Emma at Rose Theatre

There are obvious attractions for a play based on Jane Austen's novel Emma but for me the main one was simply that it was on at Rose Theatre where I have to have a good reason not to go and see a play.

Quick booking got me a seat in the very centre of the Circle, A35, for £41.5 with Senior Citizen Concession.

My only recollection of Emma, from a radio drama adaptation, was that she interfered unsuccessfully in other people's relationships while ignoring her own; not much of a plot but a sound basis for some character comedy.

The only comments I read about the production beforehand said that it was a complete reworking set in current times, so I had even less idea on what to expect.

Not knowing the original story that well I cannot comment on how close this version was and all I can do is comment on the play in its own right.

This Emma was a very entertaining character comedy. Emma, the character, was a fairly normal young woman surrounded by several exaggerated characters, notably her soon to me married self-centred sister who was fully into all the modern tropes from Instagram to Love Island.

Other notable characters included her frantic father, a boisterous hairdresser, a surly parcel delivery man and her sister's timid fiancee. A rich source for comedy indeed.

Given that the richness and success of the play relies so much on the strength of the cast, some of them with notable tv exposure, I think that it is something of a shame that the poster shows just the relatively unknown Emma.

This Emma was an unashamed rom-com and hit all the right buttons providing plenty of lives as the various couples eventually came together as they should and as we all expected.

A View From The Bridge at Rose Theatre

Not all Arthur Miller plays are classics but it is probably fair to say that are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955) are, and Wikipedia backs me up on this.

I had seen all but A View From The Bridge so was very pleased when it was announced that it was coming to Rose Theatre, particularly as their production of All My Sons was a triumph.

I picked a seat in my now favoured Circle, A24, which cost £35 with my Senior Citizen Concession. I like the view from Circle and that more than makes up for sitting amongst school children when at a matinee. That said, seat A24 is next to the aisle where a safety rail hinders the view slightly and I will avoid that seat in future (I am writing this now to remind me!).

The story was a fairly simple one, an American-Italian working class couple living with their orphaned niece (aged 17) are joined by two cousins who arrive from a poverty stricken Italy illegally to work on the docks. One of the cousins starts a relationship with the niece to which the over protective uncle is strongly against.

The story is the thread on which so many things hang that are revealed through the discussions between the five family members. Through these we learn more about life working on the docks, immigration into America at that time and the Italian community they belong too. We also learn about their histories and beliefs, for example the families left behind in Italy.

Central to all this is Eddie Carbone, the head of the family. It is his beliefs and passions that drive the story to its predictable conclusion. And we know it is predictable because a lawyer is used as a framing device and her intermittent narration explains that she has seen all this before. She may have done and while the outcome was predictable there were other outcomes that were equally possible.

Jonathan Slinger was perfect as Eddie and that was one of the main reasons the I loved the performance so much. The other cast members were good but this was Eddie's story.

Much of Eddie's character was the macho head of the family stuff but the play added some confusion over his relationship with his niece, he was accused of being jealous of his cousin at one point, and there were hints of homosexuality that were never resolved.

The other star of the show was the staging which made use of the shape and height of the unusual stage. It was a simple staging too with very few changes to the set, just a few chairs being moved around. I  have no idea why the swing is there in what was mostly a living room but it worked. Rose Theatre seems to like swings and so do I.

A View From The Bridge at Rose Theatre gave me everything that I could possibly want from a visit to a theatre, it was that good.

Wuthering Heights at Rose Theatre

Rose Thetre, Kingston is doing great modern versions of classic stories, I am thinking of things like The Importance of Being Earnest and Lord of the Flies, so it was a very easy decision to go and see Wuthering Heights. The poster above was enough to convince me that it would be interesting so I dutifully paid my £25 (very reasonable!) for seat J39 in the stalls.

As always, I walked there allowing myself enough time to grab a beer before going in to the auditorium.

I has heard several versions of the story on the radio over the years but had managed to forget almost all of it so I could approach it afresh (again). The story had lots of births, marriages and deaths and I very much appreciated the family tree drawn at the back of the stage where these were recorded as they happened, very useful when trying to work out who were cousins and who were siblings etc.

The large set of characters and the long timescale of the story were skilfully met by having actors play several different roles, e.g. a mother would die and the actor reappear sometime later as her sister's daughter, or something like that. It worked well.

