Blitz! at Union Theatre was joyous

I do not need an excuse to see a musical at Union Theatre having seen so many good ones there and my only problem is finding the time to do so. Blitz! was always on my radar and a visit from my sister (to visit Kew Gardens) was the spur to pick this evening and I dutifully bought three tickets at £22 each.

It was a change in personnel but the same plan; meet in the theatre cafe for a coffee while waiting for the box office to open, secure tickets in Group 1, go to Culture Grub to eat then back in time for the opening of the theatre and to claim seats in the centre of the front row.

All I knew about Blitz! was that it was by Lionel Bart, which was both a recommendation and more than I knew about other shows I have seen.

The first scene hit the ground running with most of the cast on stage singing as they sheltered from an air raid in an underground station. I almost always like songs with lots of singers and I certainly liked this one.

b.t.w. another play that I have seen, The Shelter, told the story of how Churchill was forced to allow working class people to have shelter.

The main story, possibly taking from Romeo and Juliet, was about two local families who argued constantly but two of the children fall in love with each other. A simple but effective premise.

A second theme was about another son who had gone into the army and was home for a few days before going abroad. He was a bit of a jack-the-lad and fell in with some bad people.

The blitz was the other main character in the story interrupting and destroying lives and giving the cast plenty of opportunities to sing anti-Hitler songs.

Having sent the scene quickly and successfully the musical moved forward joyously with plenty to enjoy in the story, the music and the performances. There was quite a large cast and they were called on to do a lot of dancing as well as singing. The movement was superb throughout, as was every aspect of this production. That was hardly surprising given that Phil Willmott's name is on the poster and I know from many past experiences that he creates great shows.

Jessica Martin, as the matriarch Mrs Blitztein, was the star of the show and lived up to that billing. She was more than ably supported by more people than it is possible to mention here. There were many characters in the play telling many little stories and they were all told with flair.

I had expected to enjoy Blitz!, mainly because of the various people involved in it, but it far exceeded my reasonably high expectations. It was simply joyous.

The Cherry Orchard at Union Theatre was sharp and satisfying

I am doing a pretty good job at seeing (almost) every Chekhov production in London even if it takes a bit of juggling to do so. To see The Cherry Orchard at Union Theatre I had to go into London on the weekend, a Saturday, and that was to catch the final performance.

I still think that Union Theatre undercharges a little and a ticket price of £22.50 meant a very full house. I was sitting in the front row, as always, so could not tell if it was completely full but it looked pretty close.

I had made something of a day of it in London going to Barbican Theatre for a matinee before walking down to Union Theatre in Southwark, taking in a visit to a Paul cafe and PokemonGo Raid along the way. The Millennium Bridge was ridiculously busy and needs widening.

I got to Union Theatre around 6pm and comforted myself with a pint of Kozel while waiting for the Box Office to open at 6:30pm. Once I had claimed my Batch 1 token I went to Culture Grub for my usual Szechuan style vegetable curry, returning to the theatre in good time to be at the front of the queue, i.e. to be number one not just one of the first ten.

The staging surprised me a little because in the first two shows in this series of three there had been stairs up on either side of the stage but this time is was set conventionally. And neatly. It just oozed faded Russian country house.

I had seen Cherry Orchard a few times, and as recently as the year before, and while I would not claim to be anything like word-perfect I did quickly spot a significant difference. Admittedly if I had looked at the poster I might have been less surprised.

This Cherry Orchard, written in 1903, was moved forward a few years to 1917 and the Russian Revolution. This added to the existing theme in the play where the landed gentry were losing out to the new merchant class. The Revolution took this redistribution of land a stage further. I think it worked well; The Cherry Orchard is partially a political play and to ignore the Revolution (which Chekhov obviously did not know was coming) left this thread effectively unfinished.

The rest of The Cherry Orchard is about the large cast of characters, their reactions (or lack of them) to the political situation and to each other and this Cherry Orchard covered this supremely. I got very frustrated with the people refusing to recognise what was about to happen to them, happy for the people who were unbowed by the changes and tearful for the couple who never quite came together. The non-proposal scene was the most poignant in the play.

Judging by the running time, something just under two hours with an interval, quite a bit had been cut here and there (much to the confusion of the man next to me trying to follow the script in Chinese) but Chekhov can be wordy and cutting a theme or two makes little difference to the totality of the play.

The ending was familiar enough though the thing that happens happened to another person. That change worked well too.

This was a very delightful and enjoyable version of The Cherry Orchard made sharper by its slight but significant shift in time.

Carmen 1808 at Union Theatre was a bold experiment that really worked

Carmen is probably my favourite opera, it ought to be given the number of times that I have seen it, so I was always going to be interested in seeing Carmen 1808 at Union Theatre, particularly as it was at Union Theatre where I had seen so many excellent musical shows and it was by The Phil Willmott Company of which the same is true.

There was only one date in the run that I could make which made the decision easier and I duly booked myself a place for 13 February for £22.5.

The evening did not get off to a good start and a late running meeting meant that I missed the usual 5:43 train from Teddington which would have got me there spot on 6:30 when the box office opened. Instead I caught a train soon after 6pm and got there at 6:45pm. That put me in the third batch for entry, the first time ever that I had not been in the first.

Then my luck changed and despite my late admittance to the theatre I was still able to claim a place in the front row.

The first thing that struck me was the similarity to the stage design for Heartbreak House, which was understandable as it was in the same season. There were differences but the basic design of a raised section in the middle and steps up on both sides was the same.

Carmen 1808 was billed as a musical rather than an opera and running at ninety minutes straight through it was considerably shorter than the opera so I had no real idea what to expect. Admittedly I could have read the details online beforehand but doing that is almost cheating.

