Tommy Steele’s Scrooge

Scrooge

By Leslie Bricusse

The Lowry, 13 December 2011

Tommy Steele as Scrooge

Tommy Steele delivers an immaculate performance.  Stainless, in fact.

He sings, he dances, he acts.  His sense of comic timing is well nigh perfect, raising copious laughter from children and adults alike.  When an audience enjoys a show this much, it is difficult to quibble or find fault with it.

James Head as the Ghost of Christmas Present also deserves a mention.  His ghost was a magnificent, multicoloured beast in very rude health indeed.

 The set evoked nineteenth century London, or a postcard view of it at any roads.  And the costumes – the top hats and frockcoats, wigs and waistcoats of the gentry in particular – got me thinking about how you might give Dickens’ famous story a steampunk revamp.

Imagine Scrooge as a mad scientist, not too far-fetched since his view of the world is skewered enough.  Perhaps he’s a fervent disciple of Malthus, intent on controlling the surplus population.  Usury would be one tool, naturally, and is present in the story as it stands.  But what he really needs is a robot army.  And instead of ghost and spirits, the forces of good could send around a clockwork mannequin or three to attempt to alter his point of view.  Dirigibles would need to be introduced, granted, and perhaps they could serve as a way of combating the robot army from the air.  Well, OK, it’s a work in progress.

Scrooge in its present form is perfectly fine.  A family-friendly Christmas show, it’s at The Lowry until 7 January, further details can be found here.

The Haunted Bride

The Haunted Bride

By John Goodrum

Rumpus Theatre Company

The Lowry, 19 October 2011

This is an engrossing adaptation of ‘To Be Read at Dusk’, Dickens’ classic tale.

Although best described perhaps as a paranormal romance, it also has a sci-fi element – time travel of a kind is present.  There’s a paradox at the heart of it.  How can you go back in time without altering the events that made you who you are?  And doesn’t (or shouldn’t) this impact on whether you do, in fact, go back in time?

Amanda Howard and Neil Bull play all the characters (there are five in total, I think), wholly holding the audience’s attention throughout.  All you need bring to this play is imagination, concentration and a willingness to be transported to an earlier time and place.  They’ll do the rest and you’ll soon be caught captive and rapt, whisked away, no probs.

The Haunted Bride is touring throughout the UK until November 2011, for tour dates click here and scroll down awhiles.

Charles Dickens’ Hard Times @ the Library Theatre

Hard Times
By Charles Dickens
Adapted for the stage by Charles Way
Library Theatre Company
Murrays’ Mills, Ancoats
8 June 2011

David Fleeshman as Thomas Gradgrind. Photo by Gerry Murray

A splendid adaptation of Dickens’ classic novel, in many respects a novel for our own day too.

As many will know, the novel – like this play – is concerned with the industrial heartland and the limitations of lives from which imagination, soul and charity have largely been excluded.  Naturally, with Dickens you can be assured of larger-than-life characters, convincingly rich in idiosyncrasies, and a story that packs a heavy dramatic punch and pulls at the heartstrings.  In this production, the actors exploited these advantages to the full and the performances that stood out for me were:

• David Fleeshman as Thomas Gradgrind, a politician who trusts his children’s future to a flawed philosophy; he was the tragic figure of the piece, if anyone was.
• Richard Heap as Josiah Bounderby, a blustering self-made man with an entertaining line in platitudes and an embarrassing secret.
• Roberta Kerr as Gradgrind’s wife, a comic turn in a way, who sported some unusual ailments, most likely psychosomatic in nature; yet you hung on her every word.

What is striking about the production, above all, is the intelligent and effective way in which the space of Murrays’ Mills has been used.  To explain, the basement is given over to an installation which shows the work going on in the factory, the alehouse in which the workers drink and agitate, and the workers’ home lives.  And there is even a scale model of the factory with great detail.  You can see, for example, barges at a loading bay and a canal snaking outward.

During the play itself, which is structured as a promenade piece on the upper floor, the audience were able to walk from scene to scene (from set to set and even into a circus), as the drama unfolded before their eyes.  At a rough reckoning there were about six or seven sets in use throughout the whole performance, rather more than usual, and the audience could choose how they viewed each scene.  Perception is somehow different when you can walk around and can choose how close to the actors you’d like to be, even sometimes (if inadvertently) appearing inside the scene itself.  I could invoke James Jerome Gibson here and discuss his work The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, but I’m afraid I only do that at parties.  One small word, though: it’s all about the affordances.

Hard Times, showing at Murrays’ Mills in Ancoats until 2 July, is a production that you really must see, so how can you do so when it’s pretty much sold out?  Well, a few tickets are still available, but only if purchased on the day for that evening’s performance.  For further details, click here.

And for details of performance times, click here.