One actor caught my eye slightly more than the others (this was very much an ensemble production) and that was Nicole Sawyerr who played Isabella, Frances and young Cathy. She shone on the night but I may also have been recalling seeing her in something at Theatre 503 where she has performed a few time.

The language of the production was modern and so was the staging but the story was still very much Wuthering Heights. Instead of being a period piece it was a bright and fresh production and that made it more relatable without losing any of the drama.

Wuthering Heights was a great success.

Richard III at Rose Theatre

I do not need much urging to see any Shakespeare play and when it is on at my nearest theatre and holds the promise of being a modern version then going becomes a no-brainer.

Richard III is one of Shakespeare's more powerful, and dark, plays yet it gets performed much less frequently than, say, Lear, and I had only seen it twice in recent years, both in excellent productions.

And, as someone forced to watch Bridgerton, I was aware of Adjoa Andoh.

All that meant that I was quick to pay £40 for regular seat J33.

I walked to Rose Theatre giving myself enough time to buy a beer before going into the auditorium. It was pretty busy, which I always like to see.

I last saw Richard III in 2017 at Arcola Theatre so my memories of the story were not great. That may have helped this time as the story is the main point of the play with Richard rising to become king through the ruthless elimination of all competitors. Macbeth rises clumsily while Richard rises purposefully. It is possible to sympathise with Macbeth (or to blame his wife!) but Richard has no excuses. It's a gripping story and well worth watching again.

With Richard III at the heart of everything the play succeeds or fails on the actor playing the role and Adjoa Andoh was convincingly evil.

There were some modern elements to the production, such as Morris Dancing(!), these were small choices in the flavour of the piece and it remained a very recognisable Richard III, and I loved it for being so.

This production of Richard III managed to be both a traditional telling of the tale and have enough that was different to make it distinctive. 

Lord of The Flies at Rose Theatre

I never read Lord of The Flies at school, unlike many people, and had only seen a version of it at the theatre once, so the story was largely unfamiliar to me and I was very happy to go and see a new production at Rose Theatre.

I cannot remember what happened with the booking but something took me away from Row J in the Stalls, where I had sat ever since the theatre first opened when it was Row A, and I made the bold move of going up a level to the front row of the Circle where seat A36 was a good deal at £25.

I was no further from the stage that I would have been in Row J downstairs and the Circle is now going to be my seating of choice, assuming the pricing is reasonable.

The Lord of The Flies is set on a small uninhabited tropical island and the set conjured that brilliantly. I also liked the way that the stage thrust forward, as it was always meant to do.

Without knowing the original story that well it was had to tell what updating had happened but one thing was immediately obvious, one of the main characters, Ralph, had changed from a school boy to school girl.

There was excellent diversity in the cast in their genders, colours and language. This diversity made absolutely no difference to the story, which was originally about white school boys, but it made  big positive difference in reflecting the people there to watch the play. The Rose has been exceptionally good in this regard recently and as an old white middle class man I heartily approve.

The story was engaging with lots of strong characters and plenty of blood as the group of children formed two tribes with one going to war with the other in a hunt for a monster. The point of the story is how the situation changed the children and this production did that very well.

Lord of The Flies was another reaffirmation that the Rose Theatre is doing the right things in the right way after several years trying to find its feet.

Noughts & Crosses at Rose Theatre

I like what Rose Theatre are doing at the moment. After several years of going for established plays with safe productions and often a famous actor, with mixed results, the programme is more unusual and more interesting.

Noughts & Crosses was an example of this. I understood it had been on TV but that was all I knew before booking it. As usual I went for a seat in row J and J41 cost a modest £25 thanks to a significant Senior Citizen Concession.

I may have made a mistake in picking a matinee performance, expecting only retired people to be there, as the place was full with several large groups of school children, we even had to wait a few minutes for one group to arrive and pile into the Circle.

 

Noughts & Crosses was, as the name suggests an Us and Them story with a forbidden love across the divide. While that obviously has strong echoes of Romeo and Juliet here the emphasis was more on the divide than on the love.

The Crosses (elite) were cast as black and the Noughts (oppressed) as white though I am so used to colour-blind casting that I took this as a co-incidence at first and though more of the obvious class divide between the two groups.

