York Press - A Man for All Seasons Review

Review: A Man For All Seasons, York Theatre Royal, until June 28

By Charles Hutchinson

A MAN For All Seasons is a play for all seasons.

 

First staged in the white heat of political turmoil in 1960, and set in Tudor times, Robert Bolt’s durable drama resonates as fiercely as ever as he mulls over integrity, the abuse of power and that increasingly outmoded commodity, personal responsibility.

In our era of slippery-eel politics, where the late Robin Cook’s principled resignation was such a rarity, the clash of pragmatism versus moral conscience and state versus individual is writ large in the rise of Henry VIII’s spin doctor, Thomas Cromwell, and the fall of his Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, scholar, lawyer, philosopher, devout family man, and politician of unbending principle. From the play’s start, More foretells the trouble brewing from Cromwell’s new brand of political expediency.

Theatre Royal audiences brought up on David Leonard as the pantomime villain - despite myriad lead roles out of the panto season - will see him taking on the complexities of More with gravitas and not a little humour in each 75-minute half of Paul Shelley’s clear and precise, witty and wise production.

Less is More for Leonard in his role as the “King’s good servant, but God’s first”. The Donald Sinden vowels of winter discontent make way for still beautiful diction, as weighty and considered in tone as in intelligence. He moves with composure and dignity, and only once does his comic timing fall back on his familiar panto delivery, and why not: Bolt’s More has a withering wit.

Nigel Hook’s ascetic, deep set, with its central stairwell, two levels, stone floors, flint backdrop and clusters of poles, is the heavy bones.

The flesh, the nourishment, lies in Bolt’s words, at once contemporary yet steeped in history too, and after the expositions of the first half, the discourse crackles, especially when Mark Frost’s ruthless Cromwell is doing the dirty work for the self-serving King (Damien Matthews).

Penelope Beaumont’s Alice More and Jessica Manley’s Margaret More, contribute potent support, while Paul Trussell’s geezer of a Common Man is a jack of all trades: audience warm-up act, scenery mover, notebook-carrying reporter and ever-changing player, whose journey concludes with the executioner’s hood upon his reluctant head.

Tim Daish’s Rich, meanwhile, is the political character of our times, forever compromising, with no moral compass, happy to lie and sell himself to climb the greasy pole.

Box office: 01904 623568.

What did you think of A Man for All Seasons?

Tell us what you thought of York Theatre Royal’s production of Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons…

The Metro - Five Questions for Donald Freed

Five questions for…Donald Freed

 

York Theatre Royal is staging the world premiere of Patient No.1, written by acclaimed American political playwright Donald Freed. Set in 2009, it places George W Bush in a psychiatric unit and questions his and the audience’s role in the war on terror.

 

Did you try to get Patient No.1 produced in America?

 

I knew straight away it would be too politically sensitive. It’s in the vein of other work I’ve written that had to come to England before it could be staged in the States.Does portraying Bush as a psychiatric patient make audiences feel sympathy for him? When I wrote [1984 film] Secret Honour, someone was angry with me because he thought I’d made him feel sympathy for Richard Nixon. What that man felt was pity, not sympathy. I want people to see that Nixon and Bush are only human, and that what their opponents hate are the ideas and power for which these men are the servomechanism.

 

Do you think Bush is used as a scapegoat?

 

Once you accept him as human, your political stance is no longer based on your loathing of a figurehead. People are happy to laugh at leaders, but they’re not prepared to do anything about them. It’s as though cracking a joke negates real political responsibility.

 

Will the impending election make any difference?

 

I think both Clinton and Obama will be important, if small, cogs in the wheels of change. Unfortunately,

the geopolitics that rule the world are grounded in such horrific fantasies that there can be no quick and easy solution.

 

Can theatre bring about change?

 

If a play is seriously done, you can open up a space where people can think about it. Antonin Artaud put it perfectly: ‘We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theatre has been created to teach us that first of all.’ 

