Leon, Stein and Lehar Opera North Grand Theatre, Leeds - at The Lowry 15th and 17th November 29 September 2018 to 17 November 2018 Opera North’s production of The Merry Widow, by Léhar, comes to The Lowry on 15th and 17th November – the former the 40th anniversary, to the day, of the company’s inauguration. It’s a revival of Giles Havergal’s brilliant production of the operetta, first seen eight years ago, and I went to Leeds to see it on the opening night of the new run. As then, it’s a guaranteed good night out. The story’s perhaps not quite so topical as it was just after the credit crunch – based on the idea that a country could have spent so much bailing out its own bankers that it faces disaster if their money ever goes abroad – but they do say another financial crisis is just around the corner, so maybe history will repeat itself. It obviously does from time to time, if the story of the imaginary grand-dukedom of ‘Pontevedro’ is anything to go by. The Merry Widow of the title is the young Hannah Glawari, who fell out with her true sweetheart, Danilo, and married money on the rebound. So much of it, in fact, that when her banker husband dies and she inherits, the fatherland is desperate she should find another Pontevedrian to share her loot with. But she’s living it up in Paris, and there is any number of suitors there … So the whole show is set in Paris, and by amazing chance good old Danilo is there, too, frittering his life away with the good time girls of Maxim’s nightclub. The one thing he’s determined not to do is to marry Hannah just because it’s his patriotic duty. Of course it all ends happily. But Opera North, this time, are reminding us of the show’s dark side. It was premiered in 1905, in what we now know was the slide into a horrific world war, and spread around the world in the next few years, and, when you listen for them, the lines are full of references to attacks, retreats and battles as if love and war were all the same. And the vainglorious posturing of minor aristocracy and empty elevation of ‘patriotism’ are very obviously part of the scenario. Hitler, incidentally, loved it. Léhar, not Wagner, was his real favourite composer. At the same time, Giles Havergal has not forgotten the real message of The Merry Widow, if there is one – that a damaged relationship can be reborn, once both money and patriotism are left out of the equation. Sentimental? Perhaps, but that’s what the story says, and not many popular love stories are about redemption. The production, with Stuart Hopps’ ingeniously lively but simple choreography, is full of life, movement, colour and humour. It may not have had quite the pizazz on opening night in Leeds that I remember from last time around, but by the time it hits The Lowry no doubt all of that will be back again. Katie Bird will be singing Hannah – she takes the role after Máire Flavin completes the Leeds run – and Quirijn de Lang is a suave but sympathetic Danilo. Amy Freston – who else? – returns to play the high-kicking, all-dancing, chorus-girl-turned-ambassador’s-wife, Valencienne. And the real chorus girls of Opera North have a high old time as Maxim’s ladies of the night. #OperaNorth #MerryWidow #tour2018

Co-creators Clare Duffy, Abbi Greenland, Helen Goalen, Jon Spooner and Becky Wilkie HOME and Unlimited Theatre, with RashDash HOME Manchester 28 September 2018 to 13 October 2018 Having your life hacked by your mobile is of course part of being human these days. But how far can it go? How far will it go? While so many are already practically glued to them, in the world envisaged here those phones will be glued inside them. Having a handheld is so yesterday. And it goes on from there. Implant Me, Upload Me, Upgrade Me. But then what’s human and what’s not? Here there’s a serial killer who refuses to have his brain tinkered with, preferring to remain as he is until executed; over there is a lover who doesn’t want to have her brain integrated into a machine because she will lose her body and all that goes with it. As the crib sheet being proffered on the way out explains it: “The technology of the future is being developed, in part, by very intelligent and/or very well-funded people who believe that death is just a technical glitch and immortality is genuinely possible. The human being is being upgraded. This is terrifying and exciting and it’s coming – whether we like it or not.” This unusual and thought-provoking mix of words, music, philosophy, quantum physics and captions is an adjunct to the Manchester Science Festival (Oct 18-28), created by Manchester-based RashDash and Unlimited Theatre from Leeds, the result of a great deal of research. Staged in HOME’s studio theatre, it’s performed on a large raised tray-like platform, covered in dark sand, and surrounded by hefty vertical plastic blinds that are tugged to and fro by the cast. Away to one side, one-person band Becky Wilkie, in all-blue, including face, performs her own rock score. Extremely slick captions, an integral part of the whole mix, flash up all over the place, including right next to the actors as they speak the words, very clever. And almost always pretty engrossing, until it gets to the last 15 minutes (of 90) or so, when the meta-speculation about the future of the human race morphs into a sequence where the cast strip to their underwear and start marching about on and playing around in that sand. I didn’t understand what was going on here and it was boring anyway. But apart from that, an interesting experience. #bodies #RashDash #ClareDuffy