The story was very political, which is why I assume the school children were there, and we shared time with militant freedom fighters (or terrorists, depending on your viewpoint) and with the authoritarian (or  people's protector) Home Secretary.

There was a lot going on within the play with politics at the macro level, a love affair at the micro level and family dynamics somewhere in the middle.

Sadly the school children were mostly interested in the love story and there were distracting shrieks when they kissed. Luckily there was not too much of this and the while the school children fidgeted and whispered they never quite became annoying.

The production was nicely done with constant set changes executed smoothly, several of the cast playing more than one role, news stories shown on TVs, and the two families in two places on stage at the same time. It all worked rather neatly.

The ending was a little corny but it worked in that it did not end the story but left plenty of room for discussion on what could happen next, something for all those school children to get their teeth into.

Noughts & Crosses was very satisfying theatre.

The Importance of Being Earnest at Rose Theatre

I made a News Year's Resolution for 2022 to restart my blog by writing something, however short, about every theatre trip, gallery visit or other signifiant event and here we go!

What finally drove me back to blogging was the fantastic production of The Importance of Being Earnest at Rose Theatre.

I was not that tempted to see it at first as I had seen and heard several productions of Earnest over the years and while the whimsical bon mots are entertaining I had never fallen in love with the play. What persuaded me to go in the end was a loyalty to Rose Theatre, I see all the main theatrical productions there, and there being no real reason not to see an Oscar Wilde play. So I duly forked out my £35 (I now qualify for a Concession Senior Citizen rate so getting old is not all bad) for seat J40 in my usual area.

That this was a different production was made clear at the start with the cast making entrances and exits to music before the actual play started. The tone was set immediately when the manservant, Lane, came in carrying a tray of cucumber martinis arranged in a pyramid. There were numerous acts of humour added to the play like this and they all added nicely to the scenes being played out before us.

What really made the production so brilliant (aside from the obvious strength of Wilde's words) was the cast and each and every one of them was excellent; I particularly liked Abiola Owokoniran as the outrageous dandy Algernon Moncrieff, and Phoebe Campbell and Adele James as the two young ladies. 

What made the performances so remarkable is that this was a young cast and for several of them it was their first major stage role. You would never have guessed this, I certainly did not.

The direction of the play took it towards pantomime, but not too far to be childish. There were lots of exaggerated gestures and expressions, especially from the young ladies, to push the humour along. Reinforcing the idea of pantomime, the formidable Lady Bracknell was played flamboyantly by a man.

The continual humour in the staging matched the continual humour in the script and Earnest was a delight throughout. I never do star ratings because theatre is so subjective but this Earnest is most definitely a five star show.

The Seven Pomegranate Seeds at Rose Theatre was remarkable

Rose Theatre is my nearest and I try to get to all of the mainstream theatre there. I seem to be doing quite well at that as my phone informed me that this was my sixtieth check-in at the venue.

It is a gentle walk of about an hour along the river to get there and I was early enough to grab a coffee before the show, and resilient enough not to have any cake wit it.

As usual, I had forgotten why I had made the booking but a quick look at one of the posters informed me that it was directed by Melly Still which was reason enough.

The set was enough to confirm that I had made a good decision. The stage was sparse with little more than a wooden door and a small table as standard props and these were complemented by oddities like rocks hanging from cords.

The play, it transpired, was a series of short stories derived from Greek legendary women like Persephone, Phaedra and Medusa. The degree of connection was lost to me due to my poor knowledge of the original material but it did not matter, the stories stood in their own right.

Several factors made this one of the best things I have ever seen at Rose. Full use of the stage was made in a way that I had never seen before, including two structures thrusting over the stage. The script rhymed subtly, enough for you to notice but not to much for it to be a distraction. All the parts were played by Shannon Hayes and Niamh Cusack who were both excellent.

The Seven Pomegranate Seeds was exactly the sort of modern and intelligent play we were promised when Rose Theatre first opened and is exactly what I go to the theatre to see.

Stones in his Pockets at Rose Theatre was clever and fun

Stones in his Pockets did not appeal to me at first as it was billed as a straight comedy and I prefer theatre with some intellectual meat in it but then  I decided that an afternoon of comedy was a good option and I booked a matinee performance, taking advantage of being retired.

