The Unexpected Guest - The People's Theatre - Review

The Unexpected Guest
The People's Theatre
17th Jan 2017





Somewhere in the remote welsh countryside wreathed in fog, a man blunders into a house seeking help. Lost in the fog he has run his car into a ditch and sought out the nearest house to beg use of a telephone and possibly a bed for the night. Unfortunately for him the house he finds is  the scene of a very recent murder...

The scene is set -  a fog of dry ice hangs in the air in the auditorium, on stage a room in darkness, a figure in an invalid chair silhouetted against the dim light from French windows. Someone knocks at a door, a voice calls out and a figure appears entering tentatively shining a torch into the room and speaking to the person in the chair. When no response is forthcoming he shines the torch at the person asking if he is asleep...he gasps and scrabbles to find a light switch. the man in the chair is dead, and in the corner stands a woman holding a pistol.

And so begins The Unexpected Guest begins. Richard Warwick has been murdered. His wife confesses to the unexpected guest but instead of phoning for the police he helps her establish an alibi and comes up with a plan to blame the murder on an old enemy. We have no idea why he would do this. he has no connection to the family - he seems simply taken with the beauty of the lady of the house and opts to help her. The alibi is set, the rest of the house are roused to discover the grisly murder and the police are called. In the morning each member of the household is called to account for their whereabouts at the time of the murder. Questioned by Inspector Thomas it becomes apparent that everyone in the household knows something more than they are telling.

The audience has the advantage of knowing that the story given by Laura Warwick and Michael Starkwedder (the unexpected guest) is a complete fabrication, and little by little we discover that Laura's confession is also false (that's not really a spoiler it is clear she is covering for someone, again, the question is who?).  So who in the household is the murderer? Everyone has a motive, Richard Warwick it is revealed was a despicable and cruel man, spoilt by his life of privilege and further ruined by the accident that took away that privileged life.
The characters one by one reveal their hands, the blackmailer, the lover, the all knowing "loyal" retainer, the downtrodden and the diminished family members. Each one played beautifully, revealing just as much or as little as needed to keep the audience guessing. Red herrings and false trails abound, and Inspector Thomas methodically works his way through the evidence - you feel certain that he will eventually unearth the truth. His doggedness is complemented by the the poetic Sargent Cadwallader. Steve Hewitt and Richard Gardner are a delight throughout, playing the two policemen systematically providing the audience with information, highlighting clues, revealing motives, illuminating character and background.

Other standout performances for me were Sam Hinton as the mysterious, unexpected guest Michael Starkwedder and Callum Mawston as the ingenuous, childlike Jan Warwick, though all the performances were well played and convincing. Jess Chapman and Vanessa Aiken have produced a tense mystery which leaves the audience guessing throughout. Excellent.

The Unexpected Guest is visiting The People's Theatre until Sat 21st Jan.

Denise Sparrowhawk
Photographs courtesy of Paula Smart

One Man, Two Guvnors - People's Theatre - Review

One Man, Two Guvnors
People's Theatre
4th Oct 2016

Pay attention because this plot needs concentration!
The year is 1963, the location is Brighton. Francis Henshall has just been dumped from his skiffle band. In need of food and money he accepts a job as a minder for Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hoodlum. Crabbe is in Brighton to attend his own engagement party and collect £6K from his fiancées father (Charlie "the Duck" Clench). This is something of a surprise to the engagement party since they believed Crabbe to be dead - murdered no less, and they are caught celebrating the engagement of Clench's daughter Pauline someone else. (Well, the sausage rolls were already paid for). Pretty straight forward so far? Wait, there's more. Ever on the lookout to make an easy bob or two Henshall accepts another job with Stanley Stubbers, a well to do crook who is hiding out at the Cricketers Arms, waiting for his girlfriend to arrive with the money for them to escape to Australia. This is where it gets complicated and you need to concentrate, Henshall has to make sure his two bosses don't find out he's moonlighting so he has to keep them apart. However, Stanley Stubbers is hiding out because he is the murderer of Roscoe Crabbe. The girlfriend he is waiting for is none other than Roscoe Crabbe's sister Rachel, who is currently masquerading as her brother in order to get hold of the six grand to pay for their tickets to Australia.