I am sure that there is a word for this that I do not know but Carmen 1808 was a companion piece to Carmen sharing some of the characters, locations,  themes and songs but it was also had a very different plot. More than a homage but less than a remake. Somebody should do a Venn Diagram.

The main story was about Napoleon's victory over Spain and the efforts of the resistance. Alongside that we still had the love triangle/square/pentagram between Carmen, a soldier, a woman from his past and Carmen's other lovers. There were several other elements from the original Carmen, like the reading of the cards. All nice to see if you knew Carmen but also understandable if it was new to you.

The music followed the same plan, some songs were copied and changed along the way. Toreador had to be in there and it appear as a song about swearing allegiance to the Spanish flag. There was no toreador.

The singing was more musical than opera with many pieces using the whole cast and there were fewer solo pieces. Toreador was an example of this, in the opera just the toreador sings the song but here it was everybody. There were some solos though and the painter/narrator was the star here.

One thing that worked very well was using the overture as a big dance number to open the show and to reprise it at the end. I also loved the comic song that was inserted along the way. This was the one time that the French featured and they told us in song just how good they were. The song produced my favourite line of the night, "Did we mensh, we are French?".

Carmen 1808 was a nice mix of a dark story, France's subjugation of Spain, with the light human foibles that drive so much of life, particularly when there are people like Carmen around. And being a new story I was keen to see how it ended. I was engrossed.

The concept of changing something as familiar as Carmen into a musical and playing around with it so much may sound sacrilegious but it really worked and I had a lot of fun watching it unfold in front of me.

The Hired Man at Union Theatre was beautiful

The Hired Man was one of those easy choices. I had seen three Howard Goodall musicals at Union Theatre a couple of years ago and loved them all and that was more than enough to get me back there for a fourth helping.

Having the story based on a book by Melvyn Bragg only made it more attractive.

A bargain at £22.50.

Normally a trip to a theatre in that area (there are four that I go to fairly regularly) means eating at Culture Grub first but they were closed for refurbishment so that meant looking for a Plan B. That was an easy too and I stayed in the theatre cafe and had a halloumi wrap with some interesting accompaniments and, er, chips.

My usual good planning got me a top ten ticket which got me in the first batch of people let into the theatre and that got me a middle seat in the front row in what proved to be a full house, they even brought a couple of chairs through from the bar.

The Hired Man told us the story of a casual agricultural worker, his two brothers and their friends and lovers in the early part of the twentieth century. They were people at the bottom of the economic tree, the sort of people Thomas Hardy also wrote about, and their lives were never settled, never comfortable. There were plenty of moments of happiness, times spent with lovers, time at the races and drinks with friends in the pub but there was also the discomfort and danger of working in the pits and the even worse discomfort and danger of the trenches in the Great War.

It was a grim story that was, somehow, never bleak.

Holding everything together was the music which did everything that I hoped it would do from my previous experiences of Goodall's work. The mood and the structure kept changing with soloists, diets, trios and choruses providing different soundscapes while some themes were repeated to make new tunes sound familiar. There was clearly a Goodall approach at work here and I felt he could write musicals in the way that other people write episodes of The Archers and they would all be good.

Sitting in the front row proved to be a good choice and I felt totally immersed in the story. That story gripped me because I did not know it, it was not obvious where it was going and there was always something interesting going on.

There was a lot of activity too with the large cast dancing quite a bit and generally moving around a lot. It was an ensemble performance and everybody played their part well.

With story by Melvyn Bragg and music by Howard Goodall my exceptions were clearly set and The Hired Man sounded exactly like that. It was beautiful (and grim!).

An excellent Three Sisters at The Union Theatre

I have seen Chekhov's Three sisters five times in recent years and all of the performances were good or better. This was possibly the best.

I go to all the Chekov that I can and The Union Theatre is one of my favourite theatres so this was unmissable. Stick a £15 price tag on the ticket and it would have been a crime.

It was good to get back to The Union Theatre again after a gap of a few months. That was nothing personal, just a lot of competition from other theatres for my evenings. I know what I am doing at The Union and that meant being there by 6:30pm when the box office opened to collect my ticket, popping along to Culture Grub for a Sichuan style curry and then back to the cafe to take into the first half of the performance.

I was first in to the theatre (after careful positioning by the door) and was pleased to see the stage set more or less in the round. It had been set traditionally on my previous visit to the new venue. I chose a seat in the middle of the row on the far side.

The stage was set as a living room with drinks out ready for a celebration, it was the 20th birthday of the youngest sister, Irina. Apart from the piano there were a couple of seats and that was about it. I like productions that use props sparingly so this was a good sign.

The cast were introduced to us gradually and carefully with each new arrival being name-checked for our benefit. Each character looked right to me and that continued throughout the play and the casting proved to be the play's main strength and that is why I thought so highly of the production.

The three sisters' lives were changed by two arrivals, the new army commander, Vershinin (Ashley Russell), and their brother's girlfriend Natasha (Francesca Burgoyne), and they were my two stars of the evening in what was a strong cast overall with no weak points.

The production played on the strength of having the large cast and there was often more than one thing happening at once. This was particularly true when relationships were forming between two of the sisters and two of the army men.

Every version of Three Sisters that I have seen has been a little different but without the chance to study the scripts it is difficult for me to say what and where the differences were. This was certainly a shorter version than some others and seemed to be faster paced because of that. In this edit the main theme was Vershinin refrain, "Happiness is not for us", though there was still space for Itina and Tusenbach to debate the virtue of work and to cosy up to each other a little.

