Wolfie at Orange Tree Theatre

I saw Wolfie at Theatre503 in 2019 and it made quite an impression on me. So much so that when recently I was asked by somebody which of the many plays I had seen at Theatre503 was my favourite, Wolfie was the first play that came to mind (quickly followed by several other contenders),

So when I heard that it was coming to Orange Tree Theatre I could hardly wait. But wait I had to as it took a few months for it to appear in their booking system, and even then it was buried with other plays under the heading Greenhouse Festival. I managed to find the booking form and eagerly grabbed a seat for £12.

The reason it was so cheap was that the festival plays were performed by graduating LAMDA students. If anything, that was a plus for me as I have a high regard for recent graduates having seen so many young actors over the years, often in small theatres across London, places like Theatre503.
 

This was a very different Wolfie visually because of the different stage layout and this one used more props than I remembered. The main prop was actually the shopping trolley on the left.

Wolfie is the story of twin girls, the Sharkey twins, who we follow from just before they are born, their birth being through the shopping trolley.

Soon after birth they are separated with one getting a wolf as her new mother and the other a woman who stays in the bath all the time. After that things get weird.

The situation may be a little strange but the story is a simple one of two girls growing up apart and in different ways. What lifts the play far above the simple story is the way that it is told and the language used. 

The story was brought to us by the two girls taking it in turns to tell theirs with the other girl playing characters in her sister's life. They also talked to each other about how they would tell the story, e.g. "It's my turn now.". A novel approach (for me) and it worked.

The language was the highlight with throw-away comments all the time, something like Wilde but also not like Wilde. To give just one example from the many that flew past, one of the sister's said that she and her daughters had not been anywhere recently, apart from a trip into space. There was also something about using Cillit Bang to clean the ocean. You get the idea.

The language also flowed poetically with a rhythm that carried it effortlessly through two hours.

A play like this requires good actors and both women were very good. I would like to namecheck them but the Orange Tree website does not give their names (as far as I can see).

My memory was of something special and it most definitely was.

Vanya at Richmond Theatre

There are three main names associated with this play, all of which I am interested in; Anton Chekhov’s wrote the original play Uncle Vanya, Simon Stephens wrote this new version and Andrew Scott played all the parts.

I half thought about doing a Venn diagram of my experience of these people but quickly though better of it. Suffice to say I have seen several plays by both Chekhov and Stephens, a few with Scott, another Stephens version of a Chekhov play and another Stephens play staring Scott, so the Venn diagram would have several entries in the overlaps of two people. This would be the first entry in the central overlap of all three people.

I presume that of these three names that Andrew Scott was the big draw, while he would have been third on my list, and the poster certainly reflected that. The promoters were certainly expecting a big crowd for this pre-west end run and the tickets were priced accordingly. The price for my normal seat was around £60, I think, so I went up a level instead and paid £30 for Upper Circle A14. I may have been a little cautious with my money but I was off the mark quickly enough to bag a central seat in the front row,

On the day the performance, and the entire week-long run, were sold out so I guess the promoters knew what they were doing.

The set surprised me a little with its modernity and clutter. I never understood the point of the modernity (other that audience recognition perhaps) but the clutter soon made sense as the different parts of the stage were often used to represent different characters, e.g. Helena often sat on the swing.

I had seen Uncle Vanya a few times, three I think, and that certainly helped as the differences between the characters were slight visually, e.g. Scott held a dishcloth in one persona. Of course the voices were different, but not very different.

Uncle Vanya's (Ivan's) story got a little lost in the theatrics and my attention was drawn to the performance at the expense of the story, which is not that dramatic anyway, despite the appearance of Chekhov's favourite prop, a gun. It did not feel like the retelling of a masterpiece, it was more like a brand new play. Nothing particularly wrong in that and most people were there for Scott not Chekhov anyway.

The Stephens version had a lot more swearing, though nothing like the level of some of his other plays (Christmas, Herons, ...), and also quite a few moments of humour that often played on only having one person on stage. Vanya is not a comedy but I chortled quite a bit.

Being a one-person show the success of Vanya depended on Scott and he delivered.

I do not think that anyone will love Anton Chekhov or Simon Stephens more after seeing Vanya, and they may even forget that they were involved. Scott, on the other-hand, Andrew Scott cemented his reputation and he is what made the evening work for me.

Makeshifts, Realities and Honour Thy Father at Finborough Theatre

I need no excuse to visit Finborough Theatre and the trio of period pieces Makeshifts, Realities and Honour Thy Father, from just over a century ago, seemed to be right in our joint sweet spot. Well worth punting £20 on.

The Finborough Theatre routine ran to plan and I was sitting in my usual seat in the front row soon after 7pm  having been fed and watered in the usual locations beforehand.

Makeshifts and Realities are two related pieces written by Gertrude Robins. In Makeshifts two unmarried sisters have few hopes of finding a husband and try to make the best of the situation. In Realities we jump forward two years and find out how their decisions have worked out.

Honour Thy Father, by H. M. Harwood, was a different story told by the same cast and was also centred on a female character; that was the point of the programming. And it worked.

The stories were a great success because they gave us an insight to another time and other ways of living. Adding to that was the great cast, effective set and, my highlight, the fabulous costumes.

It was another good night at Finborough Theatre and another good reason to keep going back there.

The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

 expected The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky and WH Auden to be in high demand with my opera-going friends but other shows in the Glyndebourne Festival 2023 took their fancy and so we were left to go on our own. Not that we were complaining.

