, dressed in black, their faces covered with white veils. When shot by the gun-toting Macbeth they would drop to the ground before silently rising again like Michael in the Halloween films. It was really rather creepy.

The production is short, just over an hour, and they’ve ripped out nearly all the dialogue, except for a few key passages (which are delivered in over-amplified and accented English). Instead they really fairly firmly on the visual to convey the power of the narrative, acknowledging that if you’re going to make people stand around for an hour you better give them plenty to look at. It was a visceral and memorable experience, one that had a pleasing cohesiveness, a sense of an over-arcing vision at work, rather than just being a string of striking images. However I suspect the National’s health and safety officer must have developed a whole collection of nervous ticks by now, what with the heady blend of flames and petrol on display here and the onstage fires lit every night in …some trace of her

This week I also saw They’re Playing Our Song at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a production that, while not truly awful, left me shrugging my shoulders and wondering what the point of it was. It seemed to be wholly an exercise in 1970s kitsch. That’s it. Ho, ho, look: orange curtains, a turquoise cardigan, some bad wigs, and so forth and so on. At least the costume changes raised a few laughs, as the one-liners, particularly in the first half, fell rather flat, leaving quite a few of those awkward, empty moments where you knew a laugh was supposed to be required, that a line was meant to be funny, only it hadn’t quite worked out that way.

While the leads – Alistair McGowan and Connie Fisher – were both amiable enough (she has a lovely singing voice and he has, well, he has a voice) and did much to make me feel warmly towards the production, they both seemed miscast as fast talking New York types and the play itself (it’s not really a full-on musical) seemed a ridiculously inward-looking piece of writing, a musical about a composer and lyricist who meet, bicker a little, get together, break up and get together again. Apparently it was based on the relationship between Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch who supplied the (forgettable, except for the title number which was just annoying) lyrics and music that accompany Neil Simon’s book. But that doesn’t excuse the lack of dramatic tension and the songs that evaporate from the memory the minute you step outside the theatre. It raised a couple of smiles I’ll admit, but I couldn’t shake this so-what feeling the whole time I was sitting there.

The Menier Misses The Mark

I was primed to like this. In common with many children of immigrants I have always had a fascination with certain English institutions and gobbled up films and novels with an Oxford or Cambridge setting as a teenager. But, despite my initial enthusiasm and despite the odd moment of poignancy, this production failed to particularly move or touch me.

Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit, which the Menier Chocolate Factory are currently reviving in a break from staging musicals, begins in Cambridge of the 1960s. A group of students are in the process of setting up a literary magazine named after an essay collection by FR Leavis. They’re not a particularly likeable bunch but there is something appealing in their intellectual idealism, their desire to leave their mark. But, inevitably, as the years pass, compromises are made, standards are lowered, life weighs down on them – in terms of narrative we’ve been here many, many times before.

Fiona Laird’s production is a curiously blunt affair, slamming much of the subtlety out of the play, flattening it out. None of the actors really convince as students alive with creative energy in the opening scene, so, as they succumb to hack jobs at the BBC (a very Bad Thing indeed in the play’s narrow view of the world) or to extramarital liaisons at the Charing Cross Hotel with women whose names they can’t remember, there is some key thing missing, some necessary hook – it’s difficult to care that much about their various dramas and infidelities

From a performance point of view the production is very mixed bag. James Dreyfus, an actor whose appeal I’ve never really got before now, is very good indeed as Humphrey, the possibly brilliant poet whose self criticism is such he ends up unable to write, frozen, lost. He always stands a little apart from the others, keeping his distance, occasionally breaking in with a waspish comment, but drawing a line between himself and his friends. Reece Shearsmith’s Nick was rather disappointing, far broader in comparison and his various tics were very reminiscent, perhaps inevitably, of his League Of Gentlemen creations (though, in his favour, he was the only one who appeared to age in any noticeable way over the near twenty-year period that the play covers). As for Mary Stockley’s Marigold, the lover and then wife of the magazine’s editor, it’s difficult to judge her performance given how underwritten a part it is, she exists purely to provide a plot twist, a mistress in waiting.