The underused and impracticable pit area of the theatre had been converted to seating and my usual row A had become row J, giving some idea of how far back it is. Seat J28 with a concession for being a Senior Citizen was a reasonable £30. The additional seating reduced the attractiveness of row A/J as the new row in front of it was higher than the previous one. Seat J28 was fine as row H did not extend that far across because of the curvature. I'll be in the centre for the next two shows that I have booked there so I'll get a better idea of any potential problems then. There is always the circle!

To quote the promotional blurb: A small village in rural Ireland is turned upside down when a major Hollywood film studio descends to make a historical blockbuster on location. The story is told through the eyes of two extras.

The two actors also played all the other parts from the film's female star to the grimiest local. They did this with limited costumes changes and made the different characters obvious by over emphasising their different voices and movements in amusing ways. The many quick character changes and the exaggerated characters were a constant source of comedy.

More comedy came from the rich dialogue between the two characters, whichever two they were at the time.

The main story was an unflattering view of how a film is made but there was a dark edge to it which gave it a nice bite; the stones were in his pockets to weigh him down.

Stones in his Pockets at was clever without being too clever and was a lot of fun too, a comedy fit to brighten up a grey Thursday afternoon.

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain at Rose Theatre

Often the programming at Rose Theatre confuses me and this was a case in point. As an almost templated touring theatre production I would have expected to see it at Richmond Theatre but it popped up at Rose Theatre which does not really do that sort of thing.

One problem with it being at Rose was the ticket price. My usual seat Stalls A41 cost £35, somewhat less than most Rose productions these days, whereas I usually get a discount at Richmond, due to my ATG Theatre Card, which usually takes the price down below £30. The view is much better at Richmond too as the seats are adjacent to the stage whereas at the Rose they are placed some distance from it.

I went with few expectations other than to enjoy more fine performances by Robert Powell and Liza Goddard, which was good enough reason to venture out for the evening.

Sherlock Holmes is a difficult character to do well partially because of the expectations set by the recent TV series and partially because of all the other adaptations that had gone before. I felt this production struggled against those expectations a little, particularly in the short first-half, where not that much happened of a Sherlock nature other than his analysis of a corpse in the opening scene.

The second half was much better and I really got into both the main story (the ghostly appearance of Watson's dead son) and also Sherlock's musing on his age and life. Moriarty and Mycroft were in there too.

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain was never going to set the world on fire, nor did it expect to, and it was perfectly content being a solid piece of theatre that entertained. Average may be, but a high average.

Curtains at Rose Theatre tackled a difficult subject intelligently

I went to see Curtains at Rose Theatre as much to support my local theatre as anything else. There was nothing particular about the play or cast that enticed me but it seemed like a reasonable show and worth a punt. The price was bit of a shock though, my seat in my usual area, A38, cost me £40 for a preview performance. That's a lot of money for a Zone 6 theatre, pushing twice what it should be.

The combination of the uncertain play and the high price kept a lot of people away and the theatre was as empty as I had ever seen it And that was a shame as Curtains was a decent enough show.

It was very much a show in two halves, the second longer than the first. Before the Prosecco break the scene was set with the death of an old woman who died on her birthday surrounded by her family. It was a slow start but with enough drama and characterisation to keep me interested.

In the second half the characterisation blossomed in the unusual situation that has been built in the first half, the main story developed into some serious directions and some new stories emerged from the interactions between the characters. There was a lot going on including the father trying to manage the situation in a way that was uncomfortably familiar, his wife trying to come to terms with the situation and what had led to it, a couple drifting apart dropping plenty of hints of problems at home, a prodigal daughter lost in middle age and a young man flirting with religion.

The main theme, which gave the play its title, was dealt with sensitively and intelligently. This was a nice contrast to the many humorous elements and it gave the play a serious heart and a purpose.

Curtains did that clever thing of entertaining and also making you think about a serious and awkward subject.

Rules for Living at Rose Theatre was an entertaining romp

Rules for Living sounded like a simple comedy and while I would not normally travel very far to see a play like that Rose Theatre is only a pleasant forty minutes away so I decided to go. I managed to get a seat in the dead centre of the first proper row, A37, for £30.

The situation was simple and familiar, two thirty something sons and their two wives/girl friends and one daughter were visiting their parents for Christmas day. There were a lot of family issues, a failing relationship, jealousy, expectations, abandoned dreams, etc. etc. that were gradually exposed as the day progressed.

