Madcap
Performing Arts Centre
Music and
Drama Community Arts Project
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Reviews |
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By Matthew
Taylor Sat Apr 19 I must admit, having read the synopsis of “Playhouse Creatures” (an all-female exploration of five characters in the theatrical world of Restoration London) I’d been a bit worried it was going to be… well, you know… shrill. Luckily I was in for a treat! It was no such thing – April De Angelis’ play is both funny and interesting, so much so that I barely even noticed how long it went on for! Even I who profess to love the stage often tire around the 90 minute mark – must be something to do with football. But this kept me gripped all the way to the end.
Regular readers will know already that I rate Pepper’s Ghost very highly in the local theatre stakes. They’ve won three Monkey Kettle Awards over the last four years (Best Theatre Company 2004 and 2006 and Best Play for “Happy Days” in 2006 too, if you’re counting!) – so I’d say they are definitely my favourite local group that don’t have me in. ;-)
And this was typically Pepper’s Ghostian fare – professionally produced, extremely well lit (if we did awards for lighting I’m sure Jase would win it every year!) and well acted across the board. Alexandra Robinson played the most prominent role (Nell Gwyn) with buxom aplomb, down-to-earth like Martine McCutcheon at the court of King Charles II. The scene where - panicking on stage for the first time - she has a brainstorm and breaks into a cheerful jig which slowly grows in confidence was superb! Not easy to pull off, but it worked really well.
Fiona Smith’s Mrs Marshall was tightly-wound, occasionally bursting into exquisite viciousness. Rosemary Hill brilliantly cast as the eccentric Mrs Betterton, wildly pronouncing her theories on acting. And Ghost staples Natasha Ellis and Sue Whyte were both excellent as ever, Sue having plenty of fun with the speak-as-I-find Doll Common (“Can you imagine me humping a wardrobe?”). Natasha always reminds me of some kind of forties or fifties B&W movie actress, even when she’s reduced to wretched poverty in Stuart England. There's a look of her.
In the First Act, I felt that the audience weren’t picking up on most of the well-scripted archness of the comedy (“Never underestimate the power of the open mouth - one may go long way in the theatre with an open mouth”), and as a result I was left chuckling to myself in occasional slightly awkward silences. But certain very funny sections started to slowly pull them in: for example Mrs Betterton teaching Nell how to act using various clock-face alignments (“Heavenly abandonment at midday. Death at a quarter to three”).
Which was just as well, because one of the play’s strengths was the swing in the Second Act from comedy into some pretty bleak waters. You’re not going to see too many plays which contain live abortions on stage. Alright, perhaps at MADCAP you might, but in general you know what I mean. The whole sequence where Mrs Farley is “rid” of her unwanted burden on a table in the backstage area was horrific and compelling. The tension and the silence. You don’t get too many moments like that in local theatre.
So then: a play that Says Something about Women In Theatre without whacking you over the head with 70s pamphlet rhetoric. A fizzy script. Genuinely engaging performances. A swordfight, even!! What more could you want?