I concede it may be an age thing but I really couldn’t grasp what it was about the production that moved Charles Spencer to tears. But having read the Guardian blog about Gray’s diaries, I suspect I may be making an Amazon purchase or two this weekend as I’ve not read them and they sound rather wonderful.

Another Menier Musical

OK then. Finally some theatre, as promised.

On Tuesday I ventured out of the warm cocoon of my flat to visit the Menier Chocolate Factory for the final preview of their revival of La Cage Aux Folles. This was due to open an age ago but the press night had been much delayed due to the illness of Douglas Hodge and an understudy had been playing the role of Albin (Spencer Stafford, who according to my flat mate who saw the show before Christmas, was excellent).

The Menier has been rejigged to include a red-curtained entrance tunnel and a number of cabaret style tables at the front of the stage, as well a strip of quite spectacularly ugly carpet, in a stab at recreating the 1970s St Tropez club in which the show is set.

I’d only encountered La Cage previously through its non-musical American film incarnation, The Birdcage, which I’d managed to sit through despite a severe intolerance to Robin Williams, but the plot remains much the same. Jean Michel, the son of nightclub owner Georges (played by Philip Quast) announces his intention to marry the daughter of a rightwing politician. The future in-laws need to meet, but Jean-Michel insists that Georges’ lover Albin – who performs nightly in the club as Zaza – needs to be elsewhere and that his real mother be present instead, this despite the fact that it is Albin who has raised him.

Though it has a degree of rough-around-the-edges charm, Terry Johnson’s production seems to take an age to set this up. There was some fun business with the club’s troupe of dancers, La Cagelles, though, unobservant me, I took an age to notice that one was in fact a woman, and I liked the way the show focused on the still-strong passion between the middle aged couple but, on the whole, this was a flabby and fluffy thing. Quast and Hodge were decent in their roles but neither knocked me out, the pacing was occasionally awry, and the orchestra, seated in an alcove at the side of the stage, often seemed to fighting against the vocals, the music rather overwhelming the lyrics. There even appeared to be a large piece of duct tape holding the set together in one corner – was this a part of the design?

There was a degree of audience interaction, which I quite liked. Those opting to sit at the front tables are likely to have their head caressed or be fed olives by Quast, but these moments felt rather rehearsed and I’d have liked to seen them push this aspect of the show a little further.

The core of the story, about acceptance, about what constitutes family, is still potent, but though I left humming Jerry Herman’s lyrics, I wasn’t as excited by the production as I’d hoped to be.

The show was playing to a full house though, which allowed me to experience the Menier seating scrum properly for the first time. (The unreserved seating policy meant that a bit of elbow action was required to secure a decent perch). Also, when filing out at the end, my friend and I got to overhear the orchestra loudly deconstructing that night's performance: “OK, next time I think we need to be faster on au revoir.” And we also got to see a six foot tall Germanic tranny sit on Toby Young. Which had entertainment value, certainly.

A Winning Hand

So, I went to the Menier last Thursday for their revival of Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice. Though – small admission – I wasn’t really looking forward to it; I was curious yes, I’d not seen the play the first time around and was intrigued, but I wasn’t really open to the idea I might enjoy it. After all, the usually reliable Menier tends to flounder when it comes to non-musicals, as the stodgy All Mouth attested, and though I’ve seen several good fringe productions of Marber’s best known play, Closer, I’ve never really warmed to it, indeed have come to actively dislike its unrelentingly bleak outlook. But one of my friends is seriously into poker, a game I’ve never really got to grips with, so hoping for insight, I went along.

For him poker is more than just a hobby, he would certainly snort at my use of the word ‘game.’ No, to him, poker is a beautiful thing, a pure and perfect exercise, demanding wit, skill and empathy from the player. There was nothing that happened in his life that couldn’t be summed up with a poker metaphor and he talked about his poker experiences with intensity and passion, often employing a near-impenetrable poker-centric language, peppered with references to Hold 'Em and Omaha and wild cards and what not. He often tried to convey what it was about poker that made him feel so awake, so connected, but though I nodded along, I don’t think I ever really got it.

