Sometimes something just turns up without warning, punches you in the gut and has you reaching for the Kleenex. Such a thing is Lost Boysand Fairies, the three-part prime time BBC drama about a gay couple – Gabriel and Andy – applying to adopt a child in Wales. No big deal in these more liberal times, you might think. It’s all about love, right? Except it is a big deal. Not because of the gay angle but because the adoption process is forensic and intrusive. It has to be. Kids in the care system are often already badly damaged, and getting it wrong can finish them off for good.
Cue the gradual opening up of old wounds for lost boy Gabriel – the strict chapel upbringing, the relentless bullying, the repression, depression, an over-fondness for risky pleasures and eventual salvation through sequins and song. Brilliantly scripted, peppered with Welsh, tender performances and gloriously showy musical interludes. Glitzy and graphic, the drama pulls no punches. At times, it’s uncomfortable viewing. Does it end well? Watch it to find out, but don’t forget the tissues.
Affectionately known as ‘The Glums’, the spectacular musical ‘Les Misérables’ has been a London fixture for nearly forty years. I’ve seen the West End production twice. I also bought the soundtrack and saw the star-studded and much-praised 2012 film adaptation. So it’s fair to say I’m pretty familiar with the tale and the tunes.
I must confess I was a little nervous as we took our seats to see Echo Youth Theatre’s version of this epic story of love, loss, injustice, rebellion and redemption. The big songs need big voices and a rousing chorus line to stir the soul. I shouldn’t have worried. As a brilliant training ground for young talent, Echo Youth always deliver. I’ve seen most of their recent shows and they’ve all hit the target with top note performances and top-notch production. Without a doubt, this show was their finest – classic and classy, energetic and emotional. And despite the high body count – most of ’em die in the end – we were left feeling elated and all tingly.
The spontaneous standing ovation at the end was richly deserved. Not glum at all.
We love a wacky musical and they don’t come much wackier than Opening Night, a brand new West End show from the pen of singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. Based on a 1977 film of the same name, the musical stars Sheridan Smith as an ageing has-been who’s lost her mojo and hit the bottle. It’s a familiar, well-trodden Judy and Norma theme. Despite a dedicated fanbase, Rufus Wainwright has been little troubled by commercial success. And I can see why. The score is dissonant, dense and tuneless – a torch song tale without the torch songs.
The production itself is a pretentious mess – shouty, angry and hard to follow, with bizarre staging involving TVs dotted about the auditorium and a large screen above the stage which, from where we were sitting, was largely obscured. We weren’t sure when and where to look – stage or screen – so by the second half we didn’t bother to look at all. The cast made the best of a bad lot and, come curtain call, the audience applauded politely, mostly out of pity, I thought.
Afterwards, as we piled onto the street in need of a stiff drink, Liam said, ‘Well, that was a pile of old shit’. The woman in front of us turned round and said, ‘I’m so glad you said that. It really was shit.’
Drama and performance can really help young minds build important life skills like confidence, comradeship, communication, cooperation and commitment – and loads of other vital ‘c’s too. But it takes guts and gumption to strut your stuff on the stage in front of a bunch of strangers. Back in my old school days, our annual theatrical offering usually consisted of a few spotty boys in need of deodorant mumbling a few lines from the Bard they didn’t really understand. Thankfully, things have come a long way since then.
Unlike the could-do-better days of my youth, this year’s Hobart High School’s production of Beauty and theBeast attained A+ in the talent and fun department. So much so, the show received an emotional standing ovation at the end, which I’m sure will linger long after the lights and makeup have faded. We know several members of the young cast – Benny, Eva, Jas and Rory. They were all amazing. And as for our very own budding starlet, Alice, in her directorial debut, is there anything this brilliant young lady can’t do?
For rural shires on the eastern edge of this green and pleasant land, East Anglia is rather blessed when it comes to live theatre. It seems everyone’s at it, from the have-a-go luvvies in drafty old village halls to well-seasoned thesps treading the boards at the rather magnificent Theatre Royal, Norwich. Unsurprisingly, it’s a mixed bag of riches – some good, some less so but all worth a few shillings. Always worth a punt are the song and dance showstoppers from the Norwich and Norfolk Operatic Society. And their latest, Betty Blue Eyes, was no exception.
Adapted from the 1984 film A Private Function, from the genius pen of Alan Bennett, Betty Blue Eyes is set in a small Yorkshire town just after the War, with food rationing still on the menu, resulting in unpalatable Soviet-style food queues and meagre plates. But to celebrate the 1947 royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Phillip, the local bigwigs decide to throw a banquet fit for a queen with a main course of illegally reared, unlicensed pork. They call the pig ‘Betty’ in honour of the soon-to-be-wed princess. Of course, the feast is strictly for the top drawer with their overbearing sense of entitlement. The hoi polloi have to make do with Spam.
Quirky, eccentric, heart-warming and thoroughly British, the show was a funny, foot-tapping tale of small town, small minds and smug middle-class snobbery; the kind of ‘one rule for us, another rule for them’ mentality exposed by the recent Partygate scandal.
The cast was excellent, particularly those from our own small community hereabouts – you know who you are. For me, the stand out performances came from Will Mugford, the hen-pecked anti-hero Gilbert who saves the day, Joseph Betts as Henry, who develops a rather unconventional relationship with Betty (or perhaps not so unconventional given we’re in Norfolk) and Alex Green, the light-footed, campish Food Inspector in Gestapo leathers trying to catch out the rule-breakers.