The Big Issue - Article

Over a long and distinguished career, Chicago born writer Donald Freed has become one of the most astute political commentators of our times, variously as a journalist, novelist, scriptwriter and playwright. He’s been the recipient of a whole host of awards and, for the past two years, he’s been a guest on these shores.

 

“I had a small grant to look for a place to teach so I approached the University of Leeds,” Freed says. “I was appointed as an artist in residence at the workshop theatre there, and that’s when I met Damian Cruden, who’s the artistic director at York Theatre Royal. He was interested in working together. He’s got tremendous talent and generosity and vision, and it’s a great theatre. You could go around the world and not have a better experience than this has been. And so I made these very deep and dynamic relationships at York Theatre Royal, and the culmination of it is this.” What Freed’s referring to is his latest play, Patient No 1, which makes its world premiere at the Theatre Royal next month. In the piece, set in the very near future, a certain George W Bush is admitted to an isolated psychiatric clinic and begins to unravel under a course of intensive therapy. It’s been widely described as a satire, but as the author, Freed fights shy of pigeonholing the play. “These labels – satire, parody, lampoon, cartoon, cabaret, political theatre – they’re all critical labels. I suppose you would call this a tragi-farce. But then again, what is a tragifarce? The situation we’re in is tragic and farcical: you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Surely it’s a challenge for any sane artist to put himself in the mind of Bush. “At first blush it would seem that these are mortal enemies politically,” agrees Freed. “But think of the great examples: think of Macbeth, Iago, the Greek tragedies. It’s all beyond good and evil. If you’re a critic then you can simply pick and choose the vices and virtues and add them up to get any sum you like. But if you’re a serious creative writer, what choice have you but to see the point of view of the character?” Freed’s play, then, uses theatre to examine the ultimate legacy of our present-day leaders. “Bush and Blair  never tire of saying that history will judge them, but history is not supposed to be the judge in a democracy. If you conduct yourself so that history is going to judge you rather than your contemporaries, it means that no one is left to judge you except the artist, except the playwright, and except the theatre. So this play is meant to demystify the cartoon version of George Bush and to show him in all his terror and pity.”

 

With the Bush era coming to an end and the American elections looming, does Freed believe they offer much hope for real political change? “You could draw a pessimistic conclusion,” he concurs. “On the other hand, even the smallest difference can have enormous impact around the world when you’re a superpower. It’s a corner of the canvas, it’s not the centre ring, but it is of tremendous importance internationally. And yet if you put all your eggs in the basket of elections you have a great problem, because the repetition of magical words like ‘democracy’ can lull you into some sort of hypnotic state. Both the US and the UK are now what you may term ‘war on terror’ democracies. There are nations dealing with tortures and secrecy at a level that means that they could be as dangerous or as transient as the so-called democracy Greece was, or the Republic of Rome.”

 

During the 1970s Freed worked for the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee, and as a journalist he wrote extensively on such highly charged subjects as Nixon, Watergate, the Black Panthers and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Now, at the age of 75, his twoyear British sojourn is about to draw to a close, and he’s set to return to the United States to teach creative writing at the University of Southern California. He’s uniquely placed to comment on the UK’s changing political landscape. “As a visitor over several decades, I do see a difference, and I’m quite struck by it,” he says. ”The Labour Party has been so warped, it seems to me, by power and by vainglorious visions of neo-colonial messianism. Everybody can sense that something’s wrong. One moment it’s banking, another moment it’s something else: there are all these signs.” However, Freed does express his strong approval for this very publication. “I’m a great follower of The Big Issue,” he says. “I first became aware of it in talking about it with Harold Pinter. It’s an honour!”