I knew the story and yet I was still captivated by it. It was a rich story with significant threads for each of the sisters and their brother plus quite a few dramatic things happening elsewhere.

Above all this was an entertaining and rewarding production; entertaining because of the story and the characters, and rewarding because of the human themes covered.

Bad Girls was another excellent musical from the Union Theatre

I had never seen the TV show Bad Girls and I am not sure that I had even heard about it so that was not my reason for going to see the musical based on it. My excuse was the usual one, I wanted to go to the theatre that evening and in looking through the listings of my favourite theatres I came across Bad Girls at the Union Theatre. I had seen many good musicals there, and other plays too, so it was an easy decision to part with £20.

I had been at the Park Theatre in the afternoon and that worked brilliantly as that finished early enough for me to have a coffee there before walking for an hour of so down from Finsbury Park to Southwark arriving there just before 6:30pm when the box office opened enabling me to get a coveted first ten ticket.

That then left me with an hour to eat something in the pub across the road and to enjoy a well deserved pint of beer to refresh me after the walk.

It is always a surprise to see how the seats are arranged at the Union Theatre and as one of the first people in (that's what a top ten ticket gets you) I had to make a quick assessment on which seats are likely to be the best. This time the seats were arranged in two long rows with the performance area in the middle. I took a seat in the front row half way down on the right hand side. It proved to be a good choice.

Bad Girls told the stories of several women in prison and of some of the people charged with looking after them. There were a lot of characters to engage with and several plot lines to follow and that made it a rich experience. I was really interested to see how things would work out for them all.

This was not a sympathetic look at prison life either. The women definitely deserved to be in there because of the seriousness of the crimes that they had committed, though there were sometimes some mitigating circumstances that the legal system was not able to make much allowance for. Some of the prison officers were not very nice either, particularly the man who thought he was entitled to sex with the women prisoners and got his entitlement regularly.

This was a women's prison so it was expected that there would be a relationship between two women somewhere, though which two it was came as something of a surprise, and for the second musical in a row at the Union the prettiest song of the evening was a gay love song.

The rest of the music was pleasing too and there was a good mix of solo, group and chorus singing which utilised all of the voices and played with their combinations. The balance between the songs and also between the songs and the speech worked very well; the songs were part of the story and there were enough of them for this to be a true musical (rather than a play with songs).

All of the story threads progressed nicely and I was quickly engaged with both the plots and the characters. This was set in a prison after all so there was lots of grimness and there was never going to be a fairy-tale level happy ending but it still managed to be uplifting and refreshing.

The Union Theatre has a wonderful habit of finding unusual and little-known musicals and staging them brilliantly. Bad Girls was simply excellent.

Buoyed by an emotional and skilful Road Show at the Union Theatre

I am not a great Sondheim fan so Road Show might not have appealed to me had it not been on at the Union Theatre where I had seen plenty of good musicals that I had known nothing about beforehand.

The story sounded interesting and that helped. It was the story of two brothers living at the start of the twentieth century when the USA offered the American Dream.

Besides, after seeing a few excellent but dark plays a musical seemed like a good way to spend a Wednesday evening.

So I paid my £20 and got the final ticket for that day. Several other days were already sold out. That was good to see both as a recommendation for the show and for the health of the theatre.

By coincidence, that health was confirmed the same day when I got an email from them saying that they would soon be moving to new premises in another railway arch on the other side of the road. It will be bigger and better, they mentioned hot water!, and I am looking forward to going there. I'll also be contributing towards their supporters' fund.

My routine for the Union Theatre is well practiced and very effective. I left the office at 5:45pm and walked down from Kings Cross to Southwark arriving at the theatre just as the box office opened at 6:30pm and that got me one of the desired first ten tickets, it was actually number one! That left me a comfortable hour to stroll along to Culture Grub for some Chinese food. I got back to the theatre in time to get a coffee to take in with me.

Around 7:25pm the first ten ticket holders were invited in and I politely let an elderly couple in before me. They took two seats at the end of the front row of the central block that left the centre seat free for me.

The stage was set much as it had been for Fear and Misery of the Third Reich with the seating along one of the long sides, the musicians in the far right corner and a large picture frame with a gauze-like material at the centre back of the stage.

The story started with the death of the brothers' father which caused them to venture out to seek their fortunes, starting with a gold rush in Alaska.

One of the boys was hard working and the other spent most of his time in the local bar, which he subsequently won in a card game. The boys fell out and went their separate ways.

We followed those separate ways through their ups and downs and the occasional reunions. Along the way we discovered that one of them was gay and one of the nicest tunes of the evening was a love duet made all the more poignant by the context, this was 1930's USA not 2010's Brighton.

There were plenty of other good tunes and I unexpectedly found my foot tapping throughout the evening. I had expected a few good songs but I had not expected the music to be as consistently enjoyable as it was.

Helping the songs immensely was the large cast all of whom sang, acted and moved well. It frustrates me that so many theatre websites do not do proper cast lists, though I accept that many have programmes that they want to sell that would give me the information I am after, so I'll only mention Andre Refig as the older brother, Wilson Mizner, who had the voice that I liked the most.

I also liked the young woman who blew me a kiss at one point though I'll have to admit that as a rare male in a female dominated front row I was an obvious target. This was during one of the all cast singing and dancing numbers that were interspersed between the more personal songs by and between the three male leads.

Road Show was fairly short, around 100 minutes and so it dispensed with an interval. I approved as even though the show was episodic, often leaping forward a few years, there was no obvious break and to insert one would have broken the flow of the journey.