No actual pigs were harmed in the performance.
Here they are in rehearsals…
Footnote:
According to Wikipedia , during the filming of A Private Function, Maggie Smith was hemmed in by an angry pig and had to vault over the back of it to escape. Dame Maggie then went on to win a Best Actress BAFTA for her trouble.She’s a real trouper.
We missed Big Dick and His Pussy, last year’s mucky offering from the Adult Panto team, so we were determined to see Sinderella, their very naughty-but-nice interpretation of the classic rags to royalty tale we all know so well. It was a strictly gays’ and girls’ night for our foursome at Norwich’s Maddermarket Theatre, with husbands left behind to look after the sprogs. Giving a whole new meaning to that well-trod panto phrase ‘he’s behind you’, it was a non-stop, X-rated, utterly unbridled, cross-dressed, nudge-nudge, wink-wink glitterfest of smut and filth which left no profanity unsaid or hole barred. We loved it.
Just one more show to go – Treasure Island from the Loddon Players, our much-loved local am dram company – and then it’s curtains for panto season for another year.
It’s Christmas so it must be pantomime time, and panto doesn’t get any more lavish and camp than the annual festive frolic at the London Palladium. Each year the show just gets bigger and better, brasher and trashier, cross-dressed in glitter, sequins and smut. Once again, all our senses were assaulted; the perfect antidote to the drizzle of a dull December and a darkening world.
This year’s extravaganza is a panto mainstay – the evergreen Peter Pan, but not quite as Disney, or indeed JM Barrie, imagined it. Starring Ab Fab’s Jennifer Saunders as Captain Hook and the matchless Julian Clary mincing on as Seaman Smee, the cast also includes Palladium regulars Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmot, and the simply wonderful Rob Madge as Fairy Tink who made us laugh and cry in his autobiographic tale My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?).
This year’s offering struck a more poignant note, dedicated as it was to the late Paul O’Grady, who sparred with Julian Clary on the Palladium stage a number of times as his alter-ego, Lily Savage.
Naturally, Julian steals every scene he’s in with one outrageous costume after another and all the best gags – a tsunami of filth. Absolutely fabulous.
We see a lot of am-dram these days – across town and county, in huts and halls, theatres big and small, all delivered by companies of dedicated luvvies giving it their all. We love the old razzle dazzle. It keeps us out of the pub, though not necessarily sober as there’s always a bar attached. Unsurprisingly, the gigs are a mixed bag – some good, some not so good. And sometimes they’re really, really good. We never know what to expect. It’s all part of the drama.
Right up there on the really, really good scale was the recent production of The Wizard of Oz at the Beccles Public Hall and Theatre, a charming little venue just across the county line in Suffolk. From the first scene to the last, the show was pure magic, slick and professional, with some cracking acts.
A special mention must go to Alice Peck, the daughter of our local tavern keeper, in her debut lead role as Dorothy. Well done, young Alice. It was a tornado of a performance. You’ll go far.
And who could forget Alice’s mother, Karen, reprising her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from her 2022 performance? She swapped her usual soft Dundonian tones for full-on, in-yer-face Glaswegian. Full of menace and mayhem, we were half-expecting a Glasgow kiss from a seriously pissed-off cackling witch. We definitely weren’t in Kansas.
Liam is away visiting an old friend from his wayward early years as a young gay about town. They worked and played together when Liam did a proper job with a pension attached. It’s the first time I’ve been home alone since we moved to the village over three years ago. Liam left to catch an early train and I fell out of my pit to an empty house, silent apart from the morning squawk of the horny birds outside. It felt odd and a little unsettling. But, as I went about my domestic chores, I kept finding post-it notes hidden here and there. Here’s a sample…
I did as I was instructed and jumped on the bus to our local garden centre. It was a warm and sunny day and the place was packed with people taking tea and talking shrubs. I cannot lie, I felt out of sorts. As I went to pay for my trolley-load of horticultural supplies, I opened my wallet to find this…
If you’d said a few years back that one day I’d be in a small provincial theatre watching a bunch of kids bounce about in a Lloyd Webber musical with a book by Julian Fellowes (he of Downton Abbey fame), I’d have laughed you off the stage. “Not my thang,” I would have said. “Give me Superstar and maybe Coat of Many Colours, but his other stuff? Nah, not for me.”
But there I was last night settling down to watch Echo Youth Theatre’s performance of School of Rock at the Maddermarket Theatre, along with rows of nervously proud friends and family, a buzz in the air. And I can report that Lloyd Webber’s eclectic, guitar-heavy score is a revelation. Andy’s back to his rock roots, and as the opening number blasted to the back of the auditorium, we all knew we were in for a foot thumping night.
And the talent on the stage last night was astounding. But then, that’s something I’ve come to expect from Echo Youth. It’s an ensemble piece and it would be unfair to single anyone out, apart from Chris Davidson in Jack Black mode. Oh, and Rory Peck, our favourite shake, rattle and roller. Suffice to say, the energetic and gifted cast produced a joyous and uplifting account of Lloyd Webber’s hit, and the standing ovation at the end was instant and richly deserved.
If you’re anywhere near Norwich, grab yourself a ticket for this rocking show and get yourself down to the Maddermarket (it runs until Sunday). And if you don’t come out humming Stick It to the Man, I’m the Queen of Sheba.
Perking the Pansies 