This play is full to the brim with everything from pantomime slapstick, farce, one-liners, and recurring jokes that just get funnier every time we hear them. It begins sedately enough, and if not for the lost skiffle band at the very beginning, we'd be forgiven for thinking this is not a comedy after all. But then Francis Henshall arrives at the party and the tone changes. Richard Gardner as Henshall bursts onto the stage in his checked suit, a stark contrast to the dark suited, somewhat sinister gentlemen at the party. His performance is full of energy and we are swept along with him as he tries in vain to keep his head above water and his two guvnors apart.

The whole play is a joy to watch - from the slapstick humour and asides to audience it has us laughing out loud. We begin to anticipate the jokes, knowing what's coming as Henshall invents his ludicrous stories to cover his tracks and trips at every step.

He is supported by a brilliant cast, Nathan Hussain as the flamboyant would-be actor Alan, and the vacuous Pauline played so well by Emma Jane Richards, Melanie Dagg as the savvy bookkeeper Dolly to name but a few.

Scene changes are cleverly covered by great performances by the skiffle band, with guest appearances by various cast members.

First time director David Downing has done a marvellous job with this play. It moves at a dizzying pace and the timing is spot on.

One Man, Two Guvnors plays till Sat 8th Oct. Come see it - you will chortle.

Denise Sparrowhawk

Grimm Tales - Peoples Theatre - Review

Grimm Tales
People's Theatre
13th Sept 2016

Grimm Tales is, as you might expect, a selection of stories from the Brothers Grimm. Fairy tales - tales of wicked witches, enchanted princes, evil stepmothers, of strange creatures, and lessons to be learned.

But these are not the sanitised stories we might have heard today. These short plays hark back to the original stories from the Brothers Grimm, so they are darker and more sinister, and in the case of "The Mouse, The Bird and The Sausage" quite brutal! The wicked characters are truly wicked, selfish and cruel. Even the good characters are not all wholly good, some are weak and easily led, though some do have true innocence and purity and it is these who triumph.

Each story has a narrator who also takes up one or two character roles within tale. Each one has a distinct "narrator's voice" so it is easy to tell when they move from character to narrator. And the stories are told through a mix of narration and dramatic enactment.

There is no scenery. The only prop on stage is a plain wood block that serves as seat, bed, headstone. Scenes are created by the actors who stand to represent trees in the forest, or donne a costume to symbolise a change of scene. Very few props are used - some sticks for firewood, a stool, a handful of dust or pebbles, a mask and a sack of straw...Actors and audience must use their skill and imagination to envision the scenes.

Performed in the round with the audience on stage, it is a very intimate setting. The audience are close to the action and the narrator speaks directly to them - inviting them into the story as any storyteller would.

There is clever use of costumes and puppets to denote the different characters - especially where the narrator is doubling up as one or more characters. The fact that each tale has a different narrator's voice also works very well. And there are some grood performances from the young cast - notably Phoebe De'Ath as Gretel, Henry Freyne, as Hansel and Dummling, and Rheanne Boothroyd as the steadfast youngest daughter in the Lady and the Lion. The senior members Ian Willis, Eileen Davidson, Andrew De'Ath, and Karen Elliot do sterling work keeping the tales and the action moving, playing narrators and various wives, husbands witches and charming princes!

This is a charming play by the People's Youth Theatre. It covers 8 tales from the Brothers Grimm in just over an hour and so each one is quite a compact telling. While it may not have quite the finesse of previous productions, it is an imaginative, clever and carefully thought out solution to the challenge posed by the current building works for producing a studio play without a studio.

Grimm Tales runs until Sat 17th Sept and is great viewing as the nights begin to draw in.

Denise Sparrowhawk

Be My Baby - Review - People's Theatre

Be My Baby
People's Theatre
19th April 2016

Be My Baby! - the innocent wish of teenage girls everywhere. We all dreamt of finding Mr Right and being swept off our feet. For some, back in the sixties, in a particularly dour Yorkshire town, being swept off their feet had unexpected consequences.  It made no difference whether they were in a steady relationship and planning marriage, the victim of unwanted advances, or taken advantage of by married men, the outcome was the same. Unmarried and pregnant meant concealment, confinement, and adoption. Unmarried mothers were not able to provide a respectable home for a child. They were not able to work and bring up their child. They were bad girls.

Be My Baby by Amanda Whittington is the story of four such girls. Confined to the hospital until their babies are born, they learn together the painful truth about pregnancy, birth and adoption. It's hard to imagine in these days of teenage mothers and one parent families, that such draconian attitudes were once accepted, that young women could have so little choice, so little independence. It is a tragic situation portrayed with amazing sensitivity, humour and emotion by the writer Amanda Whittington, and the cast at People's Theatre. 