Day 2 of Fight Club

Day 2 of Fight Club: Slightly less in numbers we arrived a fortnight later to see Raph smiling at the door. This time we meant business starting to put together the first par tof the main duel. So there was me (Percy) Chauvelin our resepctive understudies….oh and Marguerite (Toni Feetenby) made an appearance….women with swords…WHAT I hear you cry. I say in jest only, ‘cos as it turns out even after warm up Toni was looking slightly more on the ball than us men…what can I say it was Sunday morning. We reminded ourselves of previous moves we had learnt (muscle memory kicked in) and added in at least a further five or six moves totalling over ten. The secret to the fight being combination and dramatisation. The day ended with phases one to eight of the duel completed….brilliant…although unfortunately only a third maybe less of the overall scene. Marguerite has her own phase down as a print and will help complete the fight in our next session. It sounds so simple, but we have 20 run throughs to do before Raph sees us next to gain accuracy and consistency and finish the job. Will we make it, will we remember it all……will my arm fall off and all my unused muscles cease functioning????!!!!! find out soon in Day 3 of Fight Club.

Day 1 of Fight Club

Day 1 of Fight Club: Sunday morning 9.30am and I did not expect to heading to rehearsals but off I went in my comfortable clothing with a packed lunch in tow to meet Chauvelin (Richard Bainbridge) and the Bounders and…Raph. Raph being the trainined instructor leading our ‘fight club’ session and to be honest, I though he’d be bigger (but what that man can’t do with a sword……)

Anyway, we began the session with the old favourites, stage punches, hair pulls, ear pulls, upper-cuts and strangulations….believe me its harder than it sounds and certainly than it looks…..to create the effect of impact/reaction when the majority of the time this is actually happening in reverse from the actors perspective???!!!! Confused…so was I….the last stage combat session I attended was about 13 years ago. But it all came flooding back to me????!!!!

Handy as all these moves were, this is the French Revolution and bending someone’s ear is not the name of the game………duelling and in this case sword fighting is what we were building up to! So packed lunches demolished and swords laid across the front of the hall we were all full of 12 year old glee at the thought of wielding a real sword…only to find that the start of the afternoon session was position and footwork…WHAT no sword…this was gonna be harder than I thought??!!!

As the afternoon progressed the arms and inparticularly the wrists (no jokes!!!) began to ache, only to find Raph’s sword weighed a lot less than ours???? He justified it with some technical reasoning but I wasn’t convinced ha ha ha (only messing Raph) But we mastered it…..well nearly….we had at least five moves that convinced us, if no one else, that we were on our way to becoming fine swordsmen….or at least attempt to  look something like that

BBC Review

BBC Website Review

Three men in a boat

 By Janet Cass

As a fan of Jerome K Jerome’s novel ‘Three Men in a Boat’, Janet took her seat at York Theatre Royal for Riding Lights’ adaptation of the book. Hopefully she won’t be disappointed…

Riding Lights Theatre Company are based in York and the play was adapted from the book by Riding Lights Artistic Director, Paul Burbridge who also directs.

The open set and pianist already on stage playing as we took our seats, set the music hall theme that was to run through the production.

This musical adaptation was much to my taste, funny, and in parts slapstick and occasionally pensive, but on the whole very uplifting.

 

The three main characters, of Jerome, Harris and George played by John Sackville, Jonathon Race and Drew Mulligan, captured the mood of late Victorian ‘toffs’ so well, as indeed did the rest of this talented group, eight in all. Although at times the quick changes and costumes gave the appearance of a much larger cast.

 

The singing and dancing were well executed, I heard every word (something I can’t usually admit to), there are no weak links in this ensemble. The comic timing, particularly of the three main characters was excellent.

Sean Cavanagh’s set was simple, but very effective. The boat is cleverly manoeuvred round the stage by the ‘three men’ and the illusion of the boat drifting along the river was given by large wooden ‘rafts’ being pushed along the stage behind them - very clever.

 

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, this is a tale of three lazy impoverished young men who decide to take two weeks holiday in a boat on the Thames. We follow it from the planning to the end of the journey, interspersed with flashbacks and anecdotes from their past, all staged so beautifully.