This was our last visit to this year's festival and our first on the blue side, where my seat Blue Upper Circle A7 was a very respectable £128.

As on the previous trip with just two of us we travelled light the main difference being that we took a bottle of bubbly instead of buying it there; we can buy a decent bottle of champagne locally for about the price of two classes there.

As it was a Friday, and not a weekend, we figured that the trains down to the south coast would not be packed and so it would be safe to join the Lewes train at Clapham Junction. We made the right decision and the journey was a real pleasure. Travelling that way makes a proper day out of it rather than an opera sandwiched between two bouts of driving.

On arrival it was business as usual, a short walk around Lewes before heading to The Depot for lunch and then the pre-booked coach to Glyndebourne. 

We had booked the earlier of the two coaches aiming to get there as the gardens opened and that plan worked too. It was already quite busy when we arrived, just on the official opening time, and I walked briskly to the Veg Patch Stretch Tent where I was able to grab one of the few unreserved tables.

The before opera time was the traditional mix of tea, cake and walk.

One of the attractions of this production of The Rake's Progress is the set designs by David Hockney, and I liked the mix of real and drawn objects. Of course the music is the priority but while sets (in my opinion) can never make an opera than can help to ruin one. These sets were like a little sweet offered by a restaurant after a good meal, unexpected, pleasing but a small part of the event.

There was a down-side though and one I do not quite understand. The many scenes had many set changes and these took an unexpectedly long time given each set's simplicity. We sat for several minutes in the semi-dark several times. Not quite enough to spoil the opera but annoying nevertheless. 

The music was gorgeous as we follow the rake's quick rise and slow decent, which included marrying a woman with a beard, hence the graphic at the top. The mood was light and comical throughout and that was definitely helped by the silliness of some of the sets.

I think I had seen this production of The Rake's Progress twice before (my Google Calendar only goes back a decade or so) and it was well worth seeing again. Indeed, I'll gladly go once more if the revival gets re-revived.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

I was a little surprised arriving at Glyndebourne to discover that I was there to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten because I had spent all the previous months in the booking processes on the false assumption that we were going to see The Fairy Queen by Purcell. This is also based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and we saw it at Glyndebourne in 2012.

We had also seen Britten's version before, in 2016, and I was very happy to go to either. No harm done, just some slight embarrassment.

Oddly none of our regular guests put this opera top of their list so just the two of us went, which made planning the arrangement so much easier. We travelled light with just a few sandwiches and some cakes planning to buy all our drinks there.

As is our practice when travelling by train, we arrived in Lewes in plenty of time to have a light lunch at The Depot next to the station and to have bit of a stroll around old Lewes before taking the pre-booked coach to Lewes.

There was bit of a rush to the Veg Patch Stretch Tent, our new favourite dining place there, and we were lucky to bag what looked to be the last unreserved table. Apparently, it has quickly become other people's favourite dining place.

The pre-opera period was easily filled with a round of cakes, hot drinks and a leisurely walk around the gardens.

At 4pm we made out way to our seats in Red Upper Circle Row D which cost us £146 each. Given the price of concert tickets these days that seems very reasonable.

The opera jumps in to the familiar story after the slow scene setting with the two couples already running through the woods and Oberon was already scheming against Tytania. 

Everything after that was magic.

Glyndebourne has exceptionally high standards and by those standards I felt that it had fallen a little short this year but this was top-notch stuff and more than made up for any previous slight disappointments.

The music was subtle, the singing lovely and the staging simple but stunning. Of course the story is very silly, and Oberon has no right to get away with how he behaved, but that was known beforehand and Shakespeare already forgiven.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was exactly the sort of opera that I keep going back to Glyndebourne to see.

The Wind and the Rain at Finborough Theatre

The Wind and the Rain was another example of Finborough resurrecting an almost forgotten old play, this time from 1933. It had a long run then and that was enough to persuade me to see it.

I will always be willing to pay £20 for an interesting sounding play at a theatre I love.

I will be lazy and let Finborough describe the play:

"Charles Tritton, an eighteen-year-old medical student about to begin his studies, arrives at Mrs McFie’s boarding house.

"Before him lie five years’ of swotting for exams and sweating over dissections, alongside his fellow residents – eternal student Gilbert Raymond who would rather be drinking and chasing girls than passing his exams; the studious sportsman and frightful bore, John Williams; and the sage older postgraduate student, Frenchman Dr Paul Duhamel."

And that was about it, four young gentlemen and their landlady just being young gentlemen and talking to each other about it.

While that is true it also considerably understates the play.

In a situation based directly on the experiences of the playwright, Merton Hodge, training at Edinburgh Medical School, the characters interacted beautifully as their individual stories evolved.

There was a love story in there too and while that helped edge the stories toward happy endings I was actually uncomfortable with it. I recognise it only reflected the truth of those time but the expectation that the man would led the life he wanted and the woman would fall in line, even if her home life was half a world away. 

Of course one of the points of seeing period plays is to be exposed to the thinking of that time and sometimes that is going to be uncomfortable, and this was a lot less uncomfortable than seeing David Tennant play a Nazi (in Good).

The simple and charming set did its work well in adding to the period delight. I also liked the simplicity of the props used, which mostly seemed to consist of bottles of beer being brought to the table!

The cast were good too and each character was distinctive and believable.

All of the pieces of the play came together nicely, as Finborough has a lovely habit of doing, making The Wind and the Rain another satisfying evening there.