There was lots to enjoy in Road Show and while there was sadness and anger in it the overall impression was a positive one and I left the theatre buoyed by both the story and the skill of all the people who delivered it. It was indeed a great way to spend a Wednesday evening.

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich at the Union Theatre

The Union Theatre is high up in my list of favourite theatres and that means that I see most of the shows put on there. Things go in phases though and after going there five time in the first half of last year I did not go at all in the second.

What brought me back was the name Bertolt Brecht. I am far from being  Brecht expert but I knew enough to know that I should know more.

I needed to be in that part of London to see an exhibition anyway so it made sense to plan a day around the two so the Saturday became domestics in the morning, galleries in the afternoon and theatre in the evening, with lots of walking along the way.

The weather was unkind late afternoon which made a great excuse to curtail the walking and seek refuge in the Union Jack pub opposite the theatre. The resting and recovering was greatly helped by a couple of pints to drink and vegetarian bangers and mash to eat. I was in there for almost an hour and a half so was able to do some reading too, I had my iPad with me and there are always lots of unread comics on it.

I left the pub briefly at 6:30pm to join the short queue for the theatre box office to collect my ticket (£20). I was in that queue early enough to secure one of the first ten tickets, I actually got number 8, so that I would be in the first group of people let into the theatre at 7:25. I went back to the pub to continue my rest before returning at the allotted time.

My careful planning got me the seat I wanted in the centre of front-row. Facing me was this pile of junk, the purpose of which I never established!

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich was never going to be a comedy but, other than that, I did not know what to expect so I sat back and went along for the ride.

The story, in summary, was the well-known one of Nazi persecution of Jews in the period immediate before WWII. What made this telling more poignant was that it was written by somebody who was there at the time so the situations were described honestly and were not coloured by hindsight.

This was a time when the Jews as a collective were being vilified but a few individuals were still untouched because of their position in society or their usefulness to senior government people. It was an unholy combination of tyranny, suspicion and corruption. Of course in this case it led to an extreme outcome but it was hard not to see the similarities to the way that migrants and refugees are portrayed today, and that made the play even more relevant and compelling.

The message of the play was told though a series of short scenes, with repeating characters, where we saw the persecutors, the persecuted, the scared of being persecuted next, the unsure of how to behave and the carried along without thinking too much. The atmosphere that this generated was tense and dangerous, but also gripping.

The cast were excellent throughout despite the difficulties of some of the roles, it was uncomfortable enough for me to hear people say "Heil Hitler" so it must have been hard for them to say it and with conviction too.

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich was a powerful play delivered with skill and care. It is hard to describe such an unpleasant story as enjoyable but there was enjoyment from the insights it gave.

The Spitfire Grill at the Union Theatre tugged at the heart strings deftly

And to think that I nearly missed this treat.

I had always intended to go to the theatre that evening but the question was which one? There were interesting sounding shows in other theaters that were ending their runs that week but I chose to go and see The Spitfire Grill at the Union Theatre instead, a decision based mostly on my previous experience at the Union and also its convenient location.

That location would have been more convenient had I managed to work in London that day as planned but a looming important deadline took me to Reading instead.

I managed to leave there promptly to catch a train to Paddington and then a couple of tubes to Southwark, arriving there at a very hospitable 6:45pm. That was plenty of time for a Chinese curry in Culture Grub, which was just as well as the pub opposite was not doing food that evening for some reason. I got back to the theatre just in time to get a latte before the doors opened.

The seats were oddly arranged in a "U" shape with the bulk of the stage above the U. The front-row seats at the base of the "U" were taken by the only people to get into the theatre before me (I had ticket No. 3) which happened to be a group of six and the first one in claimed seats for the rest of them. There were no props on stage to suggest how the space would be used and I settled for a front-row seat at the top of the "U" on the left side as that looked as though it would be the closest to the action. It was. And only £18 too.

All I knew about The Spitfire Grill was that it was a musical set in America so I settled down for an evening of surprises.

The story started with a young woman, Percy (!), contemplating her imminent release from prison after serving five years. A pretty picture of autumnal leaves in a magazine had given her the destination of Gilead, a small town in Wisconsin. There she was met by the local policeman who arranged for her to live at The Spitfire Grill in return for working there. The grill was run by a cantankerous oldish woman, Hannah, on her own.

We quickly learned some disturbing things about the small town and the people in it. The town was suffering from the closure of the local quarry and this had a particular impact on one of the men who felt lessened without real work to do. Hannah's husband had died soon after hearing of the death of their only son, Eli.

Once the scene was set things developed quickly both in the story and the characters. To make the two points with one example, when Hannah needed more help in the Grill following an accident she called on the help of the wife of the frustrated husband mentioned earlier and the wife grew new strength as a result and was able to stand up to the husband who had been used to telling her (and his gang in the quarry) what to do. He did not take that well.

The main story concerned a plan to raffle off the Spitfire Grill in a competition and other stories flowed around this. There was a love interest for Percy, more details of Percy's past emerged (in particular, the reasons why she had been in prison and then the reasons behind her committing that crime) and the husband and wife moved apart aggressively.

At the Beck's break it was hard to tell which way the stories would go.

There were more shocks in the second half and as this was a happy musical all of the plot lines nudged towards satisfactory endings but it was the mood of the piece that mattered more than individual events. Percy in looking at the town of Gilead through new eyes could only see its beauty and she helped others to see it too. There were lots of pretty songs about forests. All of the many conflicts were resolved (to some extent) through forgiveness, such as the town's people forgiving Percy for her terrible crime. There were lots of pretty songs about emotions.