The main trick of the play were the rules for living; these were real rules, such as Matthew has to sit down to tell a lie, and they appeared on a display board above the stage. These rules were a good source of humour in their own right, for example, when Matthew was asked an awkward question and he looked around for somewhere to sit then you knew that he was about to tell a lie and that anticipation was part of the fun.

Like a good farce, Rules for Living started fairly slowly as the characters were introduced and the situation was set and then things escalated quickly and deeply. The pictures on the far left and right in the poster above gives some idea of how bad things got, but the journey there, shown in the middle two pictures, was where most of the fun happened as the rules became more complicated and the characters became more extreme. Carrie's robot dance was a joy to behold.

Rules for Living was an entertaining romp through a family's strained relationships given an added twist by the use of real rules.

For Love or Money at Rose Theatre

This is another one that I almost at Rose Theatre because of their bad publicity. I was in the theatre cafe for something else when I saw a pile of leaflets for the show and I recognised Barrie Rutter immediately. I had seen a few Northern Broadsides' touring productions in recent years and that was enough to convince me to see another one. I went for my usual place, A32, and paid £30 to do so.

For Love or Money was an adaption of a French farce, Lesage’s Turcaret apparenty, which meant that I knew what to expect, something funny that would not be too demanding on the intellect. And it was just that.

The situation was a young woman living beyond here means and surviving on the generosity of one admirer, a dubious banker much older than her, while being fleeced by a younger man, a rascal at best, that she had fallen for. That man had a partner in rascality and there were a few other maids and such like.

Most of the humour, and there was a lot of it, came from the larger than life characters who behaved extravagantly and ridiculously. The situation got more interesting too as wives turned up, people pretended to be other people and illicit encounters were recalled.

I went to see For Love or Money for some simple good humoured entertainment and that is exactly what I got.

Silver Lining at Rose Theatre was passably entertaining

In the end it was loyalty to Rose Theatre that persuaded me to go and see Silver Lining. Other people were probably attracted by the playwright, Sandi Toksvig, and some of the actors familiar to TV addicts, such as Sheila Reid (Benidorm).

Whatever the reason people went they did so in good numbers so much so that the upper circle was open (it rarely is) and all but the very edge seats downstairs were sold. I was late to the game and while I was able to get a seat in my preferred Row A it was very much at the sides, A6, for which I paid a modest preview price of £21.

The poster almost tells you all that you need to know. Silver Lining is set in an old people's home which is gradually being flooded as a large storms rolls in and the tide rises.

In structure it was much like a sit-com with lots of humorous, sometimes funny, one liners often making fun of each other. It was a reasonable sitcom too but only reasonable. You would not change the channel if you came across it but then you would probably not change the channel to catch it either and you would certainly not be buying the box set.

Towards the end, once we knew the characters a little better, there were some moments of pathos as some of the ladies told us more abut themselves, how they felt and what happened in their pasts to influence them. This was a welcome change of pace from the unrealistic snappy dialogue but that is all that it was, nothing meaningful or memorable came from these revelations.

The direction was somewhat artificial too. The five ladies spent most of the time speaking to each other yet they did so sitting in a straight line facing the audience. Their movement was as unnatural as their dialogue.

That all sounds like a relentless stream of negativity, and it largely is, so it is worth remembering that I started off by saying that Silver Lining was like a sitcom that was often humorous and sometimes funny. Overall the humour rescued the play and what could have been a disaster was passably entertaining.

All My Sons at Rose Theatre was a triumph

I always use the Swarm app (formerly FourSquare) to check in to cultural venues that I go to as I like to keep track of when I was last at a place and how often I've been there. This evening my phone informed me that I had been to the Rose Theatre (since getting an iPhone) forty times. This was one of the very best of those forty evenings.

I am keen to support Rose Theatre as much as I can and so I need an excuse not to see something rather than to see it. Normally the best excuse Rose gives me for missing something is failing to tell me about it in time but that did not happen with All My Sons and I was able to get a seat in my preferred area on one of my preferred days, A42 which cost me £36.

If I had need an excuse to see All My Sons then the name Arthur Miller would have been good enough.

I went knowing nothing about the play and so I sat down in my seat, with a pint of Black Sheep Bitter, keen to learn. We were in the garden of a decent American house just after the last World War, and there we stayed.