Giacoso, Illica, Puccini Opera North Leeds Grand - and The Lowry 14th and 16th November 16 September 2018 to 16 November 2018 Opera North’s new production on this visit is of Puccini’s Tosca – an opera they last performed 10 years ago. It comes to The Lowry on 14th and 16th November, and I went to size it up last week in Leeds. Their last version was not a pretty sight. The director was making comparisons with the Italy of Berlusconi and Forza Italia, and the nasty, lustful police chief Baron Scarpia was as revolting as they get (which, let’s face it, he is meant to be). This time we’re in the present day again, and, if you look at the programme book, it’s Donald Trump we’re supposed to see as his parallel, as director Edward Dick presents the story. You can understand where that’s coming from: the heroine, Floria Tosca, is an opera singer in love with a painter (Mario Cavaradossi) whose sympathy for an escaped political prisoner puts him on the wrong side of the powers that be – in particular of Scarpia, who tortures Cavaradossi physically and Tosca mentally until she cracks. She yields to his lustful will until she thinks she’s secured her lover’s freedom, then stabs the villain to death after he says there’ll be nothing but a mock execution for Cavaradossi the next morning. Perhaps I shouldn’t give away what happens next … So it’s about a man whose lust for women is as big as his lust for power, both cloaked in a pose of religious piety. They didn’t give Scarpia a blond wig with a comb-over (alternatively, if they’d foreseen now-current events, they might have made him up to look like Brett Cavanaugh, and we could all think of other cases in point). He’s actually a villain right out of Victorian melodrama – and the play Tosca is based on was a Victorian melodrama to begin with anyway. But it’s also about a brave and passionate woman: the operatic role for a great dramatic soprano, in many ways. Here Opera North, and Mr Dick, have struck gold this time. Giselle Allen is an amazing interpreter of the role. She acts it like a real opera singer, not flouncing around as a ‘diva’ but an extrovert and a performer, still insecure beneath it; so her jealousy is a weakness and part of her personality, not an exaggeration. I liked the way she treats Scarpia at the start of the second Act, beginning with cautious politeness though she’s repulsed by him, too. Rafael Rojas is appealing and in excellent tenor voice as Cavaradossi. He doesn’t have to do much but act the noble hero and sing like one too, and he does precisely that. Scarpia, though, is a challenge: too nasty and you have a pantomime villain, too realistic and we feel short-changed. Robert Hayward, I think, was looking to make him a man we might really encounter some time, not a monster. This rather goes against the crashing, doom-laden chords that accompany his first appearance, and I’m sure Puccini meant that to be the incarnation of a bogey-man – it isn’t quite that here. Later you wonder whether he’s motivated by power, lust or maybe even sexual impotence … interesting but possibly a bit too psycho-analytical. There’s a nice touch when, in the middle of Tosca’s great solo aria, Vissi d’arte, he starts filming her passionate outburst on his phone. The piece does stop the entire action, quite unrealistically, after all – whether people decide to applaud after it or not (and it’s a good sign if they don’t – we’re not here for a recital of Maria Callas’s greatest hits). The conductor is Antony Hermus, a young Dutch musician who I think is quite a find (he won’t be on the podium on 14th November, but he will on the 16th). He has an excellent rapport with Opera North’s orchestra and also some strikingly fresh ways of approaching the phrasing and sound qualities of what can be a hackneyed-sounding score. If Opera North are still looking for their next music director, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s high up on the score-sheet. #ON #Tosca

William Shakespeare HOME and Lyric Hammersmith HOME, Manchester 14 September 2018 to 29 September 2018 When presented with a mash-up of Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth you don’t really expect to come out humming the sets. But award-winning designer Basia Binkowska, together with lighting designer Jushua Drualus Pharo, provide some of the excitement the production otherwise lacks. Othello is played on a fore stage, in front of a vast steel-panelled screen, which rises just before the interval – as the first play merges into the second – to reveal a huge, tiled, black box of a space, with white tiled floor, a solitary tree and a rocking chair. Above both sets is a metal mesh gantry, almost in the roof of the theatre. With plenty of smoke, lighting effects that chop-change-blackout the action in the current popular style, it’s all very impressive. I’m not however as enthusiastic about director Jude Christian’s concept overall. She has had the idea