Percy was at the heart of the musical but did not dominate it. Hannah was as prominent and as powerful, while the husband, wife and policeman also had major roles. They all acted and sung well. The songs were evocative and emotional with just the right level of repetition to give them the catchiness musicals need.

The Spitfire Grill was a beautiful musical with good characters and engaging stories. It was most definitely the right thing for me to go and see on that Friday night.

Dark and innovative Henry V at the Union Theatre

I have seen a few Shakespeare adaptations at small theatres in the last few years and they have all been good or better, including two (Lear and Play of Thrones) at the Union Theatre, so there was never really any choice to make about going to see Henry V.

Like Lear, Henry V had a woman in the lead role only this time it had women in all of the roles. That was clearly unusual and interesting but that was not the main reason that I wanted to see it. More important to me were the reputations of Shakespeare and the Union Theatre and it helped that I has seen some positive comments posted on Twitter, my main source of information on current shows.

Because work was messing me about regarding where I worked and how long I had to work for (working on bids always always means late nights, which is a sign that we do not manage them well) it was a late decision to go on this Thursday evening. So late that the online booking system had closed and I had to head to the theatre to get a ticket. The online system had indicated availability earlier in the day so I was not too worried. Besides, the worst case is that they would be sold out in which case I would still have had a good walk from Kings Cross to Southwark.

It took me about 45 minutes to walk to the theatre from the office, a walk I had done several times by then, and I got there around 6:45pm only a quarter of an hour after the box office opened. I paid my £15 (a bargain) and was pleased to be given a ticket number of less than ten which meant that I would be in the first group of people allowed in.

I also had time to pop across the road for a much appreciated pint (it had been a hot day for the walk) and my usual nachos to provide some calories.

Going into the Union Theatre is always exciting. The stage area is hidden by a wall with entrances either side and it is not until you walk though one of those entrances that you know how the stage is laid out and then a quick decision has to be made on where to sit.

This time the seating was U-shaped and I took a seat in the front row half way down the right side of the U. In the centre of the stage was a table with candles and a crown and around the stage was a line of folding chairs. The open end of the U was hazed with mist made spookier by low lighting. The cast were hidden in there chanting.

Once we were settled they came into the central area, some standing and others taking advantage of the chairs.

Henry V, despite the battles, is a play dominated by speech and with little action. Shakespeare recognises this an opens with an almost apologetic narration explaining that great things will happen but we will need our imaginations to see them. This production recognised the play's limitations too and instilled life into the long dialogues with lots of movement, plenty of direct eye contact with the audience and some clever lighting. They also made the French ambassador wear a clown's mask and sing Frère Jacques.

I seemed to be man-marked by a Welsh woman, look you, who looked at me a lot and spent some time standing on the chair directly in front of me leaving me to contemplate her toes which drew the thought that they should have been painted, preferably black, as they had been in Duncton Wood.

The play followed the lines that it had the last time that I saw it though some of the language was a little different and a little more profane. Essentially the play is a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of Henry V in which everybody tells us how great he is and he does great things. The greatest great thing was beating the French at Agincourt when vastly outnumbered and with the loss of only 25 men against 10,000 on the French side. This is not entirely accurate historically.

There was a rawness and a darkness to the play that I liked. This was reinforced by both the low level of lighting and the black boiler suits that the cast wore but most of it came from the strong and harsh delivery of the words.

Henry V is far from my favourite Shakespeare play but it is a Shakespeare play and this production captured its mood neatly and enjoyably.

The musical version of Duncton Wood at the Union Theatre was lovely, if somewhat bloody

All that I knew of Duncton Wood when I saw the musical announced was that it was a popular book with animals in it. I assumed that it was rabbits or a mix of species but that would have been something like Watership Down or The Animals of Farthing Wood. Duncton Wood was about moles.

I picked a Friday performance to be reasonably sure that I could work in London that day and so could make the gentle stroll down from Kings Cross to Southwark and still have plenty of time to eat beforehand.

I had to go to the theatre first for the opening of the box office at 6:30 were good planning got me there first and so I was able to secure one of the all-important first ten tickets which would get me into the theatre as part of the first group. It is a slightly unusual ticketing system but I think that it works very well. I wish places with awkward queueing systems, like the Bush, would it.

For food I went to one of my new favourite places, Culture Grub on The Cut close to the Young Vic, where I had my new usual Chinese style curry. One of the reasons for going there was to avoid having a beer in a pub and I went for a grapefruit and honey juice instead. The food at the restaurant was very good and came very quickly, just what I wanted before a theatre date.

I got back to the Union Theatre around 7:15pm, in good time for the play. There was a little jostling for position from the people who knew how things worked there but I am not unskilled at jostling and I was the first one in. It is always a surprise walking into the theatre there as the performance area is always laid out differently and a quick decision has to be made on where to sit. This time the seating was L-shaped, running along two sides of the stage. I chose a seat in the middle of the long leg of the L. It proved to be a good choice.

I might have been alone in the audience in not knowing what to expect; it even took me a few minutes to work out that they were all moles.

The story, in case you do not know it either, was steeped in fantasy with one group of moles seeking to return to the old ways when they worshipped seven stones and another group wanting to retain their power over the moles. These were both groups of stones moles and there were also pasture moles involved.

What followed was a tense drama with groups of moles fighting each other, individual rivalries between some of the moles and some love affairs between others. It was somewhat bloody too with one of the elders and one of the pasture moles being killed before the break. I thought that might have been it for the violence but in the second half it got worse and several children were amongst those murdered.

It was not all violence, there was a fair amount of sex too. Who knew that moles bonk face-to-face like humans do?

I liked the story because while there were some obvious bits (the goodies beat the baddies in the end) there were quite a few surprises and diversions along the way and so while the general direction was clear it was always uncertain what would happen next.

