iShowmanism!- Ustinov Studio *****

Originally published on WhatsOnStage

Dickie Beau
© Sarah Ainslie

Once in a while as a critic, you see a piece of work that completely stops you in your tracks and makes you sit slack-jawed at the extraordinary level of artistry playing in front of you. Ever since seeing the lip-synch artist Dickie Beau deliver his Hamlet show Re-member Me in a tent at Latitude, I have been convinced that Beau is one of our great living artists. His new show iShowmanism!, the last programmed work in Deborah Warner’s first season at the Ustinov, builds on this work and pushes it to a new level of excellence.

In conception, Beau interviews several theatre artists, each an explorative wanderer in their own right, and asks them to strip back what the art form is to its most elemental form. In Ancient Greece, playing in those vast open Amphitheatres of Epidaurus and below the mountains of Olympus, the connection between the texts and the Gods themselves was clear to the citizens whose leaders would pay them a day’s agricultural wage to allow them to attend because they knew the importance. Consistently these actors, academics, and directors talk about theatre and its place in the grand sphere of life, with an almost holy reverence. For a short while theatre and what it stands for, is the most important event in the world. From Shakespeare to Beckett, from the parasitic nature of critics, to whether theatre is even relevant while the world burns around us, it’s an intellectual as well as touching exploration of an art form that sometimes can be dismissed as simply entertainment.

Warner’s first season at the Ustinov has brought with it a renewed sense of what the space can do. Justin Nardella’s design is a memory trove of a theatrical archive, Yorrick’s skull, the gravedigger’s spade, and a patch of land that Winnie stands buried up to her neck in. Meanwhile on video screens we see tape recorders spool as the subject reveals something about themselves through a moment in history. Marty Langthorne provides a hazy, dream-like quality to the lighting, a reconciliation with the theatrical past.

And there at its heart is Beau, the blank canvas at its centre. Pre-show he stands there, his eyes scanning the audience, a slight smile curled on the edge of his lips, unknowable. Yet when he begins to sync his lips to the words; Ian McKellen and Peter Sellers, Fiona Shaw, and that great voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg, there is a complete transformation. His facial muscles shift, his eyes twinkle like Gandalf, and his physicality subtly shifts. There is a lot of discussion about impressionists and the job they do, in caricature-made life. What Beau does is deeper, an artist sketching his subject and then being consumed by them.

It’s a technical achievement beyond words, Each slight stumble, and minor hesitation from the interviewee caught by the interviewer over 95 magical minutes. In a show that explores the magic of theatre, the artistry of the greats, Beau, carefully supported by director Jan Willem Van Den Bosch, has produced a show that matches those beliefs. The word genius can so easily be bandied about, but when you’re in its presence it’s hard not to believe. For 90 minutes I was caught in a dream euphoria and couldn’t leave. It’s mesmerising. A work of genius.

The Tempest: Ustinov Studio ☆☆☆☆

Originally published on WhatsOnStage

Nicholas Woodeson and Dickie Beau in The Tempest
© Hugo Glendenning

It seems a fitting tribute that in the week we lost the mighty Peter Brook, a different theatrical explorer began her reign in Bath. Under previous artistic director Laurence Boswell, the Ustinov Studio played host to a string of shows that hit big nationally and internationally. For a few hot years in the mid-2010s, it was arguably the most exciting theatre in the country. The new boss in charge, Deborah Warner, is changing up the programme. We are promised classical plays, adaptions from novels, fully-staged song recitals, dance, and at least one full opera a year. It explores what theatre can be – something you’d expect the maestro sitting in his pantheon to nod sagely at.

The Tempest is a strong opening statement. It’s theatre loaded with imagination, alive and messy, and alone that places the actor at the heart. What Warner does very quickly here is to show us what to expect of her reign. Years of creative exploration find a home in this studio theatre in cozy Bath.

Not that she manages to get to grips with all of the challenges Shakespeare’s late valediction play possesses. The opening lengthy exposition scene that lays out all the key players and their place in Prospero’s story still stretches time intermittently and the final release of Ariel feels oddly muted. What she does manage is to bring all the disparate strands together into one cohesive vision and most excitingly bring a real sense of magic to the play while also stripping it back to feel elementally theatrical.