The main players were the occupiers of the house, Joe and Kate Keller and their thirty-something son Chris. Joining them in the garden were Ann, a young friend of the family who had recently returned after a year away, two neighbouring couples and the memory of their other son, Larry, who went missing a few years ago during the war.

Larry's absence, or death, was the opening theme of the play with a tree planted in his honour having been blown down in the night and Chris trying to persuade Ann to help him to convince his mother that Larry was not just missing and was not coming home.

The other talk was general catching up with Ann on things that had happened in the last year or so and some thoughts about the future. It was not far off being a typical relaxed and meaningless discussion between family and friends. There were a few hints of resentment and disdain but, as I said, it was a typical discussion between people who knew each other well.

Then the word "murderer" was dropped like a bombshell.

The theme of the play suddenly changed to an incident in Joe Keller's past where, as the owner of a munitions factory, he had allowed some faulty parts to be shipped and these had led to the deaths of twenty odd American servicemen. He had been found to not be directly responsible and had been released after a trial while an engineer, Ann's father, had gone to prison, and was still there.

To complicate things further, Ann had been in a relationship with Larry and was now planning to marry Chris (nobody had told Kate). Then there was Ann's brother George who was still angry at his father's imprisonment and blamed Joe for this.

The main story came to dominate the play and there were more bombshells to shunt the story forward, including a letter from Larry to Ann and a defining decision from Joe. It was a strong and gripping plot but it was just the backbone of the play and there was a lot hanging off it with all of the characters adding interest and colour to the drama. Making this work was a simple set and a magnificent ensemble cast with Penny Downie as Kate impressing me the most.

My only reservation, and it is an odd one, is wondering why Rose Theatre is doing plays like this which are very much Richmond Theatre territory. Rose seems unsure if it is modern and imaginative or classic and traditional. Luckily I like both sorts of plays and both theatres.

All My Sons had the dark themes and intense dialogue that I expected from my limited exposure to Arthur Miller (Crucible and Salesman) and it lived up to their reputations. This skillful production turned a good play into a triumph.

When We Are Married at Rose Theatre was modestly funny

Somehow I found myself seeing three J B Priestly plays in short succession and as an experience this one fell somewhere in the middle of the three.

There was no compelling reason for me to see this but it was at my local theatre, Rose Theatre, it was by J B Priestly and it was presented by Northern Broadsides. That was enough for me to fork out £26 for Seat A43.

The stage was set fairly simply as the lounge in a reasonable house in 1930's Yorkshire. There three couples were celebrating their shared 25th wedding anniversaries when they receive the news that they were not properly married.

This caused a lot of consternation, not being married was called "living in sin" then, and also forced each couple to consider if, now they were single, they would marry the partners they thought that they were married to.

There were some strong stereotypes in the group, such as one henpecked husband and one really boring one, and these were joined by a surly housemaid and a drunk photographer. These characters, rather than any plot, were  the root of much of the play's humour. This made the humour a little simplistic at times but it was funny none the less. Just not as funny as The Roundabout had been a month earlier.

When We Are Married was pleasant enough, and easily worth the price of the ticket and a night away from other things, it was somewhat dated (that was reflected in the average age of the audience, why would any young person want to see a play like this?) and somewhat simple.

Good Canary at the Rose Theatre

The biggest impediment to me seeing things at the Rose Theatre is their woeful publicity so it is lucky that Good Canary was one of their own productions and so did get some publicity. Visiting shows are less fortunate.

I suspect that many people will go to see this because of the John Malkovich name, even though he is "only" directing and does not appear on stage, I went because it sounded interesting, the sort of play that I am used to seeing at places like Theatre503 and if I'd go to Clapham to see a play like that then clearly I would go closer to home.

The Rose is a nice walk from home which takes slightly under an hour at a leisurely pace along the river. I left home soon after 5pm intending to eat something at Wagamama but got tempted in to The Gazebo by the vegetarian Korean Curry on the menu. It was also good to have a pint of Old Brewery Bitter again. It was my staple diet when I first started working in London but Sam Smiths pubs are few and far between and so I have few opportunities to get to one.

I got to the Rose in good time for a glass of Prosecco despite the traditional long queue for the bar. Looking around I was pleased to see that so many people had dressed up for the evening, though none had a shirt to match mine. Especially not John Malkovich who walked past me a couple of times dressed like a presenter on Scrapheap Challenge.