The musical side of the performance worked very well. There was a large cast with several important roles and that meant lots of loud choruses, plenty of solo ballads and several cosy duets. The music was reassuringly approachable with some of the themes repeating, as they should in a musical.

I was impressed by the singing in all its combinations though in my view the baddies had not only the best tunes they had some of the best singing too, and the one who impressed me the most was second-in-command baddie Rune, but that is just me being my usual unfair self and picking one when all were good.

The rest of the production was good too with plenty of movement, atmospheric lighting, a simple set, evocative costumes, striking make-up and good use of sound effects for rain etc. This was another example of when being in a small theatre works best as the total effect was very immersive with all of the elements of the play set out just before me. It is hard to tell what colour a mole's toenails are painted from several rows back in the stall.

Duncton Wood was my sort of musical as it had a good story touched with darkness, fine music well played and sung, and a rich production that teased all the strengths out of both.

Whistle Down the Wind at the Union Theatre was glorious

All that I knew about Whistle Down the Wind previously was that it was the name of a song by Nick Heyward from the eighties and I guessed that it had nothing to do with this show. But there was something evocative about the title and my previous experiences of the Union Theatre had all been good (or better) so I decided to go.

I managed to work in Kings Cross that day and as I am on a health kick at the moment and I had plenty of time, I walked all the way down to Southwark arriving there just in time for a coffee before the box office opened at 6:30. The first target was to get one of the first ten tickets, which I managed comfortably.

That then gave me a almost an hour to go across the road to the Union Jack for some food and something to eat. I went for the Nachos as I had on my two previous visits as I like nachos and I like sticking to things that I like.

Then, armed with my top-ten ticket, I went back to the Union to join the queue to make the most of that ticket. It is just possible that the man who got in to the theatre ahead of me had been in the box office queue before me so I did not begrudge him taking my favourite seat too much. I took one next to him.

The stage was set out as on my previous two visits with the performance area on the right and the seats arranged in a wide horse-shoe on the left. As I sat facing the stage the small band of musicians were in the corner on the far right.

The story of Whistle Down the Wind was almost silly, some children find an escaped convict hiding in a barn, convince themselves that he is Jesus Christ returned and conspire to hide him from the adults. But there was far more to this than the story.

The heart of the piece was the many emotional relationships between the children, their friends, their father and his sister, the convict and the other adults. This was a slow moving piece that wallowed in the emotional highs and lows of the unusual situation and the usual hardships of the time.

The music and singing heightened the emotions with slow powerful tunes and plenty of group singing of the sort that I enjoy. I also liked the mix of combinations of singers with solos, duets, small groups, larger groups, larger groups and mixes of male and female voices. I think I prefer musicals where the singing roles are shared widely rather than given to just a few lead singers, but do not quote me on that.

A particular favourite scene of mine was towards the end when all of the children formed a line around the barn to keep the adults out and sang loudly and proudly. It was a magnificent moment in an excellent musical.

Whistle Down the Wind really surprised me. I went there with few expectations and hoping just to be reasonably entertained but I left in absolute awe of what I had just witnessed. It moved me in a way that I did not expect to me moved and in a way that very few musicals have. Would definitely see it again.

Play of Thrones at the Union Theatre was magnificent modern Shakespeare

My introduction to the Union Theatre was with their magnificent Lear and so there was no way that I was going to miss Play of Thrones, their take on Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy.

Play of Thrones came with high expectations thanks to my recent experiences at the Union Theatre and of other modern Shakespeare adaptations. These expectations were comfortable exceeded in an exceptional performance.

But first I had to get there.

Work took me to Birmingham that day but I was able to leave a little early to catch the 17:00 train back to Euston which got me there at 18:15. From there the Northern Line whisked me down to Borough and I was left with a five minute walk to the theatre. Or rather to The Union Jack pub opposite where I went first for a quick bite and a pint before the show.

The good planning continued and I was able to bag one of the best seats in the house, in the middle of the front row. There I was confronted by two aluminium ladders, clearly this was going to be an unusual adaptation. I like unusual.

I had not seen any of the Henry VI plays before and could remember very little, if anything, of the real history so the story was new to me and I had nothing to compare it to. Phil Willmott's clever adaptation (he was also responsible for Lear) anticipated that book-ended the play with famous lines from Henry V and Richard III to place Henry VI in context.

Stripping the three plays down to one made for relentless action (physical and verbal) and I  never lost that I-wonder-what-happens-next? buzz.

Propelling the drama was a large cast of strong characters strongly portrayed. These were characters I wanted to scream at, marry or fight alongside.

Perhaps it is my Yorkshire birthright swaying my judgement but the character I felt closest too was the Duchess of York played by Penelope Day. Two other women stood out, Margaret of Anjou (Emma Kelly) and Joan or Arc (Abigail Carter-Simpson), and so did two men, the future Richard III (Michael Keane) and Duke of Suffolk (Gavin Kerr). Note that this is a comment on the characters, not the actors, and the lesser characters had good actors too.

These characters bounced off and around each other generating strong passions and deep hatreds. It was hard not to cheer and wince at the same time when Richard tortured Suffolk or to squirm when Margaret and Suffolk conducted their affair. There was quite a bit of torture, a fair bit of hanky-panky and a great deal of killing. The connection to Game of Thrones was obvious.

But there was far more to Play of Thrones than riding on the back of Game of Thrones' popularity with tales of ambition and revenge. The production was fast paced and imaginative, e.g. good use was made of the relatively small cast and the ladders to simulate the many battles.