And I’m still not sure I do. But I am a little nearer. Marber’s play really gets across what poker means to those (men) who play it, the power it exerts. The play is set in a London restaurant where the staff hold weekly Sunday poker sessions, run by the restaurant's owner, the calm, meticulous Stephen. These games are also the only time he sees his son Carl, so they have particular significance to him. The remaining players consist of a young waiter called Mugsy, an eternally optimistic fellow with a mad scheme of turning a Mile End public lav into a posh restaurant of his very own; the other waiter, Frankie, is a bit more together; and there’s also a cook, Sweeney, (played by Ross Boatman, who I gather is a bit of a poker legend himself) who’s divorced with a young daughter and hopes to cry off that night's game so he can save his cash to take her to the zoo the next day. (It’s giving away little to say his good intentions come to nothing).

The first half carefully sets up these characters, the way they interact and their various motivations. It's deftly done, the material enhanced by some genuinely superb ensemble stage acting, particularly from Malcolm Sinclair as Stephen. I really liked his measured, controlled performance – you could sense so much going on beneath the calm exterior. I also liked Stephen Wight’s Mugsy, a man whose mouth seems to be permanently two steps ahead of his brain. I suspect it takes really great timing to play dim with such proficiency. Roger Lloyd Pack was also entertaining, exuding deadpan menace as Ash, the professional poker player to whom Carl owes a hefty sum of money – though there’s something a bit wrong about seeing Trigger from Only Fools and Horses calling a man a cunt..

The already simmering tension builds up considerably in the second half when the poker game proper begins and the striking restaurant kitchen set, with its mirrored back wall, is replaced by that of the basement poker room. (I came back from the bar in time to see them changing the set around, a complex process involving ramps and motors and winches and things, fascinating, but I thought rather too susceptible to things snapping or sticking or generally going awry). The play runs at well over two hours but it flits by, every moment used wisely. I didn’t look at my watch once, and while I still couldn’t tell you what a river card is, or anything like that, I came away feeling I understood a little more of what this 'game' means to my friend.

Oh, and more musings on matinees here.

Something To See Here

Hurrah! Finally, I have been to the theatre. To the Menier Chocolate Factory in fact to see Take Flight, a new musical, by John Weidman, David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr, that interweaves the stories of the early pioneers of flying: the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart

The Menier is at its best with musicals, and while this show is far from perfect, it’s vastly more interesting and engaging than their last offering, the lumpy and unfunny All Mouth. Take Flight is about individuals who strive to do the impossible. It looks at what drives people to want to take to the air in an era where, more often than not, they would lose their lives in the attempt (or as the show’s narrator of sorts, the inventor Otto Lillienthal amusingly puts it: go ‘pfft’). Are these people visionaries, or, well, just a bit odd?

The answer appears to be a bit of both. Lindbergh is depicted as so cripplingly shy that flying solo is his only pleasure and the Wright Brothers exist in their own little nerdy world (“don’t have houses, don’t have wives, don’t have prospects, don’t have lives.”). Earhart is an independent spirit, who needs to constantly challenge herself in order to feel alive. She views the idea of settling down with her publisher husband, George Putnam with something akin to dread.

By necessity this is a musical of ideas, rather than visual spectacle. The flying scenes are simulated by the actors sitting on stepladders and jiggling about a bit (and though there’ll be a model plane going spare soon, once The Drowsy Chaperone closes, I doubt they could fit it in the Menier, so stepladders will have to suffice).

With a couple of exceptions the songs are rather samey – there’s little here that will be adding itself to your internal iPod – but the show’s sub-Sondheim style has its moments of wit and inspiration. Sally Anne Triplett’s Earhart is supposed to provide the emotional core of the piece but I was more taken with Michael Jibson’s pallid, introverted Lindberg, unfortunately his character is given little room for development.

Though flawed there is something genuinely uplifting about Take Flight if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s a celebration of what people can achieve, it’s about progress and hope, rather than the fear and apprehension about the future that seems so globally pervasive at the moment.