The core creative team of designer Christof Hetzer, lighting designer Jean Kalman, sound designer and composer Mel Mercier, and video designer Torge Møller bring a European aesthetic to its look. A white sterile set that floods with golden light, which is desecrated with mud and liquid, and whose projections at one point provide a jump scare worthy of Blumhouse, it is minimalist in design and maximalist in execution. If you want to see world-class theatremakers engage in fringe theatre methods, this is the show.

Nicholas Woodeson is a mishmash of a Prospero, terrifying as the revenging sorcerer, twisting and turning his puppets, but muted in his forgiveness. He, alongside the rest of the cast, speaks the text beautifully, the metre and iambic observed and riffed, but he is not the dominant figure. Instead, it’s Dickie Beau’s Ariel and Edward Hogg’s Caliban that become the heart of Warner’s vision. Lip syncing performance artist Beau is particularly magical as Ariel, his eyes dead but calibrating his mouth and face so the sprite takes a multitude of voices though his persona remains trapped in the firm grip of his master. We first encounter Hogg’s Caliban flinging faeces at his captors, and it’s a fully committed performance capturing both the wildness of the original native and the voice of the romantic when he feels he may, at last, have some freedom. The sympathies in this production are for those who find their homes invaded and overrun by outsiders.

Tanvi Virmani makes a promising debut as Miranda, her wide-eyed joy at seeing other human life being sweetly matched by Pierro Niel-Mee as a slightly bumbling but endearing Ferdinand. Warner has assembled a veritable smorgasbord of character actors to play the various courtiers and clowns of Milan who find themselves washed ashore. In particular, Finbar Lynch’s inscrutable Antonio and Stephen Kennedy and Gary Sefton’s clownish double act are fascinating mirrors in the minimalist/maximalism framework this show possesses.

It ends with Shakespeare’s goodbye speech extolling the virtues of creating and entertaining an audience. It works almost as well as a statement of intent of what its audience can expect moving forward. The Ustinov, under Warner, may be about to land on another golden period.

2017 Year In Review

 Regional Show Of The Year

5. Beauty and the Beast- Tobacco Factory Theatres

In a year where the Disney live action version set the pace at the UK cinema box office, NIE and the Tobacco Factory’s Christmas show stripped it right back to basics but still found the great pleasures inGabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve tale. With dating etiquette for beasts, two ugly sisters that made the word ‘Daddy’ a deadly honing missile and the loveliest heroine around in Sara Lessore, this Beast won the battle of the regions Christmas shows, in fierce completion with the Egg’s Little Mermaid and all the vintage pleasures of The Wizard Of Oz at the Redgrave. Yet this Gallic infused tale won both heart and mind providing a refreshing storytelling alternative to the Disney sparkle.

4.  Junkyard- Bristol Old Vic

Who would have guessed that this play with music concerning the building of an adventure playground in 1970’s Lockleaze could be so much fun? Jeremy Herrin’s production in a co-production between BOV, Headlong, Rose Theatre Kingston and Theatre Clwyd confirmed the ever increasing reputation of theatre school graduate Erin Doherty who shone as the central point in a group of misfits, discarded by society but finally finding purpose as the adventure playground is assembled. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t flashy but Jack Thorne’s play slowly built up a community that its audience cared about with some catchy tunes from Stephen Warbeck to boot. If it lost some steam in the second half as Doherty’s character was somewhat side lined, it still left me grinning from ear to ear, a big hearted work that defined Bristol at its best.

3. Iceland- Wardrobe Theatre

The annual director’s cuts season presented by the MA Theatre Directing Students of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is always a good way of seeing the best of contemporary theatre writing in the city. Rarely has it been as accomplished as Geoffrey Brumlik’s production of his fellow Canadian writers Nicholas Billon Iceland, a tight, taut thriller that built up to a devastating climax. Three interlocking monologues delivered smartly by Bradley Banton, Verity Blyth and Sarah Livingstone explored the effect of rampant capitalism on a landscape gradually collapsing under its greed. None of the characters fell under angel or demon, all hogged that middle ground that makes up human nature. It was unexpectedly one of the highlights of my theatre going year. The school must have agreed, over the summer Brumlik became a full time member of staff there.