of putting the women from both plays more to the fore, not by re-writing – apparently everything here was written by Shakespeare – but by cutting some of the men’s lines to change the emphasis. Much depends on how well you know the texts. I’m far more familiar with Macbeth than Othello, and it took me around 15 minutes to focus on what the Moor was up to, but then it proved the more satisfactory part of the show. As Othello concludes, Kirsten Foster’s Desdemona, Melissa Johns’ Emelia and Kezrena James’ Bianca don camouflage jackets as they morph into the Three Witches of Macbeth. It’s effective, but that really is the only obvious link between the two plays. Lodovico and Lennox (who he?) are played by a rather stately Grace Cookey-Gam, but much of the rest is done pretty straight by the cast of nine. And Macbeth, the play, I’m afraid lacks the thing above all that Macbeth doesn’t lack, and that’s drama. Both plays are in modern dress and the cast are aiming for casual delivery of their lines, which is fine but not when it robs them of clarity and conviction. I liked Samuel Collings as Iago and Macduff; Kirsten Foster as Desdemona and Sandy Grierson as Cassio/Macbeth. I saw it at a schools matinee and it seemed to go down OK: it’s certainly rather different to the schools matinees I used to be marched across town to at the Library Theatre many years ago. I just hope the kids had a strong grasp of the text beforehand. #othellomacbeth #mashup #Shakespeare

Alan Ayckbourn Stephen Joseph Theatre Company The Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough 06 September 2018 to 06 October 2018 Astonishingly it’s number 82, and I have to confess to having missed much of Ayckbourn's more recent work – the master’s continuing output virtually passes the north west by (unlike in the glory days of the Manchester Library Theatre) – so it is a great nostalgic pleasure to find he is still very much on top of his game, writing ’em as well as directing ’em. Better Off Dead concerns one Algy Waterbridge, an ageing, out-of-fashion thriller writer whose novels about DCI Tommy Middlebrass of the North Yorkshire Constabulary – a somewhat stereotyped misfit who practises policing in his own inimitable manner – haven’t been adapted for TV in quite some time. Very much in the now-familiar tradition of odd couple cops, he is teamed with DS Gemma Price, a young female sergeant from darn sarf who finds the ways of the North, and Middlebrass in particular, just a little strange. Grumpy Algy is in his summer house, writing novel number 33, while the fictional Tommy and his sidekick circle around the garden outside, figments of Algy’s imagination whom he clearly prefers to his real life associates and family. He harangues his unfortunate PA, his wife is suffering from dementia, and an interview with a  careless journalist – the funniest extended riff in the play – results in a very unfortunate mix-up. To complicate matters further, his publisher arrives by helicopter (good sound effect, but no Miss Saigon on-stage landing) for a little chat about his future prospects. Immaculately directed on a set of a circular central cutaway pagoda surrounded by well-trodden grass (long-time designer collaborator Michael Holt), lit convincingly (by long-time collaborator Jason Taylor) it has a cast of long-time collaborator actors. Christopher Godwin as Algy leads the charge in totally convincing manner, while Russell Dixon prowls and plods around the periphery as the characterful detective. Leigh Symonds’ turn as the confused journo is a hoot, and Eileen Battye is charmingly confused as wife Jessica. There are undoubtedly echoes of the author’s own life in there somewhere, but best not to puzzle over those for too long, better to just sit back and laugh. It does veer in a more serious direction towards the conclusion, as Jessica’s dementia becomes more central and the plotting overall becomes a little more dense, taking rather too long to play out. But that’s about the only negative thought I’ve got about an otherwise highly enjoyable experience. #Ayckbourn #SJT #BetterOffDead

Giacosa & Illica, Puccini Clonter Opera Clonter Opera Theatre 20 July 2018 to 28 July 2018 Clonter Opera does an amazing job each year putting on a complete production of a mainstream repertoire opera, in its own theatre, with young singers who are at the threshold of their professional careers. Its track record bespeaks its skill at talent spotting and the value of its away-from-the-hothouse environment in building skills for future star performers. This year’s La Boheme is no exception to its form. In many ways it’s one of the best productions it has done. The set strikes you as soon as you sit down – Grace Venning’s design of a garret for the starving artistic young men of the title may be largely a collection of junk, but it’s striking and evocative. And there’s a concept behind the junk, too. Director Harry Fehr presents the story as Rodolfo, the main protagonist, returning to the attic in which those great formative experiences of his youth took place. So he enters the stage before the music starts, looking around and remembering. Everything seems to happen within his memories, and at the end the other characters slip away