The net result of all this was that Play of Thrones made three of Shakespeare's weakest plays, which I had never seen advertised much less been to see, something thrilling, exciting and unforgettable. I would go and see it again tomorrow if I could.

Girlfriends at the Union Theatre was a very musical musical

The first two shows in the Howard Goodall season at the Union Theatre, the dreaming and Love Story, were very lovely and so I made sure that I got to see the final show, Girlfriends.

Not unusually (sadly) the best that my careful planning could do was the final Friday evening of the run. At least the planning was good enough to get me a seat for the show which sold out soon afterwards.

I was able to work in London that day and that was a big help. I can get back to London from Reading in time for evening performances but that is fraught with risks (delayed trains etc.) and allows little time for food. The people in the pasty shop on Reading Station are starting to recognise me. So it was nice to be able to hop on a 63 bus which took me straight from Kings Cross to Southwark Station.

My plan was to dive into the nearest pub to get some food (and a beer!) but the nearest ones were several people deep outside and looked busier than the average rush hour tube inside. Slightly worried I walked away from the station along Union Street toward the theatre and was delighted to find The Union Jack opposite. It was busy but there was enough space to get inside and I managed to get a table towards the back. The food was excellent, well price and delivered with great care. I'll be back.

Having got used to how the Union Theatre works, I collected my ticket from the box office when it opened at 6:30pm before going to the pub. There was a short queue already but I was able to secure ticket number 10 which meant that I would be in the first group let in. Job done.

Entering the Union Theatre is rather like entering Narnia from a wardrobe and it always takes a moment or two to make sense of the layout after entering from the darkness. This time the stage was set up almost traditionally with all the seats arranged in three rows along the left-hand side. I was first in and eagerly grabbed the middle seat in the front row.

Girlfriends, as the poster honestly suggested, was the story of a group of women in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) during WWII. This premise made for an unusual musical with ten female voices and only two men (pilots). These were used to good effect and there was a lot of group singing throughout the show.

There was also a lot of group movement, like squad bashing, and the choreography was a defining feature of the show. This came to a delightful head in a duet between one of the girls and a pilot that was a neat mix of dancing and acting (while singing), i.e. the dance helped to tell the story rather than just being there for decoration.

That story was a fairly simple one of an assortment of young women thrown together, for different reasons, during the war and of two young men who faced the high possibility of death every time they took to the skies. The women reacted and adjusted differently to the situation and there were several running plot lines about their personal lives, such as the Scottish woman who was desperate to go home when she heard about the bombing of Glasgow.

The simple plot left space for the music and movement, space which they gleefully filled. Good music does not need a plot, as Tristan und Isolde proves. There is always a balance between the various components of a musical or opera but that does not mean that they all need to have the same weight, only that the total weight is enough to satisfy the intellect and the soul. Girlfriends got it right.

One thing that I did find a little hard to get used to was that all the women wore identical uniforms and they all had identical 40's hairstyles so it was hard for me to tell some of them apart! I caught myself looking for distinguishing features in hands and legs.

The music was the, by then, familiar Howard Goodall sound with lots of catchy well-structured tunes that were repeated in snatches as themes to the story and also to improve their familiarity. It's a simple trick and it worked (again).

While there were clearly, and expectedly, some musical similarities between the three shows they proved to be a colourful combination; Girlfriends had a large group of women, Love Story was about one couple and the dreaming had a large and diverse cast of characters. That variety helped to make the Howard Goodall Season the success that it was.

Girlfriends was a fitting finale to the excellent season that was only let down by being so short! I was completely unaware of Howard Goodall's musicals beforehand but now I will make more of an effort to seek them out.

Lovely Love Story at the Union Theatre

I certainly had more important things to do on the Sunday afternoon but none better.

With an early start to my holiday the next day, and things to clear before doing so, there was plenty to do at home but I had enjoyed the first part of the Howard Goodall Season at the Union Theatre, the dreaming, so much that I was determined to see the second part and this was the only performance that I could get to. So I went.

The Union Theatre has the advantage for me of being a short brisk walk away from Waterloo and so I could get there and back fairly quickly to minimise the time lost to important chores. I had to make some allowance for the Sunday timetable and possible delays but in the end I got there just after 2pm. I though that was early but I was given ticket number 25 so quite a few people had tried harder then me to get one of the best seats.

I used the spare half hour wisely by supping a Becks.

The Union Theatre loads people in groups of ten so I was in the third group. I was first in of that group and that won me a front row seat in one corner of the stage. That was plenty good enough.

I know that I had not seen the film and am I pretty certain that I did not read the book either but some of the plot had seeped through to my consciousness, something to do with ice hockey,  death and love means never having to say you're sorry. That relative ignorance was bliss and I was able to sit down and let the story take me wherever it wanted to go.

Howard Goodall had taken a fairly standard approach to the music with an opening song for the whole cast that was echoed at the end and with plenty of pretty catchy tunes in the middle some of which were also repeated to help them to stick in the memory.

It worked, as it had at the dreaming, and I caught several people humming tunes at the break and at the end.

The story impressed me less. The man was rather unpleasant toward both his family and his girlfriend/wife. I was hoping that it was him who died so I was even sadder at the ending when it wasn't.

The production was neatly unobtrusive. It used props sparingly and these were sometimes swapped in one corner of the stage while the action happened in another. That helped the story to flow which it needed to do.

This was a simple love story with only two parties so the musical relied a lot on their skills and they were both good. Perhaps it was because I cared for her more but the woman, Victoria Serra, was the heart and soul of the show for me. The couple were supported by a small and very able cast that sang beautifully and acted tenderly.

