Theatre 2016: Review Thirty-Four

The Wipers Times, New Wolsley Theatre, Ipswich. November 2016

Getting to and from Ipswich proved nearly as time consuming and awkward as getting to London but the journey was totally worth it.

This new World War One play from satirists Hislop and Newman could so easily have been over played and the jokes too contemporary, or overly sentimental but the duo managed to pull off the near impossible - a comedy about World War One that was balanced.

The original Wipers Times was a newspaper written and published by soldiers serving in the Trenches and was devised as an antidote to the inaccuracies and propaganda stories published in the mainstream media - and it is this where it would have been so easy to pepper the play with modern references.

The play tells the story of the men behind the paper as well as bringing to life some of the sketches from the paper in a clever way using Vaudeville, projections and a lot of very quick costume changes. Some of the jokes were terrible but on looking at my facsimile copy of the Wipers Times I see that they were all lifted from the original. The few comments about media inaccuracies also came straight from the original!

I enjoyed this greatly but my one criticism was that I found the set / scenery to be too fussy. The scene changes were well done and incorporated more original material from the newspapers but there were just too many of them and too much furniture moved each time for my taste.

What struck me the most was how much Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth owed to the papers - the humour in both of these, seen as edgy and challenging, came straight from the Wipers Times. There were moment of poignancy and sadness, and the gas attack was breath taking (pun intended) and I found this a balanced and enjoyable play. It isn't in the same league as Journey's End but I do hope that this gets a transfer or longer run somewhere as I think that the play is much better than the previous television documentary.

Theatre 2015: Review Thirty-Six

Handbagged, Theatre Royal, Norwich. November 2015.

This was a last minute booking for me and a convenient matinee at the theatre opposite where I work meant I could take a gamble on this.  I wasn't sure that I needed to see another play about the relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister - after all it wasn't that long since I'd seen the NT Live broadcast of The Audience.

The idea is the same in many ways, no one actually knows what went on when the Queen and Margaret Thatcher but Buffini uses real speeches and her imagination to make a believable play.

In some ways the story telling is quite conventional - we start the day after Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979 and finish when she resigned in 1990. That is where convention stops.  The play is very hard to explain without making it sound incomprehensible, pretentious and like a long Spitting Image episode and it really is none of those things.

Essentially we have the Queen and Margaret Thatcher in older age looking back on the story, while another two actresses play the Queen and Margaret Thatcher during the 11 years of her rule.  There are also two male characters who play a further 27 parts between them to move the plot along.  The older ladies interject and interact with their younger selves, and older Queen repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience...  see it sounds complicated and dreadful!

It wasn't at all, it was genuinely funny and at times shocking and moving.  I was a young teenager in 1990 when Thatcher resigned but I could remember 90% of the historical facts that were covered in the play, but those that I didn't recognise were explained in such a way that if it all became a bit 'Basil Exposition' then this was also referenced by the cast. Even in a big theatre like Norwich the nuance and expression came through and at times I did think I was watching the real people not actors - impressive seeing as there were two of them on stage at all times.

My discomfort with this play didn't come from the style or the acting but rather from the audience.  The writing of the play is non-judgemental and as I said earlier a lot of the actual lines come from real speeches just altered slightly to fit the stage representations.  Mrs Thatcher was a decisive figure in politics and very far to the right of where my own political belief is, the audience I shared this play with seemed to be, how shall we say..., more appreciative of her stance than I was.  Lines that I found shocking received laughter and applause and on the occasions when characters made comments more in line with my views the audience were stony silent or making their displeasure known.  It made for an interesting afternoon I suppose!

After the performance three of the cast held a q&a session and their insights in to the political mixes of the audiences in various locations was great fun to hear, as were there anecdotes about accidentally staying in role away from the stage!

I wasn't expecting much from my afternoon and I was pleasantly surprised that a play so similar to another recent hit could add to the story and engage and amuse me so thoroughly.  I may avoid weekday matinees for political plays in Norwich however!

Theatre 2014: Review Four

Eat, Pray Laugh! Barry Humphries' Farewell Tour. Norwich Theatre Royal, February 2014.

A cold and damp February night was just the time to see this farewell tour event, although during the first half I wasn't entirely sure it was a huge mistake.

Before the interval we have an extended scene with Les Patterson, Cultural Attache, who is trying to reinvent himself as a celebrity chef and won't let a touch of Montezuma's Revenge stop him.  This skit bordered on being just too gross for me and I was alarmed that some in the audience didn't see Les's pronouncements as satire. We then met Gerald the vicar with an ASBO and leg tag who has a penchant for young men.  Lastly there was Sandy Stone a deceased elderly man looking back on the death of his daughter and the way his widow had been conned by a relative and placed in a home not suitable for looking after her.  Can you tell from my tone I didn't find this funny?

However after the interval it all changed - we started with a film expose of Dame Edna's life and then the lady herself appeared on an elephant.

Comedy that relies on picking on the audience shouldn't be funny but this was, and I was very glad to be sitting high up at the back even if that did draw some ribbing from the Dame herself.  The jokes were very place and time specific but I ended up with a stitch long before the end.

As a nice touch at the very end Barry Humphries appeared as himself and gave a little speech - and despite my misgivings from the first hour by the end I was on my feet waving a metaphorical gladdie with the rest of the audience!