Quartermaine's Terms at Wyndham's

This is going to be an easy review to write because there is so little so say.

I chose to go to the play because an offer came through work and, obviously, because it stars Rowan Atkinson.

He plays St. John Quartermaine, one of the dysfunctional teachers in a school in Cambridge teaching English to foreign teachers. He is lonely and has signs of dementia. Other teachers are living with her mother, married to a man who has a series of affairs, seriously accident-prone, recently left by his wife and children, and stuck in a drab love-less marriage.

The characters may be rather contrived, and its is annoyingly simplistic that we literally meet them one-by-one, but they do make a rich source of potential comedy and/or tragedy.

So it is a great shame that the play does neither.

We get a series of conversations between the staff through which we learn of romance, murder, failed novels, finding god, a caravan holiday in Norfolk, an incident in a French restaurant, and several other events none of which makes the slightest difference to the mood or the pace of the play.

I kept being reminded of Terry and June, the bland but very success full sitcom that was on TV when this was written in 1982. I suspect that Terry and June was much better.

Quartermaine's Terms was not let down by the actors and I think that they all made the best of the weak material that they had to deal with. Rowan Atkinson did what Rowan Atkinson does without stretching to achieve anything more. His is the thinnest character. My favourite was new-boy Derek, the accident-prone one, played by Will Keen. I also liked Louise Ford as Anita, the wife of the affair loving husband.

There were several moments of humour and the play was quite watchable. It was also lacking in story, lacking in emotion and lacking any variation in pace. At £25 for the ticket I felt a little cheated and I would have felt a lot worse if I had paid the £44 face value. Unless you are a big Rowan Atkinson fan then there is no point going to see this.

Twelfth Night at The Globe

I had always considered The Globe to be a tourist attraction rather than a serious theatre and that is why I had not been there before.

I only went this time because work organised some (relatively) cheap tickets and the cast included a couple of big names, i.e. Stephen Fry and Roger Lloyd Pack in the character roles Malvolio and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Mark Rylance staring as Olivia.

The Globe soon shows you why they stopped making theatres like that. The climb up to the gods is steep and when you get there you are greeted by a narrow wooden bench.

The more famous place to watch plays is in the pit that is open to the elements and on the night that I went that meant wearing something seriously weather-proof. And warm.Even in what passes for indoors a winter coat was needed.

I respect the experiment of rebuilding a period theatre but, to be honest, I think that it was the wrong direction to take from a theatrical view-point. Personally I prefer the modern route that the RSC has taken at Stratford upon Avon. The tourists seem to love The Globe though.

This production of Twelfth Night has an all-male cast, as it would have had in Shakespeare's time. I had seen all-male Shakespeare before and loved it then so that was another attraction for me this time.

For most of the play the main character is a man playing a woman who is pretending to be a man. And, thinking that she is a man, another woman falls in love with her.

She also has a brother who looks just like her.

A lot of the comedy comes from the flirting that goes on between the mixed sexes.

More comedy comes from the supporting character roles.

Stephen Fry is getting most of the press because he is Stephen Fry. He plays Malvolio just as you would expect him to, with superciliousness and pathos. All this makes for a lot of fun when he is tricked but we do not really see the bad side of his character that led to him being tricked in the first place and which gave him his name.

Not that this really matters. This is a comedy with a paper-thin plot so the comedy element is far more important than any attempt at realism.

Roger Lloyd Pack is brilliantly hapless as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

The direction plucks all the humour that it can out of the plot and the characters and there is always a lot going on with movements and expressions.

After a slow start that felt a little jilted at times there were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that even the rain and the cold could not suppress.

Abigail's Party at Wyndham's Theatre

Abigail's Party had been on my radar for some time a) because I had head of it and b) one of the stars is Natalie Casey from the trashy but immensely watchable Two Pints ..., which I have probably watched more than any other TV programme (it's about time that BBC Three brought it back).

I was unable to catch the start of the run at the Menier Chocolate Factory so was glad to see it transfer to the larger and more convenient Wyndham's Theatre and even gladder to be offered discounted tickets through work.

And they were reasonable tickets too. Our group was near the front in the Royal Circle. This is the first level above the stalls and is my favourite place to sit in traditionally arranged theatres. I prefer to look down on the stage

Last time I was at Wyndam's I was right at the back on the fourth level (and paid very little to be there) so it was nice to be back in the heart of the theatre and with a decent view.