The first impact that Good Canary made was with its staging. Extensive use was made of back projection to change the set from scene to scene as the few props came on and off the stage as if by magic, but which was probably wires. Both techniques allowed the scenes to change quickly and that maintained the pace of the story.

That story concerned a young married couple. He was on the verge of a promising career as a written while she took industrial levels of drugs, mostly speed, in an effort to cope with her depression. That tension between hope and despair drove the drama and I was entangled in their emotions as I watched the couple swing between ups and downs.

Annie, as the person with the mental issues and the strong drug habit, was at the heart of everything that happened and ridiculously young Freya  Mavor was sensational. Not just good, sensational. She went from playful, to loving, to desperate, to angry and took us with her every step of the way.

With a decent story, great staging and a sensational actress Good Canary was an excellent production. I hope that the Rose will have the courage to put on more plays like this and leaves the quaint period dramas to Richmond Theatre to do.

The Merry Wives at the Rose Theatre was a laugh out loud riot of a play

Whatever the thinking was behind renaming The Merry Wives of Windsor to just The Merry Wives it managed to confuse me and so I almost missed a Shakespeare play being performed in my nearest theatre.

The Rose Theatre is still pretty terrible at publicity, obviously they have either not read my previous moans on this subject or they have chosen to ignore them, and so it was rather late in the day that I discovered that this was on and despite the new name was with the original Shakespeare text.  This is a play that I was always going to want to see at a theatre that I try to see as many things as I can to support it and it frustrates me that I find out about some of the shows there very late and it worries me that I am missing some altogether. They seem to put all their publicity effort into their productions and little into anything else.

I have booked to see something else there in April, Ockham's Razor Tipping Point, and I also found out about that show by accident and I saw nothing to promote it at the theatre on this evening, just a few weeks before the show.

I suspect that I was lucky with a cancellation and I managed to buy a seat in my preferred area, Stalls Row A Seat 44 at £25, just a couple of days before the performance. Being Good Friday would not have helped but I suspect that other people were misled by the publicity or did not see it and the audience was fairly small with the central section almost full but few people on either side. This was a shame as both the theatre and this production deserve better and a Shakespearean comedy should have been ideal fare for the Easter holiday period.

I had not seen The Merry Wives (of Windsor) before but I had seen the operatic version, Falstaff by Verdi at Glyndebourne, so I knew something of the story. It mixes a comedy about love and a straight love story.

In the main story Falstaff tries it on with two married women and writes them identical love letters. Unfortunately they are close friends and share the letters, they then plan to get their revenge by staging incidents where Falstaff would come to see one of them then a husband would return unexpectedly and he'd leave by an ignominious and embarrassing method. Meanwhile one of the husbands, using an alternative name, was asking Falstaff for his advice about his suspicions over his wife's infidelity only to have Falstaff boast about the assignations he had lined up with his wife.

In the other lesser story a young heiress is promised by her two parents to two different suitors but is in love with a third man who is earnest but penniless (relatively).

The two stories collide in the final scene and, no surprise, everything ends happily. But it was not the ending that mattered it was the journey there and that was a journey rich with bawdy humour and strong personalities.

The production did lots of things well and cleverly used the same simple set throughout with just a few tables and chairs coming and going to denote the different scenes. A great exception to the no-prop rule was the use of a forklift to carry out the basket of washing in which Falstaff was hiding after the two men charged with the task were unable to lift it.

Making it all happen delightfully was a large cast headed by Barry Rutter as Sir John Falstaff, he also directed it. The Merry Wives, Supporting him Nicola Sanderson and Becky Hindley were splendid as they planned and set their traps for Falstaff. The rest of the cast all played their parts well in teasing the most from the situations and the personalities.

The Merry Wives was a laugh out loud riot of a play which entertained mightily and in so many ways. The perfect antidote to a wet and windy Bank Holiday.

Toast at the Rose Theatre entertained and surprised delightfully

The two main reasons that I went to see Toast are given in the poster, it starred Matthew Kelly, who I last saw in The Seagull, and was written by Richard Bean, who also wrote One Man Two Guvnors which was very funny. The other reason was that it was on at the Rose Theatre and I like to support my local theatres, the Rose is one of the three that I can walk to and is the closest of those.