backwards through the doorways, like wraiths at the rising of the sun. I could quibble about minor incongruities (Rodolfo has to be middle-aged throughout the story, as he can’t rejuvenate instantly to fit the imagined flip back in time; the attic is full of chairs which enable it to convert into the Café Momus for the middle acts, but you wonder at first whether, if the lads were so short of fuel for the winter, they didn’t just burn them), but it’s a cinematic way of telling the story, and you have to suspend disbelief as you see it on stage. The stark and bare third and fourth acts work brilliantly: in fact the last was one of the best acted endings to La Boheme I’ve ever seen. Movement and placings are well worked out, and at the same time we see young people facing, all unprepared, the reality of death and its ending of their dreams. There was perhaps a little nervousness in Act One which detracted from a sense of young love’s first joys as the richly famous music was sung (and very well sung), and in a setting with no extras and limited space there’s not much scope for the Christmassy merriment of Act Two, but no doubt later performances will allow for compensation here. But with Clonter it’s always the voices that are the thing, and here they have struck gold again. Estonian soprano Mirjam Mesak (Mimì) is surely a singing actress with a great future, and she effortlessly shone out over the biggest vocal ensembles and accompanimental textures. Russian Alexey Gusev (Marcello) is a natural actor as well as a very good baritone, and Lebanon-born Bechara Moufarrej (Rodolfo) has a refined, mature and flexible tenor. Connor Baiano (Colline) and Jolyon Loy (Schaunard) will have much to give in future, too, and Pedro Ometto (Benoit and Alcindoro) has a comic gift in the making. And Erika Baikoff gave us a Musetta with attitude, not so much a hardened cynic as a youngster blending aggression and naivety (very convincingly), and singing beautifully. The Clonter Sinfonia, led by Liz Rossi, played the reduced orchestration with fire and affection, and Clive Timms conducted with his accustomed sure hand and dramatic skill. He has been music director for Clonter for the last several years and its achievements under his care have been exceptional. #Clonter #Puccini

Saint-Georges & Bayard and Donizetti, adapted by Jeff Clarke Opera della Luna Buxton Opera House 09 July 2018 to 15 July 2018 The Buxton Festival has often been at its best when it has balanced high drama with comedy in its operatic offerings. This year, with two heavyweight pieces as its in-house productions, it has wisely turned to Jeff Clarke and his Opera della Luna to make up the fun quotient. They do it splendidly. Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment is a classic light opera, but needs singers of real quality to do it justice. The famous tenor aria with the nine high Cs (‘Ah! mes amis’) is in it, for one thing, and there are some superb soprano showpieces, too, and a clever trio. But for Opera della Luna adaptation is the name of the game. Clarke has not only got John Longstaff to reduce the score – the chorus is all-male here, and three of the six of them double in other roles – but he’s re-written the book completely. ‘The Regiment’ is no longer a section of the French army operating in the rural Tyrols, but a desert-based Harley-riding biker gang in California, USA, and Sulpice is their president. The Marquise is now Los Angeles based social climber Marsha Berkenfield (she lives in West Hollywood, of course), and the Duchess of Crakentorp is heiress Dulcie Crackenthorpe. Marie, the daughter of the title, is still a lovely girl brought up by the good-hearted guys of The Regiment, and it’s all about her falling for Tonio – now an Hispanic immigrant, rather than a peasant – and then turning out, finally, to be the long unacknowledged daughter of Marsha. It’s all great fun and very cleverly matches the essence of the original. The dialogue is all-American (and they’ve had dialect coach Matthew Bloxham to help them get it right), and the set (Graham Wynne) looks like an Old El Paso chili chips packet, plus cactuses. This is a second incarnation for Opera della Luna’s interpretation of the piece, as they did it four years ago for the Iford Festival, but I fancy (from the stills of that version) that this is a fuller staging. And it is a hugely entertaining gem of a show. What makes it most satisfying is the quality of the singing. Jesús Álvarez has got the top Cs – he doesn’t belt them out like a circus act, rather weaves them into the aria’s melody line, but they’re all there. And his Marie is Elin Pritchard, both a great comedy actress and a wonderful soprano, who both Opera North’s and Buxton Festival’s audiences know well. Her finale aria to the first act (‘Yes, we must part’) was lovely, and she made a delight of the ‘singing lesson’ in act two (which Clarke transforms to include some neat bowdlerizations beginning ‘I dreamt I dwelt …’ and ‘My tiny hand is …’). The roles of Sulpice (Charles Johnston) and Marsha (Katharine Taylor-Jones) are character studies above all, but very finely done (and sung) here, and Robert Gildon made Hortensius the butler into a comedy cameo in his own right. Toby Purser conducts the company, and a great little band, with skill. #Donizetti #Festival #DaughteroftheRegiment