In particular the train journey with the cheese, although with little to suggest an actual train, the clever staging and direction left one in no doubt that that’s where they were. As with the scene in the Hampton Court Maze, the stage direction is to be applauded.

 

I have not enjoyed an evening at the theatre so much for a long time, this is an evening of real pleasure and I certainly was not alone in feeling this, as the applause from the audience proved, resulting in numerous curtain calls.

 

I would urge you to pay this excellent show a visit.

An interview with Philip Meeks - Writer

Hi Philip

 

Hi

 

So, why don’t you tell us a little about your new play Twinkle, Little Star, why should people go see it?

 

It’s about a man who’s life has taken several unfortunate turns for the worse. He’s become obsolete but because he’s a survivor he refuses to give in to this fact and he’s decided to fight back.  He’s a man kicking seventy, he’s gay and as one of the last great pantomime dames he’s had an ineteresting life.  Although the play contains lots of theatrical bravado and fruity anecdotes this isn’t what it’s about. Harold’s fears and isolation are things that I think terrify us all deep down.  The moment when it all goes wrong!    In its Nottingham run and tour we found it appealed to a huge cross section of people. From young theatre goers to the elderly - and none of them seemed remotely shocked by Harold’s dabblings in public toilets in the fifties.  We did have a family turn up in Wakefield expecting a pantomime but even they seemed quite happy at the end.  There was a six year old with them however - and it’s really not a play for children - I’d expect there’d be a few awkward questions on the way home in the car. The main reason to see it of course is the production - which I couldn’t be happier with, and Kenneth Alan Taylor’s staggering performance.

 

Sounds really exciting. I was lucky enough to see the play in Nottingham and it really is a very dark story, how did you come up with the idea for the play?

 

I was In Newcatsle on the day they were turning on the Christmas lights. I saw an advert for John Inman playing Twankey with some gurning loon off Big Brother. I know panto’s always adapted to include different forms of pupular culture - but I couldn’t think of anything less appropriate than this. So I started thinking what John Inman thought of the situation and by the time the lights were turned on I had the basic framework of the story.

 

Enough, for the moment about the play, tell us a little about yourself, how did you become a playwright?

 

I started quite late I suppose - I think I always wanted to be a writer but didn’t have it in me. I began teaching then worked in the arts and as a television publicist. When I arrived at YTV I had never imagined soaps for example were written. I think I thought they just ‘happened’. It’s really dim when I think back.Anyway one day the penny dropped and I decided to do it. Now I’ve met many people before or since who want to write but don’t actually put finger to keyboard.  I set myself two hours a day after work to begin with. I was very disciplined. Twinkle was the first thing I wrote…then I got an agent…and suddenly I had a new career. I gave myself five years to do it and di it in two and a half….not that it ever gets any easier.

 

And finally, what are your plans for the future, any more masterpieces in the pipeline?

 

Lots of ideas all mulling around. I’m not very disciplined about deciding which ones to concentrate on!

 

Philip Meeks,  thank you very much… 

Our House - Review

WHAT’S ON STAGE 

Our House (tour)
Venue: 
Where: 
Date Reviewed: 11th February 2008
WOS Rating: 
Reader Reviews: View and add to our user reviews

On its first production in 2001, John Godber’s Our House was presented in two separate spaces, one of them a purpose-built auditorium containing a full-size replica of part of a council house and its garden. Clearly Hull Truck’s touring version could have no such luxuries: Pip Leckenby’s set, while supremely functional, looks flimsy in the Victorian opulence of Wakefield’s Theatre Royal, though any designer planning a tour of 20 venues ranging from Frank Matcham auditoria to theatres in the round has my sympathy.

 

However, the naturalism that’s essential to the play seems somewhat diluted. The dreadful neighbours who make life unbearable are limited in scope and reduced to conventional yobbish stereotypes who amuse more than appal. The sense of process in moving out an entire lifetime is reduced to a pleasant young removal man occasionally carrying out a box with suitable grimaces and groans.