I’ll let you know next time they have a show on so you can come with me, and see that I’m not just making this stuff up! If you’re into Theatre and live in Milton Keynes, you’ve really got to be there. And they can quote me on that on a poster and everything. If they want to. ;-)
Evening Of Diverse Entertainment EODE - Sat Oct 27 By Matthew Taylor I can’t believe it’s been four years since the last Evening Of Diverse Entertainment at MADCAP. Christ, what a cultural wasteland we must have been living in since then! Luckily… they’re back! Oh yes! BACK!!! I first came across the Evenings Of Diverse Entertainment in 2001, when Tony & Carolyn got in touch with me and asked if we’d like to come and do some poetry for them. As they were also offering the chance to sell magazines at a table in the bar, I jumped at the chance! This led to us attending regularly and performing poems, showing comedy films, etc. and not too long afterwards I started being a semi-regular compere for the EODEs. Which wasn’t something I imagined I’d be any good at, but was actually okay. If you’ve never been to an Evening Of Diverse Entertainment, they can be described quite simply. They take place in the Evenings. The quality and genre of the performances is indeed Diverse. But they are always Entertaining. Also, if you attended either the 2nd or 3rd Monkey Kettle nights at MADCAP in recent times, you’ll have a good inkling of the EODEs because we ripped them off so comprehensively! The slapdash mixture of music, drama, comedy, poetry and (add random wild card factor here) always leads to a smashing night of grass-roots level Cultcha in Bohemian surroundings. But in about 2003, having occurred roughly every two or three months up till then, for a variety of reasons the EODEs stopped. Until now. And dropping in to perform this Saturday, we realised just exactly how much we’d missed them! As we’d also promised to get along to Rachel’s birthday drinks up at First Base, we were only able to attend the first half of the night in Wolverton, but in that half alone there were four acoustic acts, an urban dance crew, an incredibly talented beatbox artist and best of all – Philip from MADCAP dressed incredibly convincingly as a voodoo witch doctor barking scary words over a muffled backing track. Some of the night balanced on the knife edge between brilliant and appalling, but that’s the beauty. Like I say, the Diversity bit of the title accounts for quality as well as genre!
Martin and I did a Vodka Boy set rich in wryness, but the biggest hit of the night (well – the half night we were there) was Simon’s ace new poetry triptych about hating Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay. Tony told us the next day that one bloke had said “I just kept hoping he’d shut up… because I was laughing so much it hurt!” – a great advert to all those there for the Monkey Kettle Kapow in a few weeks!
Going back to the Arts Meeting I had on Tuesday, this is what I’m talking about. This is our kind of thing, and hopefully always will be – the vaguely subversive off-radar Arts night. They’re always well-attended, but well-attended by emo kids, acid casualties and freakish nerds. Our kind of crowd, basically. So welcome home, Evenings Of Diverse Entertainment. Long may you reign. And a massive big-up to Tony & Carolyn who devote their lives to MADCAP and the things that go on there.
At First Base, we attempted to play pool in a group of about twelve, but it just got confusing. I think I ended up playing for both sides! And won with neither… story of my life! ;-) Also, talking of playing for both sides, I missed out on a trip to Pink Punters, where Simon apparently met a load of transvestites and had a disagreement with a barman! Typical! That’ll teach me to go home and sleep. Hmmm… Sat Oct 27 By Matthew Taylor
M.M.Taylor Tony stands behind the bar, fag in hand, banging his head with uncommon enthusiasm to the three mop-headed guitarists thrashing away on stage as their singer, a diminutive young blonde, drapes herself languidly over a member of the audience and through an atmosphere of smoke and dirt, screams into her microphone. To the right, a drama teacher and a retired opera singer share cucumber sandwiches and discuss Sartre. The Monkey Kettle Nights at MADCAP are starting to make a name for themselves for this strange brand of eclectic anarchy. The night starts slowly. Whilst there are plenty of people here from the previous Monkey Kettle Night who know what to expect, I’m more interested in the new faces. They seem as confused as I am. “Hi, is this your first time?” I