Love Story was never going to be my sort of story, even less so when the wrong one of them died, but the music and the singing more than made up for the plot and I left very happy and vindicated in my decision to sacrifice a busy afternoon to see it.

the dreaming at the Union Theatre was all sorts of beautiful

There were various reasons why I was keen to see the dreaming and the Shakespeare connection was the least of them.

My initial interest came from the composer, Howard Goodall. I would hardly claim to be familiar with his music, apart from the Red Dwarf theme obviously, but I had seen him talk about musing on TV often enough to know something about his character. My second interest came from the Union Theatre as I had seen a blistering version of Lear on by first visit there. I also liked the space, small intimate theatres are my thing.

My planning for the day went well and after some time exploring Somerset House I still had plenty of time to eat at The Refinery in Southwark Street before heading to the cafe at the Union Theatre for some coffee and cake, always a good start to an evening.

The routine had changed slightly from my first visit and this time they let people in according to the ticket number they were given when they arrived. Unaware of this, I had not claimed my ticket immediately on arrival so, sporting number 12, I was let in with the second group. That was good enough to get a front row (only row, actually) seat on the right-hand side, much where I had sat for parts of Lear.

Another difference this time was that the rows of seats were away from the walls rather than being up against them. This was to create space for the multitude of characters to move around. That made the main stage area even smaller and even more intimate. Lovely.

the dreaming was pretty much A Midsummer Night’s Dream but was also noticeably different. It had magic potions to make the wrong people fall in love with each other and had a play within the play but the lovers were gentlefolk in WWI era England and the play was about St George slaying the dragon.

There was a large cast and even then most of the actors had to double-up as gentlefolk and woodfolk to cover all the parts. A large cast meant a wide range of voices and the opportunity to combine them in various pleasurable ways.

The music was superbly constructed so that it flowed like one piece, much more like an opera than a play with disparate songs added. It was all very pretty and very English turn-of-the-century too and called to mind Butterworth, Parry and Bridge (from my limited knowledge of such things). The success of the music was seen in the way that it hung on the lips of the audience as we left.

The lyrics were poetic and more complex than is sometimes the case with musicals that prefer to tell simple stories with simple songs. The Shakespearean feel was maintained in the new words even down the the bawdy nature of some of them.

The production was amazing and accomplished so much with a few costumes and fewer props. When they wanted us to see a river they just told us that it was there are we saw it.

Everything about the show was magical; the music, the lyrics, the singing, the acting, the movement, the staging and the interaction with the audience. It was an immensely rich experience with so much going on all the time, not least some of the characters crouching behind me to hide from those on the main stage.

The best news is that the dreaming was just the first part of a Howard Goodall season of three musicals. I will also be going to the other two.

Imaginative and intense Lear at the Union Theatre

The reason that I go to so much theatre, especially at the smaller venues, is that it is normally good and sometimes you get to see something as exceptional as this production of Lear.

Not for the first time I had Twitter to thank for seeing it. I had tweeted my disappointment at the National Theatre's King Lear when I got a reply telling me about Lear at the Union Theatre. It was the same play but with a female lead and so the slightly different title.

I had not been to the Union Theatre before but it was easy to find. Luckily I had allowed plenty of time to find it so the horrendous delay due to the temporary closure of Waterloo Station (person on the tracks) was not a significant problem, though it did reduce my evening meal to a takeaway pasty from the station.

At least I had time for a bottle of Becks at the theatre where the box office was conveniently situated in the bar.

As I collected my reusable ticket (I like theatres that do not give out throw-away paper tickets) I was told that the play was in three parts with two breaks and that we would be standing for the first fifteen minutes. I liked the sound of that.

As we entered the small dark space that is Union Theatre we joined a reception of some sort with Lear standing next to the piano which her youngest daughter Cordelia was playing. The other guests were standing around and we joined them.

As the drama opened the cast moved through us and I had to make room for the a couple of times.

At the end of the first scene we retired to the seats that ringed three sides of the performance area in single-file.

The dark space was used imaginatively and the only significant props used were the piano and a desk where the Earl of Gloucester worked.

Incidentally, the usual actor in this role had had an accident just a couple of days before and another member of the cast had had to step up to the role and he had to refer to the script occasionally. We were warned beforehand that this was the case and it is a testament to the quality of the performance that this did not matter in the least. At the curtain call Gloucester got an especially loud reception. It was well deserved.

Clever use was made of lighting too. The most memorable was at the start of the second session where Lear and her Fool were heading for Dover and the only lighting was the electric torches that they each carried.

It was all very intense and dramatic. And then it got even better.

As we entered the theatre for the third and final time we saw that most of the stage was given over to a large table (just as it had been at the National Theatre) and there were seats at it. I was lucky to get on in the middle. The seat next to me was reserved for Regan and she died sitting next to me while her sister, Goneril, sat opposite her delighting in the work of her poison.

A lot of the actioned happened on the table itself and a few people died just in front of me. Theatre does not get much more immersive than that.

A good script and good direction still needs a good cast to make the play work and this cast was excellent. Sadly the Union Theatre's website only lists the cast and does not put names to roles so I will just name a few roles that I especially liked. Edmund, Gloucester's illegitimate son, was brash, confident and nasty as he stepped in to the void created by Lear's insanity and Edgar rose magnificently to undo the tragedy wrought by Edmund.

And Ursula Mohan did what Lear has to do swinging through moods and delusions as first she sparked the tragedy, then railed against it and final succumbed to it.

Following close on the heals of a superb Hamlet, this magnificent production of Lear showed how dramatic and relevant Shakespeare can still be in the right hands. It also showed how imaginative and accomplished small theatres can be.