 

The plot is simple, but encompasses in summary a full 45 years of life. May, recently widowed, is moving out of her house in Yorkshire to live in Spain. In the present, all that happens is that she talks to her writer son, Jack, his wife and the removal man, the confrontations with her neighbours rumble on and eventually she departs. The essence of the play lies in the snapshots of her life from moving there in 1958 onwards.

 

Often referred to as Godber’s most autobiographical play, Our Housebenefits in this respect from the gentle sympathy with which May and Ted, based on his parents, are drawn. To his credit Godber resists any temptation to make the son (whose situation reflects his own) any kind of a hero. As played by Matthew Booth, Jack is well-intentioned enough, but weak, self-centred and not terribly interesting. The focus is firmly on the parents, with Jacqueline Naylor and Dicken Ashworth straightforwardly affecting and often amusing, though Naylor is too obviously many years younger than her character.

 

Godber’s production is typically brisk, with seamless joins between past and present, and the play is entertaining and sometimes moving, if held back by some caricature performances in supporting roles. My reservations, I should make clear, were not shared by the Wakefield audience which responded with constant laughter (in all the right places and one or two wrong ones) and a standing ovation. Could this be due in part to Godber’s canny placing of local references? It’s interesting to speculate on the reactions of Winchester or Eastbourne audiences later in the tour!

- Ron Simpson (reviewed at the Theatre Royal, Wakefield) 

Our House - Review

 BBC WEBSITE

 Theatre and Dance

Our House: ‘A powerful performance’

‘Real life, real people’

By Pattie Ryan and Shirley Andrews

Wakefield’s very own John Godber has been treading home turf directing Hull Truck’s production of his play ‘Our House’ at Wakefield Theatre Royal. It’s all about ‘real life with real people’ say our reviewers Pattie and Shirley…

We arrived at the theatre in Wakefield which was full to the brim with theatre-goers of various ages within the tiny foyer and, taking our seats, we realised it was almost a full house.

The story begins with May – a widow, played by Jacqueline Naylor - as she strongly instructs the removal man. Following the death of her husband, May is moving on to a new life in Spain. Throughout the performance she relives mixed memories of the past 45 years in the house - both happy and sad.

John Godber

Godber captures a series of events in family life showing a couple in their council house. Set in the ‘North’ it portrays a very traditional family existence with a housewife and her husband bringing in the bacon from working down the pit. In the ‘memory’ scenes there is the token noisy neighbour who just pops in constantly and there is a sense of community, whereas the present day scenes demonstrate how community spirit and consideration for your neighbours is sadly lost.

The son’s timeline follows him growing up, getting married, having a child and his marriage break-up. It’s realistic and demonstrates how children whatever their age affect their parents. The family arguments, dealing with illnesses and neighbours who like somewhat questionable music demonstrate realism in family life past and present. Godber is very clever in his intertwining portrayal of past and present life within the house. 

The play is full of mixed emotions, particularly humour, and the audience is constantly amused - especially some ladies behind our seats! The humour is very similar to The Royle Family TV series: northern and sometimes a bit sarcastic. There’s some mild swearing in places but the acting makes it seem more aggressive and at one moment you recoil at the bare-faced rudeness of the noisy neighbour. There are moments of sadness that reflect the ups and downs of all our lives. If I were to find one small criticism I would say that the Yorkshire dialect was not quite right.

“A fine show of real life with real people that most could relate too. A good night out.”

Pattie Ryan and Shirley Andrews on ‘Our House’

The set, May’s living room and that of her present-day neighbour, is simple but effective. There are also fab examples of vintage clothing and it was pleasing to see the attendance of a sign language person for the deaf.

There’s a six character cast who all give a powerful performance and really emulate their acting skills. The son, Jack, played by Matthew Booth (who previously played Paul Marsden in Emmerdale) is very nice eye candy!

A fine show of real life with real people that most could relate too. A good night out.