Lots of laughs with Two Into One at the Menier Chocolate Factory

It is hardly unusual for me to forget why I booked to see a show by the time that I get to see it but I rarely get it as wrong as this.

Because I was at the Menier Chocolate Factory I assumed that this was a musical. It wasn't. It was a farce. A very funny one.

This was my third visit to Menier Chocolate Factory and the seating arrangements had been very different each time. For Two Into One it was laid out more-or-less as a standard proscenium with straight rows to seating. I was in the front row just left of centre (seat A17).

The place seemed to be completely sold out with a reasonably  diverse audience.

The story was a fairly simple one. A lecherous MP saw spending a few days in London, in the Westminster Hotel, as the ideal opportunity for some quality time with one of the PM's secretaries while his wife was out at the theatre. She had managed to send her husband away on a skiing holiday. The MP's Permanent Private Secretary was told to book another room under an assumed name to create a place for the dalliance to happen.

The first slip-up in the plans convince the MP's wife that the PPS is after a dalliance with her and she is up for this and cancels her theatre trip.

For the next couple of hours we had the PM, his wife, his PPS, his amour, her husband, a Labour MP, a waiter and the hotel manager moving between the two rooms with increasingly confusing and amusing results as lie after lie was invented to explain the compromising posiyion that somebody found themselves in.

For most of the play we could see the two hotel suites, each with three doors that were constantly opening and closing as people in varying stages of undress moved through the rooms either trying to find somebody or to get away from them. This was a classic farce and was very well done.

It was only while watching it that I remembered that I had booked it because of its stellar cast. This included Michael Praed as the MP, Kelly Adams as his love interest and Jeffrey Holland as the Hotel Manager. It also featured Ray Cooney who wrote and directed it.

Of the actors new to me, Josefina Gabrielle was appropriately saucy as the MP's wife and Nick Wilton was brilliant as the beleaguered PPS at the heart of everything.

The shrieks of laughter were confirmation of the success of the play. It was a fabulous evening made all the more so by the surprise of it not being a musical.

Candide at Menier Chocolate Factory

I went to see Candide at the suggestion of a friend. I had heard of the show, obviously, and I respected the reputation of the Menier Chocolate Factory for musicals and so I went.

The Factory was arranged very differently from my last visit, to see Pippin in 2011, which surprised me. Then it was more-or-less a standard stage (though oddly shaped) and this time it was staged in the round and with a balcony too.

The seating, possibly deliberately, was a shambolic collection of short benches some with throws on. Mine was comfortable enough but the lack of arm rests and the overall quality were a poor return for the West End price that I paid (£40).

Though I had heard of Candide I knew nothing about it so that everything that followed was a surprise. I like it like that.

The musical tells the extraordinary tale of Candide and his journeys from Westphalia across Europe and on to the New World, before returning home.

In each city he meets up with his love (Cunegonde), her brother (Maximilian) and their ex-tutor (Dr. Pangloss). This co-incidence is the more remarkable because they often die in the misadventures only to reappear unscathed in another city. That is a nice device to rework the same characters in to completely different scenes and to allow horrible things to happen to them. It is just like one cast performing a series of short unrelated plays.

While the details of the story can be put aside for their deliberate silliness the recurrent use of the same characters and what they represent is more interesting and gives the story its point.

The music is clearly important too and I found Candide fine, if not exceptional, in that respect. There were some songs that enjoyed a lot at the time but the memory of them has dimmed. That is not that surprising as it would take a pretty good song to make a memorable impact on a first listening.

The acting and stagecraft were neat and functional with lots of little touches, such as some audience involvement, adding to the richness of the performance.

It was all very lovely but never much more than that.

Pippin at Menier Chocolate Factory

After the disappointment of Les Miserables my attempt to find a decent musical took me to an unknown theatre to see an unknown show.

It is something of a mystery how the Menier Chocolate Factory had managed to escape my attention for so long; not only did I use to work literally around the corner in Southwark Bridge Road but shows there have appealed to me before.

The advance blurb for Pippin suggested something special and unusual, and I like special and unusual.

To clinch the deal was the offer of (slight) reductions during the preview period. The still meant shelling out the best part of £40 which is about twice my usual limit.

The theatre is staged in a glorious Victorian building that, surprisingly, used to be a chocolate factory.

Now it is home to a bustling attractive restaurant, a gallery and a theatre with its own bar.

For some reason the entrance as at the side and the route to it involves a clamber over an uneven and narrow path.

Once inside the path to the theatre winds through the restaurant and then down a short corridor that looks as though it might be leading to the toilets.

The bar area, which also hosts the box office, opens up like a Christmas Aunt's arms. There's plenty of space, reasonable seating and warm spicy cider.

The bell goes shortly before the performance starts and it's an orderly rush to the theatre as, unusually for somewhere this size, the seats are numbered.

The route to the theatre is down another corridor that bends slightly. Along the way the walls are strewn with posters for computer games and the like so you think that you are walking through a student's bedroom.

I was delighted to see included a reproduction of a cover of the Marvel comic Tomb of Dracula. This was drawn by Gene Colan who died earlier this year.

Convincing you that this is a student's room there is a student in one corner doing something with a PC that involves making noise.

The first impression of the theatre is one of confusion. The stage is across one corner, almost triangular, and the seating is defined by rows of foot-wells with the seats the same height as the stage. I had a seat in row B which is, of course, the front row.

The stage was brutally bare with little more than a concrete pillar on it. Computer directed lights drew lines along the edges of the stage and the steps as if to emphasise the strangeness of the shape of the stage.

Then the magic started.

The walls proved to be porous and the players suddenly appeared from all directions. This set the tone for the evening with the performance built on a foundation of intricate, clever and spellbinding theatre technology.

But let's get to the story.

Pippin is the eldest son of heir to the throne of Charlemagne. He is not war-minded like his father and is unsure what direction his life should take. He tries many things, including war, over throwing his father, the priesthood, family life and art before reaching his journey's end.

When Pippin arrives on stage we realise that he was the student that we squeezed past outside. A nice touch.

The music is very musically and there's enough repetition of the main songs for you to remember them afterwards. The only low-point comes when the audience is encouraged to join in singing a chorus when displaying the words does little to encourage participation. This is England and this was too much of a middle-class audience for that to work.

The computer generated effects make several appearances as if to remind you that the direction is the point of the show. One highlight, among several, is when Pippin fences against a shadow figure.

There's quite a bit of dancing and acrobatic movement too and the cast make good use of the small and unusual space. Ladders are climbed and swung from, holes are leaped in to and steps are ascended.

The combination of the story,  the movement, the music, the singing and the set cleverness was captivating, thrilling, amazing and, above all else, entertaining. Pippin is a great show.