Poignantly punctuated with music from the decade  - The Ronettes, The Dixie Chicks, The Shangrilas - Mary, Queenie, Dolores, and Norma work in the laundry and wait out their time, dreaming of their guys and their babies, and planning a future at complete odds with the one society will allow them.
 

This is a surprisingly gentle and humorous play about a harsh and unforgiving situation. Relationships are forged and unforged, bonds made and broken, between friends and lovers, and between a mother and a daughter.
 

The direction and perfomance are deceptively understated, making this an incredibly touching piece of theatre. Impressive performances by the cast ensure that the audience are in full sympathy with the characters - unlike the 1960s society that would not acknowledge them. there may have been a lot of love around, but for these girls it was barely free.
 

Be My Baby plays until Sat 23rd April and is well worth seeing, especially if you think we haven't moved on much as a society...

Denise Sparrowhawk

The Pitmen Painters -Review- People's Theatre

The Pitmen Painters
The People's Theatre 
13 June 2011

The first time that Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters was in our region was the professional production at Live Theatre along Newcastle's Quayside.
I viewed that performance with open mouthed awe. It was well before my days as a hobbyist theatre reviewer but even then I would have gave it a magnificent 5*'s.
Tonight -and for the rest of the SOLD OUT week- it is the turn of the amateurs. Hall (of Billy Elliot fame) has given special permission for the first staging of this North East tale by an amdram team.
The Pitmen Painters is the story and fine social commentary on the harsh North East working platform. Seen through the eyes of five Ashington pitmen; struggling with the many hours underground for a pittance of a wage. They need more out of their existence of work-home-work, so the onsite Union devise up a deflection tactic (absolutely nothing to do with their work) of creating an art appreciation society. What starts off as looking at unfamiliar and alien pieces set by their tutor Robert Lyon, turns into competition between the miners at who can produce the best art between them all with a humourous-but subtle-edge, but remain totally focused as a group. What follows is a wonderfully funny tale of 'whoever you are you can be whatever you want to be'.
Given that The People's Theatre is an amateur theatre, you would think that this production would be very much lower in expectations to the more professional offerings of the original in 2007. You would be very very wrong to think along these lines. From the staging to the lighting, the audio visual delights to the wonderful acting of the local players, The Pitmen Painters is a smash, it was very very close to the Max Roberts directed play all those years ago. The Pitmen's has of course gone on to score rave reviews in Broadway on the other side of the pond. George Brown played by Harry Gilbert took off the very much nose-in-his-union-rule-book character with so much realism that I wanted to join up there and then. The humour of the down to earth workmen surrounding the styles of their painting and practice was so upbeat that even the sometimes glum Marxist Harry Wilson played by Mike Smith cracked up a few times. Jimmy Floyd played by Steven Robertson kept the humour flowing with some fantastic scenes. The youthful essence of the play rested on the shoulders of the 'Young Lad' played by Steven Wallace, his performance reminded me of Pike out of BBC's 'Dads Army' he even had a long stripey scarf to boot. Lyon's commanding part played by Matthew Cummins kept the balance between roll on the floor laughter and serious educational desires. Star painter and keen to 'get it' Oliver Kilbourn played by Pete McAndrew has a major role alongside Helen Sutherland played by the fab Val Russell, his talent was immediately picked up by art collector Sutherland, who wanted him to give up his 9 to 5 to fund his ambitions. The interaction between these two was fantastic to see, cumulating in terrific scenes that the audience grasped. Grace Robson made up the numbers by playing a life art model Susan Parks, her feisty character certainly was eye opening.
Chris Heckels directing has done a brilliant job with fantastic actors to turn this play into the hit that it is. It is really exciting that full houses will be enjoying, laughing and contemplating what the Pitmen had to go through to paint and show off their art.
Superb production from Derek Nellist (stage design), Lighting (Richard Flood) and Tom Saunders (projections) gave this a very crisp feel, buzzing with energy.
I cant give this 5 out of 5 as a rating as a few lines were talked over by other characters, and have to say that at the back of the theatre it was a little hard to hear audibly. Altogether though this was a superb performance that I have been used to at People's. Nothing at all amateur about this staging, well done

Runs until 18 June 

Michael Hunter

Guys and Dolls today

Really looking forward to it.
A bit of crime on Tyneside,it has never been known. Ha ha

Hoping to meet up with the cast and the production staff,after the curtain has closed

Hope to get a review on here,as soon as I can