2. Education, Education, Education- Wardrobe Ensemble at Bristol Old Vic

If theatre companies accrue supporters like football team than my colours are nailed firmly to Bristol’s own The Wardrobe Ensemble. If their last work 1972: The Future Of Sex showed a company now fully in its stride, Educationx3 continued on its same gold standard vein. 1997 was the year Blair took control promising brighter times ahead, Spice Up Your Life dominated the air waves and Tamagotchi’s threatened to hijack lessons. A work that made me nostalgic for my own school days it saw the first ever Made In Bristol Company take to the main stage of the theatre that moulded them and demonstrated the top class artistry that led to a blue plaque raised in their honour. It will return to Bristol in 2018 as part of another nationwide tour and should provide more sell out success.

1. Othello- Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory

It was SATTF founder Andrew Hilton’s last year in charge before he took a well-deserved retirement having created work for this company since 2000, and he signed off with a highly entertaining modern take on Moliere’s Tartuffe but it was Richard Twyman’s blazing production of Othello that gave him a well-deserved retirement present. Combining razor sharp interrogation of the text, a production that made us look at Shakespeare’s work anew-Islamaphobia and all- and towering performances from among others Mark Lockyer, Kate Stephens, Nora Lopez Holden and Abraham Poopola, it was an outstanding work, criminally overlooked by the critical community come end of year. With a change of date for 2018 it was a fitting end to a decade and a half of rigorously produced spring classics that got the Tobacco Factory noticed as a national organisation in its own right.  Sublime.

 

Performances Of The Year

5. Georgia Frost- The Two Gentleman of Verona/Crave/13/The Little Mermaid Various

The graduating class of 2017 from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School were a pretty strong bunch all told but no one held the attention quite like Georgia Frost. A natural comedienne with an elastic, expressive face she also broke hearts with an intense turn in Sarah Kane’s tone poem for four voices. Her impressive work continued after she graduated, she stood out again in the Egg’s joyful and bold take on The Little Mermaid. BOVTS have produced a range of fascinating female performers in the last few years; Erin Doherty, Pearl Macky and Faye Marsay among them. I have a feeling Frost’s career trajectory will follow a similar path.

4. Audrey Brisson- La Strada Bristol Old Vic

Brisson is an old fashioned throwback, with a Louise Brooks’ bob and Jean Arthur funnies. Her diminutive frame doesn’t hold back any of her large scale talent, right now there are very few more interesting actors around. She moved on from her sparkling turn last year in the Bristol Old Vic run of The Grinning Man to provide a Chaplin-esque gait as the waif fought over by a circus strong man and unicyclist in this stage adaption of Fellini’s La Strada. There are few modern performers who would slip quite so easily into a work that harks so much back to its time and period, but Brisson was the beating heart of a musical adaptation that put Fellini’s masterpiece through the prism of director Sally Cookson’s fertile imagination and discovered fresh riches.

3. Henry Goodman- Looking at Lucian Ustinov Studio

It was a so-so year for the Ustinov and Theatre Royal Bath productions. Very little was particularly bad, but nothing really moved much beyond the middle ground either- a little staid all told. Alan Franks monologue was a case in point- a work that read like a fascinating long form profile but one that never justified its need to be turned into theatre. The reason to cough up for a ticket was Goodman, who convincingly made the painter, grandson to Sigmund, both charm personified and a monster bubbling to get out. It is a turn likely to be overlooked from most people’s end of year list, coming in a work that felt so slight but it was as precise and as honed as any work he has previously given. The Ustinov hosted some big turns from star actors this year (in work that was by and large a few rungs beneath them), there were also striking contributions from Hollywood star F Murray Abraham in The Mentor, Greg Hicks in The Open House and Niamh Cusack in the damp squid Christmas Eve.