Cammerano and Verdi Buxton International Festival Buxton Opera House 07 July 2018 to 20 July 2018 Alzira completes the trilogy of early Verdi operas performed at the Buxton Festival in recent years under Elijah Moshinsky’s direction. In Giovanna D’Arco in 2015, and last year Macbetto (the original 1847 version), he showed his awareness of human and relationship tensions in Verdi’s work and brought them clearly to the fore. He also made use of video projection and sound effects to evoke the scenarios. With Russell Craig as designer and Stanley Orwin-Fraser as video designer again, we have impressive results this year, too. The story (based on Voltaire) is about Incas rebelling against their Spanish conquerors several centuries ago. Moshinsky’s brought it up to date and made it show guerilla fighters harassing a present-day (or near present-day) Peruvian government. The heroine (title role) is in love with the peasants’ leader, Zamoro, but is captured by government forces and mercilessly used by their leader Gusmano: he forces her to agree to marry him in order to save the life of Zamoro. In the end Gusmano gets his just deserts, and before he dies he has a (rather unconvincing) change of heart and forgives his enemies. Moshinsky and his team see themes of nature and innocence versus power and cruelty in this, and the projections show the beauty of the jungle as a contrast to the stifled atmosphere of government. They also set a few scenes by using the small side-title screens and remind us of the human cost of political violence with what looks like authentic news footage. The opera is Verdi’s shortest and least often performed: this is the first fully staged version in the UK. It does not have the depth of much other Verdi, but has a concision of construction and kaleidoscopic variety of mood almost akin to fast-cut movie direction, and these mean it has much to offer still. The reason it doesn’t often get put on is probably to do with Cammarano’s plot. But there are some thundering good tunes (with several marches and a drinking song), and with retiring artistic director Stephen Barlow conducting again, plus a strong cast and well-resourced company (a bigger chorus than Buxton’s often managed historically), the musical results are first-class. It’s stirring stuff. Kate Ladner (Alzira) has strength and stamina in her voice and expresses tenderness and courage rapidly alternating. Jung Soo Yun cuts the right dash as Zamoro and is a very fine tenor. James Cleverton makes Gusmano as believable as probably anyone could, while singing with distinction, while Graeme Danby brings maturity and experience to Gusmano’s father, Alvaro. #Verdi #BuxtonFestival #revival

Cathy Marston choreographer, Philip Feeney composer Northern Ballet The Lowry 06 June 2018 to 09 June 2018 Northern Ballet visited Brontë-land some years ago with David Nixon’s Wuthering Heights (with great character studies but, inevitably, a rather prolix narrative). Jane Eyre offers much more opportunity to shape a drama – it’s been brought to the stage both as play and musical in recent experience – and Cathy Marston’s full-length ballet is a fascinating and in some ways unique creation. She’s a choreographer of great gifts, including the ability to tell a story vividly. This fits perfectly to Northern Ballet’s tradition and expertise, and the style is clearly classical in spirit but with freedom to borrow from other inspirations. The work began two years ago as one for smaller touring theatres, with a small orchestra and modest staging requirements. As so often, less can be more in creative terms, and the work well deserves its new incarnation for bigger theatres, with renewed settings and fuller sounds from the pit. It’s just been seen at Sadler’s Wells on a spring tour that began in March. What struck me most about it was the fit of the score to the story and the staging. Northern Ballet have always fielded a live orchestra and often commissioned new composition for their work, with the resultant extra spark of creativity that you never get when a company dances to a mere recording of a well-known score. Here composer Philip Feeney has used music by Fanny Mendelssohn, her brother and Schubert – in imaginative arrangements – alongside his own to create a composite that matches the 19th century Romanticism of the story incredibly well. There’s the same sense of pent-up passion within the constraints of politeness and convention that was the world of the Brontë sisters’ creations, occasionally bursting through in mystery, horror and shock. It creates an atmosphere that’s very unusual, as the music is mostly 19th century but not in 19th century dance forms, and the choreography much freer than those would permit. There are some virtuosic and expressive pas de deux, too, especially at the close of Act 1 and after the ball in Act 2 (this one to superb original Feeney music, if I’m not mistaken). And Marston makes a virtual trio feature for Jane, Mrs Fairfax and Adele (once our heroine has arrived at Thornfield) which we see more than once, enlivened by the coltish liveliness of the young girl’s steps (nicely