With a local theatre to go to in the evening I made it a Work At Home day. I could have got there from work but that would have meant the slow train to Kingston whereas being at home I had a leisurely walk along the river instead.

I went for my usual area, the first proper row, named appropriately Row A, where seat 14 was a very reasonable £26.

The stage was set as the rest area of a large industrial bakery in Yorkshire on a busy Sunday.

We met them one at a time as they either came in ready to start their shift or to take a break. There was the usual sort of friendly banter between people who have worked together for years. Through this banter we learned something about them, one was in debt and was trying to see his car, one was in a marriage that had lost its lustre and another had ambitions for a promotion to another factory.

What was quickly apparent was that this was nothing like One Man Two Guvnors with the humour coming more that from the interplay between the characters than from any farce-like comic situation set-up. About the only moments if slapstick were the many failed attempts by all of the men (they were all men) to throw rubbish into the waste bin. The floor around it was littered with used teabags etc.

There was a serious side to the story too. The plant was on its last legs mechanically and a serious incident meant that there was a real risk that it would be closed down in favour of another newer factory. The men talked about what this would mean and it was bad news for all of them.

Toast was something like an Alan Bleasdale's TV plays in the Thatcher years, plays like Boys from the Blackstuff, that mixed politics with humour. The balance in Toast was more towards the humour than the social commentary but both played a part.

Another element came into the story with the arrival of a mature student on his first day of work there. The others were sceptical about his chances of survival given the experience of previous students. Then things took a strange turn when the student suggested that he was actually something else and was there for another reason.

There were other things going on in the play too and it was never clear where it was going until right at the unexpected end. The journey there took several twists and turns and piled on the laughs while it did so.

Being a character play put the emphasis on the actors and luckily they were all good. It was very much an ensemble performance. Matthew Kelly may have been given the main billing, and was the best known name in the cast, but he was absent from several scenes, he had some dough to mix, and so did not dominate the show.

Toast gave us humour, social commentary and a few surprises in a play that entertained easily.

Ockham's Razor return to the Rose Theatre for another magical show

Having caught Ockham's Razor almost by accident on their previous on their previous visit to the Rose Theatre I was quick to book to see them on their return.

I would have been even quicker if not for the poor way that the Rose advertises shows that are not its own productions. All there was on the website was a thumbnail picture and the title "Triple Bill" and the emails were much the same. On my initial scan I missed the show and I think it was only thanks to a comment on Twitter that I learned that this was Ockham's Razor and so was a show that I had to see.

They were only playing for a few nights and so I found myself going on a Monday evening, not a usual theatre night. I worked at home that day (often a good idea on a Monday after the pub quiz on Sunday) and that made it an easy walk in to town for the evening show. I timed my walk to get there just before the show started as experience had taught me that there was no point trying to get a drink there beforehand as the queues are too long and the bar staff too few. Something else the Rose had to fix.

I do not understand the pricing policy at the Rose, or even who decides it, but at £10 my seat in my favoured Centre Stalls Row A (47) was a steal. I would not have thought twice at paying double that and would not have had to think for too long to pay more than that.

The arrangements were very different this time. Previously they had performed in the round with the audience free to roam and while that added to the excitement they worked just as well on a traditional stage. There was not a lot on that stage, just their equipment and that was not very substantial.

Ockham's Razor do something unique, as far as I am aware, in producing shows that combine gymnastic skills with the beauty of dance and the structure of story-telling.

The opening piece, Arc, typified all of this. It was performed on a grid suspended above the stage and to make things harder the grid swung and spun. The movement was smooth and balletic rather than energetic and circus-like. The story of the three people stuck together had moments of tension, tenderness and humour - I loved the little section where they played "It".

The photograph was taken at the start of the second half with the piece Every Action that used robes to connect four people. In the simplest form one person going up meant another one coming down. The actions were more complex than that and the four performers moved together in interesting and clever ways.

The final piece was a duet on a trapeze like metal frame. Despite the name, Memento Mori (The Dance of Death) this was a slow and gentle piece where the two people flowed around and over each other beautifully.

The three pieces were quite different in the mood they created and in the equipment they used which all added to the interest and entertainment. I am still not sure how to categorise Ockham's Razor so I will just settle for saying that it is physically clever, visually exciting and thoroughly entertaining.