2. Erin Doherty- Junkyard Bristol Old Vic

Already mentioned above, Doherty is destined to be a star. It was obvious from the moment she held the stage in Heresy of Love in her graduating work as part of BOVTS and we have been lucky to witness some of her early career milestones play out in the area. If she was a standout part of the ensemble of Pink Mist she was the leading player of Headlong Theatre and Bristol Old Vic’s raucous, joyful play with musicJunkyard. So powerfully did she hold the stage as dissatisfied teenager Fiz that when she left the stage for a majority of the second half the show slumped a little as a result. Since then Doherty has seen her status skyrocket. Let’s hope we get her back soon before the inevitable awards and television roles turn her into a future Dame.

1. Mark Lockyer- Othello Tobacco Factory Theatres

It was a year where a great actor returned to his best and provided the most terrifying turn of the year. His Iago, in Shakespeare at The Tobacco Factory’s Othello, was a sardonic mass of fury, as liable to choke in grief as he was ready to explode into violent action. His was a sarcastic Lieutenant, ignored for the top position and turned psycho as a result. He was both a stand-up comic and Lucifer himself. In the intimate surroundings of the Tobacco Factory it was terrifying to see the embodiment of evil in man so close up. In a night filled to the brim with great performances- Katy Stephens was riveting even in the small role of Emilia while Abraham Poopola and Nora Lopez Holden were daring and refreshingly young as the doomed lovers- Lockyer was the glue to hold it all together and delivered the year’s most memorable performance as a result. The fact he then followed this up with a riveting one man show Living With The Lights On that explored his own grapples with mental health ensured that 2017 was a sparkling one for Lockyer

 

 

The best touring and non-regional work seen this year

This was a year where the work touring in to Bristol and the work I saw in Latitude, London, the cinema and New York dazzled. This is a list of 10 (actually 13 but that would be too unlucky) shows that I fell in love with this year.

1. Dickie Beau: Re-Member Me/Hot Brown Honey (Latitude Festival)

Latitude’s joy is usually in the total immersion of culture that it gives but this year’s festival brought two of the best pieces of work I saw all year and provided a panoply of what the festival offers. Hot Brown Honey raucously took down stereotypes and blasted the roof off the theatre tent with their cabaret/party. It showed women at their most powerful, political, sexy best. Meanwhile Dickie Beau took on the legacy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a show that delved into the psyche of the Danish Prince and those actors who have tackled the role. The poses and facial tics was extraordinary, his Ian McKellen turn as memorable a moment as has been on stage this year. As quiet a work as the troupe from Australia were exuberant, it was a theatre geek’s paradise, a show you just slipped comfortably into and hoped never to leave. It was probably my show of 2017. I’m still hoping its picked up for next year and seen in Bristol, perhaps as part of Mayfest.

2. The Grinning Man- Trafalgar Studio

My top show of 2016 has to be included in my round up of best shows of 2017 as well. Cleaned up and clearer in its West End run, its melodies and discordant harmonies are even more ravishing now. Louis Maskell has improved on an already impeccable turn as the young man with a Glasgow smile and Julian Bleach is a macabre delight as a psychotic court jester. It’s a unique West End prospect, darker and grittier than the usual Shaftesbury Avenue Fair but it truly deserves to be a hit. On its third showing it knocked me out as much as its first. Bristol Old Vic has come to the heart of the establishment and scored a bull’s eye.

 

3. Tristan and Yseult – Kneehigh at Bristol Old Vic

Kneehigh were barely away from Bristol in 2017 and ensured the city was constantly being fed with theatre that dazzled senses. IfThe Tin Drum was a flawed but fascinating scale of a mountain and Flying Lovers a low-key turn, Tristan and Yseult was five star joy from first to last. Making us look at the classic tale from afresh, no other show brought such joy this year. Returning to a company’s greatest hit its always worrying if the work doesn’t live up to expectations. Yet over two and a bit hours innovation after innovation pile up until one was left with no alternative but to stand and applaud a rightly appointed modern classic. Emma Rice on form is arguably one of the greats, no one since Joan Littlewood has caught that sense of pure rigour and utter joy at the possibilities of theatre. With the creation of her new company Wise Children being based in Bristol, expect plenty more nights of joy in the years ahead.