done by Antointette Brooks-Daw on Press night). I always feel that the story of Jane Eyre doesn’t really get going until she meets the fateful Mr R, but Marston feels it needs a prologue even to the childhood and schooling episodes (though they are sadly typical of the fact that Victorian orphans often endured lives that were nasty, brutish and short). She provides an ensemble of what she calls Jane’s ‘D-men’ – ie her de-mons? – who surround her at the start and pop up later now and then. They are admittedly a device to give some work to the male members of the company in a story that has few key male characters, and I felt something of weakness in its interpretation. But in other respects the conceptualization works very well. I particularly liked the way, to express Jane’s intelligence as she verbally spars with that of Rochester, Cathy Marston has her literally trip him up – and he her, now and again, in a recurring visual motif. And another interpretation of what in the book are mysterious unexplained noises from Bertha in the attic (impossible to reproduce literally when the music is live and important) is achieved by a dancer in silhouette – a brilliant idea. Northern Ballet put some of their younger soloists in the main roles in last night’s performance, and Abigail Prudames showed herself a gifted and expressive interpreter in the title role. Mlindi Kulashe also had strong presence as Mr Rochester, and the piece as a whole showed a gifted ensemble of dancers working most effectively together. #NBT #JaneEyre #CathyMarston

Alan Ayckbourn Oldham Coliseum 20 April 2018 to 05 May 2018 So, an Ayckbourn then: quite a rarity these days. Time was when the Scarborough maestro was the second most performed playwright in the world after Shakespeare. Not any more and regarded now by a younger generation of theatregoers as old hat, which is a pity because while I definitely don’t want to return to season after season packed with his work, disinterring the occasional gem is, I think, a good idea. Relatively Speaking isn’t just any old Ayckbourn, it’s his first big success, from 1965, the one that went on from the Yorkshire seaside to the West End and established his reputation. And at the helm here isn’t just any old director either, as Robin Herford is a long time close associate of the author and is steeped in the traditions. In a London bedsit we meet Ginny (Lianne Harvey) and Greg (Matt Connor). It’s early in the morning, Greg is still in bed while Ginny is getting ready to catch a train out of town to see her parents. When Greg answers the phone, the caller hangs up. And what about those bunches of flowers all over the place and the rather large slippers under the bed, not to mention the boxes of chocolates? Greg is getting suspicious and when Ginny leaves for her parents’ house he decides to follow her. However, the address he’s sussed out isn’t that of her parents but of her married boss Philip (Crispin Letts) with whom Ginny has been having an affair she now intends ending. To totally complicate matters and set up the intricate confusions that follow, Greg manages to get to Philip’s house before Ginny and meets Philip’s wife Susan (Jo Mousley), thinking the pair of them are Ginny’s parents. Still with me? Well, confusion here is very much the name of Ayckbourn’s game… Although it’s lighter in tone than many of the later plays there’s plenty of middle-class marital angst amongst the comedy, and lots of barbs hurled around by the older pair. And the cast is pretty much spot on throughout, with pretty impeccable timing. But despite the intricate, often quite brilliant plotting, the piece overall is showing its age. Herford quite rightly keeps it in the sixties – appropriate posters on the walls of the bedsit, mini skirt and white boots for Ginny – but it hasn’t anymore the shock of the new re its sexual outlook and, above all, it could do with some pruning. The first scene in the bedsit was always the slightly draggy opener you had to get through before the laughs in the countryside but it now does seem too laboured and I didn’t actually laugh out loud until half way through the second scene, when Letts’ astonished husband, having learned that his wife is a multiple philanderer, suddenly sees her in a completely different light. Impressive country house exterior from Michael Holt and overall, it's a pleasant change to enjoy an evening at the theatre that isn’t trying too hard to put across an Important Message. #Ayckbourn #Relatively #OldhamColiseum