ask, suddenly realising they don’t know who the hell I am or what I’m referring to. It feels like I’m trying to induct them into a cult… maybe I am. “A friend recommended we come”, they reply. “Oh cool… Would you like a cucumber sandwich?” The gentleman in his fifties looks tempted but his wife quickly snaps that he’s already had tea. He looks glum. I sympathise. He looks to be more comfortable around cucumber sandwiches than around the guy with dreadlocks and big plastic plugs in his ears. And that sort of sums it up. Dotted around MADCAP’s spacious first floor theatre are tables and chairs dotted with candles. The deliberately subdued lighting casts strange shadows and the ever present smoke gives the whole place the feel of a secret Jazz Club somewhere off the main Strip. The kind of place people stop and look at you as you sip your cider and question “do I belong here?”... As I look around though, it’s hard to work out exactly who does belong. A bunch of Emo Kids in the corner are talking to an old grey-haired matronly looking woman about something miserable. A burly man shows a gentleman in a suit around a collection of photographs he’s displaying while a drunk half naked Scotsman staggers around the gallery professing his love for, well, everyone. A man in a cowboy hat and leather boots walks up on stage, and takes the Mic. And I guess that’s how it starts. I quickly look over to check on “no cucumber for you” man and his wife. They don’t know what’s going to happen. None of us do. And I’m one of the organizers. What follows is a beautiful mess. Poets fluff their words and read from scripts, bands get their mix wrong, and then right, and then wrong and then break something. Someone falls over a table. The drunk Scottish guy has to leave but doesn’t do so till he’s gone round the entire room and hugged everyone before finally staggering out the door. The compere doesn’t know the running order, the poets haven’t rehearsed and don’t know who’s supposed to be going next. No one can find the next act. No one can work out how an electric piano is out of tune. The mikes not working or something like that. And everyone is having a ball. If anything these Monkey Kettle Nights epitomise a Punk-like down-dirty-and-cheap who gives a flip attitude. It’s glorious, it's angry. It’s funny and charming and stupid and hilarious. And as a performer, it’s liberating. I’ve been to a lot of slams and every one of them has made a point of being accepting of everyone’s work, regardless of quality. It’s a nice thought but for some reason it seams that often you find yourself sitting in stoic silence listening to yet another depressed bloke whitter about his ex girlfriend. This place is different though, everyone is greeted with the kind of hoots and screams usually reserved for Rock Gods! They leave to equally rambunctious applause. In this anything-goes atmosphere, the actual poems seem to take second place to the performance, a large amount of which is coming from the audience. It’s a great leveller. Old hands share the stage with new faces And the lack of reverence in the audience or pretension from the performers combines into one of those cocktails that looks foul but God it gets you drunk. Poets are followed by Bands are followed by poets are followed by drunk people shouting at each other. The wonderful lack of cohesion between any of their styles forming a cohesion in itself, it’s a discordian's wet dream. It’s Bacchus and Eris getting it on. The night ends in suitably anarchic form, the audience are trying to leave but some bloke in black is shouting at them and telling them to move tables and help tidy up “WHAT DID YOU EXPECT! IT ONLY COSTS THREE QUID?” I see The Cucumber Man hefting a bunch of chairs downstairs. His wife looks like she wants to say “you hefted chairs earlier!” but he’s stopped listening. He’s got a big grin on his face that says he’s bought in and that next time he’ll eat however many goddamn cucumber sandwiches he goddamn well pleases. There are hugs and smiles everywhere. Everyone wants to know when the next one is - we don’t know, like the night itself it’ll just sort of happen. We’ve gone from not knowing what was going to happen to not knowing what the hell just happened. But we loved it, and we want more. I head outside, groups of people are moving out into the night talking loudly, shouts and screeches interspersed with excited squeals. Somewhere in the distance I hear a drunk Scotsman shouting something about hedges. We find out the next day that he woke up in a ditch. I guess he found out why they call it a slam.