4. People Places and Things- Headlong at Bristol Old Vic

 

Even without Denise Gough’s much heralded central performance PPT fizzed. Lisa Dwyer Hogg brought her own talent to the role of Emma, an actress checking into rehab and confronting her demons, a performance less explosive but no less sad and full of exquisite painful in a virtuoso turn by an under the radar performer. If a great performance is at the heart of the work and been much discussed in the reviews, it’s also writing of the highest order. Duncan McMillan’s play scorches, no-missed beats or clunky lines here, building to a climax and familial confrontation that left its audience breathless in its seats. Seating on stage seating, facing directly into the stunning BOV auditorium it was a treat to see writing and acting of the highest order mere inches from your face. It gave you the intimacy of a Netflix show with the scope of the best of theatre .Bunny Christies inventive designs and Jeremy Herrin’s precise direction completed a clean sweep of a work that should justly become a modern classic.

5. How To Win Against History– Wardrobe Theatre as part of Tobacco Factory

 

Seirol Davies cabaret/revue concerning the flamboyant sixth Duke of Anglesey had been an Edinburgh smash hit twice over and sparkled just as brightly as part of its UK tour on the back of those reviews. Okay it had the feel of a clever undergrad show at times, but students haven’t had the wit and droll irony in such stores since Fry and Laurie headlined Footlights. It was a work that blended high camp style and witty pastiche with big heart and ultimately probing insight. It’s a show I would have remained in my seat to gorge on again straight away. A marvel.

6. Groundhog Day- August Wilson Theatre Broadway

Polish, sheen and spectacle. Nobody does it better than Broadway. Add Tim Minchin’s witty book and Matthew Warchus clever staging and Groundhog Daywas just one caffeinated dose of pleasure. Andy Karl made sleaze and arrogance charming, his hard working turn not even hampered with a leg injury picked up on press night. It may have had a short run on 42^nd street but this is a show much better than its commercial run suggests. An Olivier for Best Musical will hopefully ensure it won’t be long until this is back in the West End. Bill Murray, the star of the original film ensured he had his own Groundhog Evening, seeing it on consecutive nights. It really wouldn’t be a bad way to get trapped.

7. War Horse- Bristol Hippodrome

Slightly streamlined for the 2017 tour it may have been, but War Horse still feels a game changer all these years later. Joey is without doubt the most iconic character of 21^st century theatre, up there with Lear and Mother Courage, his transformation from foal to stallion still enough to bring goose bumps to the back of the neck. This is the show that every theatre- both commercial and subsidised- are looking to find. One that secures legacies both financially and critically. Ten years on Joey still reigns supreme.

8. Amadeus/Angels In America/Follies (NT Live)

It may have been a fairly ropey year for the Nat but viewed from a little distance and with their big hitters playing as part of NT Live it still seemed like a pretty good year all told for this monolith of the South Bank. Amadeus with Lucian Msamatti (a belter) was just the beginning of the epic work seen their this year, the 7 ½ hours of Angels In America with Andrew Garfield and Russell Tovey especially breaking hearts and Follies hauntingly realised proved that nowhere does it better for the big classics of world theatre.

 

9. Die Flaudermaus- Welsh National Opera at Bristol Hippodrome

Strauss’ opera was a charmer, a full on romp from the first note of its overture to its resolution filled conclusion. With no musical on offer this touring year for the WNO, it felt like orchestra, chorus and principals let their hair down with this crowd pleasing operetta instead. This was opera for everyone, a night of pure music theatre that dazzled the ear along with the heart.

10. The Winters Tale- Cheek by Jowl at Bristol Old Vic

I have never seen the concluding scene bettered then in Cheek by Jowl’s ravishing version of Shakespeare’s late tragi-comedy. So much of the work was exquisite, both in performance and in design, that it made the Bohemia scenes especially jarring, a mess of a middle that fell off a cliff. Still, it couldn’t stop a work so rich from falling onto this list.