Terence Rattigan Birmingham Repertory Theatre The Lowry 09 April 2018 to 14 April 2018 Of all the Rattigan plays that get periodically revived it’s The Winslow Boy that is revived most frequently and invariably makes the most impact. The reason is pretty obvious – it’s such a darn good yarn, based on real events, that despite its Edwardian setting still chimes with modern outlooks on celebrity and scandal. It’s well constructed, has characters you care about and offers plum parts for the cast. For any director worth his or her salt it ought to be a piece of cake. The current revival is a handsomely-mounted production from Birmingham Rep, featuring Timothy Watson – the infamous, villainous, despicable Rob Titchner of The Archers’ most edge-of-seat recent storyline – as the QC charged with defending young naval cadet Ronnie Winslow (Misha Butler, making an impressive stage debut) when he is accused of stealing a five shilling postal order. The fight to clear 14-year-old Ronnie’s name means his family has to make sacrifice after sacrifice, with Ronnie's father leading the charge, passionately believing in his son’s innocence and consequently battling against injustice, single-mindedly pressing onwards while losing wealth and health in the process. Aden Gillett, as the father gives a quietly compelling performance, though I did find his increasing physical infirmity just a little exaggerated. Watson, ramrod stiff back as well as upper lip and manner, has the best scene of them all, as he agrees to take on the case in what is still one of the very best first act closers. Tessa Peake-Jones (Raquel in Only Fools and Horses) makes it powerfully clear that her only real concern is her son, while Dorothea Myer-Bennett offers a detailed performance as Ronnie’s sister, a pioneering suffragette of wit and intelligence. There’s a large, very large, drawing room set of turquoise walls that occasionally become translucent to expose a world outside of the intense claustrophobia of the family drama. I’ve seen it loads of time before and what struck me particularly this time was that Rattigan managed to write a court room drama that never actually takes place in a court room, quite a clever trick until you start to notice it, which I did this time, at which point it seems a bit of a cheat. So, director Rachel Kavanaugh, didn’t distract me enough from the shortcomings but otherwise does find the ingredients she has been provided with easy enough to bake into a pretty satisfactory whole. #Rattigan #courtroom #Winslow

Book and lyrics Steven Sater, music Duncan Sheik, based on the play by Frank Wedekind Hope Mill Theatre 31 March 2018 to 03 May 2018 Specialists in musicals rarely, or never, seen this side of the Atlantic, Hope Mill now offer a relatively well-known show that had a respectable, rave-received, run on Broadway in 2006 and scooped eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Book and Score. It was hailed as a landmark show. But despite achieving cult status before it even opened – and winning an Olivier for Best Musical – it has never taken off over here. The West End production in 2009 received rave reviews, some of the most favourable ever, yet it closed after just 10 weeks. Can Hope Mill break the British jinx…..? Well, other, far lesser, Hope Mill productions have moved on for limited runs on the London fringe. With this I think they should be aiming higher. It is unquestionably, far and away, their best production to date in every way – content-wise and production-wise Hope Mill moves into a different league with this. They are now quite clearly Manchester's second most important producing house, after the Royal Exchange (HOME, it seems, having virtually given up on producing its own shows). Spring Awakening the musical, is an ambitious, occasionally inspired, rock/pop show, often with some quite melancholy songs and soaring melodies, quite closely based on the original – still pretty edgy – 1891 Wedekind play, a dark and sombre look at a group of German youngsters as they travel from childhood into adulthood. It deals quite frankly with homosexuality, rape (though here it seems the sex is consensual), masturbation, sadomasochism, suicide and abortion. The play has often been censored and was banned in New York and London. So that’s a promising start. Like all musicals, there are plenty of parts you can pull apart if you are of a mind to, but such is the conviction of this evening I’m certainly not doing so. Wendla (Nikita Johal) is beginning to question her sexuality, but her mother won’t discuss it and won’t even tell her where babies come from. She feels the stirrings of womanhood but doesn’t know how to deal with it. Moritz (Jabez Sykes), an anxious misfit, is also dealing with his sexuality, very much feeling the physical urges of adulthood, while Melchior (Darragh Cowley) is the brilliant student who knows about sex and is willing to share his knowledge with his male friends. He’s also the heartthrob of his village, and innocent, sweet Wendla is one of the girls attracted to him. Her naiveté and the stupidity of the adults – too embarrassed or prudish to discuss their offsprings’ urges – leads the children down an onrushing tide of hormones that cause confusion and desperation as they lose their innocence. While the musical tends to simplify the original – for example, having all the adult roles played by just two actors tips it rather too firmly into standard generation-gap territory, and fitting in 20 songs reduces Wedekind’s text and loses some intricate psychology – it’s still a show with unusual depth for a musical. It’s a young cast, with several professional debuts, including Cowley, who holds everything together with what looks like relaxed aplomb. Sykes is the other stand-out. No one, of course, looks the teenager they’re supposed to be, but it isn’t difficult to suspend disbelief. It’s a terrific ensemble, vibrant, pulsing with energy and raising the roof in the big Totally Fucked number. Excellent atmospheric set of a dusty old schoolhouse that wraps around the audience (Gabriella Slade); astonishingly good, cutting-edge lighting (Nic Farman). Director Luke Sheppard really does know what he’s about, encouraging some excellent performances, pulling the whole thing together superbly and even finding the time for details in depth. It's only let down, I’m afraid, by the quality of the sound. With a cast of 13 and band of eight and in this restricted space, it can’t be easy to ensure audiences hear every word of the lyrics, but unfortunately too many are inaudible, and it matters. I’m sure they know and will be fine tuning, so don’t let this put you off. It’s all round a pretty brilliant must-see. #Wedekind #brilliant #Hope_Mill

Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton Old Vic The Lowry 26 March 2018 to 31 March 2018 Twenty years ago Art became something of a phenomenon, winning awards around the world, running for year after year in the West End, touring for virtually ever, and featuring - during its various incarnations - such stellar actors as Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Alan Alda, Rufus Sewell and so on. Back now, with Nigel Havers, Denis Lawson and Stephen Tompkinson, giving performances that were probably never bettered by any of their predecessors, Art is here for new generations to enjoy and argue over. We catch up with three middle-aged friends just after wealthy, divorced, dermatologist Serge (Havers) has spent £200,000 on a painting. Not any old canvas, but one that is featureless white as snow. Marc (Lawson), an engineer, practical and rational, has opinions on the canvas that are unprintable and Yvan (Tompkinson), a not entirely successful salesman, about to get married rather late in life, and full of problems, are both worried that Serge may have gone just slightly batty. As the script unfolds, Yvan is seen walking a tightrope between the other two when each tries to draw him to their side in a series of discussions and encounters. It’s all presented in an interval-less 80 or so minutes on a tastefully pared-back contemporary space of soaring off-white walls, with snappy blackouts between scenes (a current favourite with directors and something Art needs credit for pioneering) and is very cleverly written, very witty and often laugh-out-loud funny. Is it a commentary on contemporary art? Is it about relationships? Is it about middle class foibles? Yes, it is. But it’s also about an interesting specific 25-year friendship being tested to destruction and also, very much not least, about three consummate performers grabbing a golden opportunity to present a masterclass in bling acting. Enjoy. #Art #Yasmina_Reza #painting

Adelheid Wette and Engelbert Humperdinck Royal Northern College of Music RNCM Theatre 17 March 2018 to 25 March 2018 The RNCM offers an imaginative take on Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘fairytale opera’: it’s an all-too-realistic episode in the life of two Manchester children circa 1893 (the date of the original). Director Stephen Medcalf and designer Yannis Thavoris have however kept the storyline remarkably close to their model. The parents are poor and father’s a drunk: they throw their children out to fend for themselves because they have nothing to give them. The difference is that the kids go wandering in an urban nightscape of gas lamps (instead of a forest), and they find a magical sweets and pastry shop (rather than a gingerbread house), whose proprietor (aka the Witch) has a back room which is a half-as-big-again version of their own home. Danger lurks, of course, but they outwit the wicked Witch, pushing her into her own oven, and thus provide loads of gingerbread for a host of previously enchanted children to eat. It’s a dream, I guess – beginning after they sing their glorious little prayer before they slumber – and the lesson from a sampler on the wall of their home, that ‘When in need or dark despair, God will always hear your prayer’, finally proves a true one. Medcalf and Thavoris provide many artful touches, such as the gaslamp lighters with glimmering ends to their poles like glow-worms, who later turn into guardian angels (as we see from woolly wings sewn on their backs), and the Dew Fairy as a morning milkman from ‘Dew Farm Dairy’.  The magnified home inside the Witch’s lair is a superb idea and brilliantly achieved. I wouldn’t have realised it was meant to be specifically the Manchester of 1893 we were seeing if I hadn’t read the press release, but that didn’t matter. I liked it a lot, and the cast I heard sing – with Fiona Finsbury as Gretel and Rebecca Barry as Hansel – offered two of the outstanding voices from last December’s Cendrillon in this piece’s principal roles – only this time acting children very convincingly and doing some great movement and dance steps (choreographer is Bethan Rhys Wiliam). The others were top-notch, too. The opera is sung in a recent English translation, and enough of the lines come over to make any visual assistance unnecessary. Anthony Kraus conducts the RNCM Opera Orchestra in a reduced but still sumptuous version of the score, and the whole thing is a delight. #RNCM #Humperdinck #Manchester