Krapp's Last Tape Okay, so this is the third time in recent years we've reviewed Tony's production of Krapp, but it really IS one of those actor-finds-a-performance-that-defines-them-utterly moments. If you haven't seen it yet, look out for it the next time he revives it! ;-) Haggard of face and crackly of voice, he's ideal as the elderly nostalgist Krapp. One of Beckett's finest works anyway, this new version from Tony Ffitch (& Carolyn) adds a few nice touches to the previous versions I've seen. Krapp is wearing groovy white disco shoes, for one thing! The best moment, though, comes when he produces a second reel-to-reel machine to cross-reference a previous tape of his memories - I laughed long and hard. Man, I love Beckett! And I love Tony's Krapp - one of the best creations I've seen in local theatre ever. A million points
Photo by Simon Raynor Happy Days : Pepper's Ghost Theatre Company Regular readers of my reviews (if there are any!) will know that I rate Pepper's Ghost very highly, but prefer their takes on Theatre "classics" to their productions of TIE-style works. Which is why it was such a joy to return to MADCAP a week or two after Krapp's Last Tape to see their version of Happy Days. And I wasn't disappointed - it was absolutely brilliant! Atop one of the best sets I've ever seen in local theatre (some kind of plastic / polystyrene / cement / buggered if I know how they made it! mound of earth), Sue Whyte gave the greatest performance I've ever seen her give, as Winnie - trapped in a world of uncertainty, slow decay and nostalgia. It was really good to see her given the chance to do something other than "The Mum" character which she often gets lumbered with (well, I say lumbered - often they're good characters), and show the range she's really capable of. Her Winnie was by turns funny, innocent, harsh and tortured. Behind the mound for almost all of the play, Richard Duncombe was great as ever, whether it was just the tip of his head or hands we saw, or during the painful moment when his Willie finally emerged. Fnarr. Perhaps the best praise I can give, though, is that this piece which can often drag (as feature-length plays with only one actual voice will tend to) rarely lost my attention at all. I was spellbound throughout, and it's not very often you can say that with local theatre productions. Another hit from Pepper's Ghost, then. A million and one points. Great stuff. Matthew Taylor
Photos by Simon Raynor |
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Summer
School 2006
Madcap’s Summer School was a great success this year. The theme was “Myths and Magic” and there were workshops in drama, music, dance, film making, set design and prop making. Students worked towards a final production and this fabulous week culminated with a wonderful show which linked all the work which had been devised during the week. Staff, practitioners and young people had a brilliant time and the standard of work was extremely high. The final show was much appreciated by the many family members and friends who attended. Congratulations to all those who played their part and a big thank you for all your hard work.
Too
Much Punch For Judy - The Peppers Ghost Theatre
Company
How
amazing to be reporting on a premiere of this play
after over 4,500 performances of it… and a
premiere that occurred in the UK! Mark
Wheeller
Following on from the similarly-vibed “Find Me” (with which Pepper’s Ghost previously hit our stages last time around), “Too Much Punch For Judy” is a straightforward, Community Theatre / TIE piece about the events leading up to and following on from a drink-driving fatality in 1983. It’s definitely worth saluting the company’s willingness to mix their performances of the more “classic” theatre (Churchill, Pinter, and the upcoming Beckett) with this kind of educational drama, even though I must freely admit it’s not my cup of tea. Still, as always, the performances were top-notch, particularly the Natasha Ellis-Sue Whyte mother-daughter combo, and the supporting characters are all brought vividly to life too. A few technical problems on the night I saw it failed to distract, in fact the actors managed to keep our attention very well despite them. I always like the use of projection, and TMPFJ (if I can abbreviate!) employed this to good effect., vividly and colourfully. The piece itself is drawn from real-life interviews that the writer (Mark Wheeller) himself conducted, so there's plenty of personal engagement with what the characters are saying, and the kind of air of realism you usually get with TIE. The community-minded PC who has to break the news is a particularly sympathetic figure (imagine having to tell a mother one of her daughters is dead and the other is seriously injured - shiver), as is the bloke first on the scene of the crash - even listening to his monologue, one of the best moments in dramatic terms, you start to think "what would I have done? would I have done that myself?" While ultimately it was a little TOO straightforward a production for my poncy effete palate, it was still an engaging show, and very well received by the audience. There were truly some heart-breaking moments of tension, and it was definitely an improvement on "Find Me", which I found had less to interest me dramatically. Pepper's Ghost always manage to bring compelling performances out of their company, and TMPFJ was no exception. I look forward, as always, to which direction they'll choose next, whether it's up my alley or not! Matthew
Taylor
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Madcap
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Charity Number: 298086 |
© The Madcap Trust Ltd 2006