The empty stage gave us a good clue of what to expect with its leather furniture, dividing unit and relentless browns. This is what the 70s looked like.

The room is the setting for an evening of drinks to welcome a new couple to the area. The hosts are an estate agent and his bubble wife, the newcomers are a nurse and a computer operator (I remember when we had those) and joining them was another neighbour, Susan, who has been divorced for three years.

Susan is also the mother of fifteen year old Abigail who is also having a party that night. We never see Abigail but we do learn a little about her party; more on that later.

The play is a comedy of manners between five very different people who don't really get on or mix very well, despite being married and/or friends.

Beverley the hostess, played brilliantly by Jill Halfpenny, buzzes around the room, talks at nineteen to the dozen, plies everybody with drinks and makes the most of her low-cut dress.

Angela (Natalie Casey) is slow in speech and thought without realising it.

Her husband seems to resent her dullness and while she think that they are happily married it is not at all clear that he agrees.

At one point he goes to check the Abigail's party is under control and he comes back sometime later with a wet shirt that goes unexplained.

There are petty battles over music, some blatant flirting and a more serious spat over art but it the way that the five characters are gradually exposed through their words that matters. This is the source of a lot of laughs and some cringes before the story suddenly changes direction and we are left with an uncertain and unsettling ending.

The richness of the dialogue makes it an enjoyable evening even if it does not stretch the intellect too much.

Matilda is a great dollop of fun

Matilda has had such good reviews that I had to give it a go. And the reviews are right with one or two exceptions.

Every facet of the play has been crafted with care and intelligence making it one of the most absorbing evenings that I have ever spent in the theatre.

It starts with the stage that is ringed with books and children's building blocks that spell out Matilda and it ends with an extravagant and unexpected final act.

In the middle there is so much to celebrate including two major show-pieces. In one Miss Trunchbull throws a girl in to the audience and in the other she (played by a he) does something surprising and spectacular.

The story is brilliant too. It is very much the original Roald Dahl but with some tweaks for the format and duration of the theatre. A nice touch was the way that the back story was told by Matilda to a friendly librarian as a story within the story. Another was a still that Matilda used at the end to get out of a tricky situation.

The cast was excellent, especially the previously mentioned Miss Trunchball and Matilda. These two are very much the stars of the show.

They are very well supported and a special mention should go to Matilda's father who played the not very bright wide-boy with aplomb and humour.

I've not mentioned yet that Matilda is a musical and that is deliberate.

There are quite a few songs in the show but there are large gaps between them that are filled with normal theatre. The songs play second, or third, fiddle to the story and staging and the play would be just as good, if a little shorter, without them.


The songs do not have the stage to themselves and they come with more on histrionics that keep you glued to the action. I liked the alphabet song where books were gradually added to a book case enabling children to climb up them.

Matilda is a thoroughly entertaining show that reeks attention to detail and shows what the presence of a strong guiding hand can do. And you do not have to take children with you to appreciate that.

Bingo at the Young Vic

It has been quite a while since I bought tickets for an event over a year in advance, and that is what I did for Bingo.

The draw was Patrick Stewart, as the promotion for the show makes quite clear.

He plays the part of an elderly Shakespeare who has finished writing, left London and returned to his country home which he shares with a wife and daughter whom he cannot stand and a couple of servants whom he respects more.

Shakespeare, a minor landowner, gets caught up in the lard reforms of the time, enclosure of common land, and that brings him in to local politics on the side of the rich. This is the right move for him financially but he seems unhappy with it.

He is also unhappy with other aspects of the then current ways of the world and, through his eyes, we learn about matters like almost casual hangings and bear baiting.

Shakespeare is a troubled soul.

He spends a lot of time sitting in the garden despite protestations from the house maid that he should try and keep warm.

There he talks to staff, family, visitors and, when all else fails, himself.

The other scenes are less idyllic and include a gallows, a bar and his bed chamber which is locked to keep his wife and daughter out.

The conversations continue in all these settings and through them we learn more and more about Shakespeare and his world, neither of which are particularly bright. There is little to see of what gave him the title Bard of Avon except, perhaps, a few glimpses in his monologues.

If I suggest that there is little substance, i.e. story, in the play then that is probably right, yet that is not a problem. The play resounds with the words of Shakespeare and they are delivered brilliantly by Patrick Stewart. The rest of the cast play their part too and are more than just foils to his brilliance.

Bingo educates us on Shakespeare's life and times and offers some captivating side stories as it does so.