And, excitement of excitements, (well perhaps that’s overstating it, but still, anyway, good thing) the Menier has finally invested in an air conditioning unit! This will surely gladden anyone who sweated through The Last Five Years there last summer.

All Mouth, No Heart

As a general rule, most plays need some form of structure and shape; they need to unfold, to develop, to take the audience on a journey. It doesn’t need to be a long journey, it doesn’t need to make you reassess your life as you know it or shift your political beliefs. But it needs to move you in some small way. Or else it’s just two hours of noise.

Which brings me, conveniently, to All Mouth, the new comedy at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The play, by Jonathan Lewis and Miranda Foster, is set in the world of advertising voiceover artists, and while it does make you chuckle on occasion, it’s more or less two hours of noise. The characters, four actors who use a central London flat as a base for hanging out and learning their lines, are incredibly thinly sketched, stereotypes who never really grow beyond simple two-word tags: aging thesp, American bloke, divorced mother, and, erm, the other one.

There’s a plot of sorts about an actors strike and a young actor who wheedles his way into the aging thesp’s affections as a way of getting his career off the ground, but it doesn’t work as drama or satire and you get little sense of who these people are. Some solid performances keep the play afloat and render it watchable but, as it is, it feels like a work in progress – a play in need of a complete re-write.

Now, the West End Whingers have a thing about the Menier’s unreserved seating policy, but this has never bothered me quite so much as the lack of air-con, more noticeable here than at any other venue I can think of. I have never had a more uncomfortable night at the theatre than I had watching a performance of The Last Five Years there on a hot July night last year. It was so stuffy in the theatre that the staff were handing out tiny battery-powered fans at the door. Even with those it was impossible to enjoy the show properly; it was like sitting in a sauna. Christ knows how the actors coped. It’s a shame because as a venue I’m quite fond of it, though my affection is bound to dwindle if they keep on staging nothingy comedies like this.

Oh yes and the ‘dead white men’ debate is still trundling on, with a riposte from Nicholas Hytner in the Observer.

Feed Me, Seymour

Met Sarah B after work on Thursday for a large, much-much-much-needed glass of Merlot and a hasty spot of dinner before heading to the Duke Of York’s Theatre to see Little Shop Of Horrors.

This is another transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory who sent Sunday In The Park With George to the West End last summer. The Menier is also the place where Laura and I slowly expired from heat exhaustion during a sauna-like performance of The Last Five Years, but I'm learning not to hold that against it. I don't hold grudges, no, I swallow my hate, I bottle it safely away. Far healthier.

Anyway their version of Little Shop itself was great fun, slick and witty, silly yet endearing. If you don't already know the play, it's based on a 1950s B-movie, a Roger Corman film about one of life's losers, a weedy chap called Seymour, who works in a florist - and the killer plant that promises him good fortune in exchange for food (and we're not talking Baby Bio here.) The Menier's production is hugely entertaining, hitting just the right kitsch tone, and boasts fantastic performances from everyone involved, particularly Sheridan Smith as Seymour's breathy love-interest Audrey, who managed during one number, to simultaneously sing and weep - quite a difficult thing to pull off, I’d imagine.

However I did think the production's centre-piece, the blood-thirsty plant Audrey II, - though superbly voiced by Mike McShane - was a bit of a let down. I remember a lot of talk, when the show opened at the Menier, of all the money they’d spent on it, changing the design, making it properly scary, so how come it still looked like a big green dustbin with teeth? Was that really the best they could come up with?

The only new additon to the cast since the transfer, is Alistair McGowan, the long-faced impressionist guy of the telly; he was great fun as Audrey’s vile dentist boyfriend Orin (a part memorably played by Steve Martin in the 1980s film version). A minor prop malfunction, in the scene where he has Seymour in the dentist’s chair, almost caused him to corpse – but he pulled himself together quickly and fortunately it’s the kind of show where the odd involuntray giggle just adds to the charm. The shoo-wopping three-girl chorus who sing back-up on all of the songs were also superb, perhaps the best thing in it. Not only did they have great voices but spot-on comic timing as well. So, yes in short, 'twas a brilliant evening, very entertaining – and the perfect antidote to a monumentally crappy day at the office.