Dial ‘M’ For Murder

The story of a jealous and avaricious husband attempting to commit the perfect murder was retold in a subtle, moderately suspenseful production of the Hitchcockian classic, Dial ‘M’ for Murder. Although adequately managing to ratchet up the tension at points, the play over all proved to be distinctly underwhelming and formulaic, with little evidence of  innovation or original interpretation.

It was a clever use of set design which conveyed much of the silent, slow sense of menace and forboding that the play did manage to achieve.  The use of a swivelling stage, silently rotating as the action proceeded created a subtle sense of disorientation, whilst the deceptively simple use of a red veil like curtain, which would at times move around much as the stage did, added a sinister unease.

An unwelcomely discordant note was struck with the clumsily staged strangling scene;  accompanied by melodramatic music, slightly amateurish ‘gagging’ sound effects, and a badly choreographed and unconvincing physical struggle between   Sheila Wendice (Aislin McGuckin) and the would-be murderer Captain Lesgate (Daniel Hill), I disliked this departure from the effectively disconcerting stillness of the production; rather than making me jump it  made me laugh a little at how silly it was.

The actors on the whole were competent , with distinguishing turns from Richard Lintern as Tony Wendice and  Des McAleer as Inspector Hubbard. One of the more chilling moments of the play occurred when Wendice, after  mistakenly thinking that he had evaded the detective’s suspicion , stood alone on the stage and hugged himself in delight, emitting the creepiest of giggles.

Despite some striking moments however, this revival of Dial ‘M’ for Murder seemed unoriginal and unexciting, more like an imitation of the cinematic version than anything else.

Psychic Sally

An Audience with Sally Morgan, from start to finish, was not as we had expected. Too accurate at points to be completely dismissed but too inaccurate at others to be entirely believed, it was nevertheless  both compelling and uncomfortable throughout.

Arriving with a combination of scepticism and curiosity, the former was heightened by the slick video montage that greeted the  audience at the beginning of the show.   Featuring celebrities emphatically pronouncing their faith in Morgan as a psychic, and footage of some of Morgan’s more dramatic spiritual encounters added a sense of initial cynicism to the proceedings, suggesting as it did a commercially minded production eager to capitalize upon the fame of     Morgan’s more recognizable clients  and the more sensationalist of her readings.

We were surprised then to find Morgan to be personable, sympathetic and unpretentious.  Indeed, the content and format of the show largely contradicted the way in which it was marketed.  Billed as an ‘ an entertaining…theatrical spectacle’ on the flyer, (which also included  a message of thanks from Princess Diana) what unfolded in the Hawth’s theatre was hardly what one might call entertainment, unless it was of the  voyeuristic and macabre sort.

An Audience with Sally Morgan consisted primarily of Morgan sensing spiritual ‘visitors’, usually deceased relatives of members of the audience, who would relay via  the medium  messages  and greetings to  their loved ones  still living on the ‘earthly plane’.  In this respect  it is hard to see the  harm in a medium. If a few members of the audience go away feeling comforted and  reassured, there can be little wrong in that. Like a sympathetic aunt, Morgan offered solace for audience participants, many of whom were clearly still grieving the loss of a loved one

What complicated the situation was the fact that highly private moments of frequently intense grief were played out as public spectacle.  As mere bystanders one felt more intrusive than anything else. One must also consider the vulnerability of those in the audience, who appeared to have  come with the anticipation of communicating with deceased family members and friends. The reality of the impressionability of those with a deep rooted emotional investment in the show is a disconcerting one.

Hannah Guinness and Olivia Wilson

Everything must go: papas, puppets and pathos

One of the performance editors told me she had a puppet show to review: ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘That sounds like a larf’. But, happily, the ‘puppet show’ formed only a fifth of this stunning performance from award-winning performer Kristin Fredricksson. A live art extravaganza comprising narration, film, cardboard cut-outs, wild movement and delicate puppetry, this was a one-woman-wonder portrayal of the creator’s father, Karl a man who – quite literally – showed his bloomers to orthodoxy. The necessarily unconventional performance took us on a family saga, from tricky beginnings in Wales, through the shockingly sudden death of Karl’s wife and the consequent genesis of his cross-dressing, to the solicitous ingenuity that her father developed later on in life.

Kristin first performed the show with her father, and the pair danced offstage together in the final scene. Sadly, however, Karl died in June this year (at the ripe old age of 78), and that scene was replaced with video footage of the original performance.

Kristin had already created a remarkable living memorial of her father and his story, but it now takes on a new poignancy. Why brood quietly in your bedroom and sigh at the passing of a person the world should have known, but didn’t? Show the world that person! And he was quite a man: hurdler, P.E. teacher (who covertly taught his pupils ballet), cross-dresser, player of characters, obsessive hoarder. He undoubtedly bordered on fruit-cake status, with snippets of film showing us his penchant for milk-crate collection and nipple exposure; one felt at times that his constant masquerading was almost an obstruction to his love for his daughters.

The piece having been conceived and performed before Karl’s death, the newer audiences’ perceptions of meaning within the play are inevitably transformed. Whilst Kristin’s intentions may have remained the same, her father’s passing has invested the work with an increased sense of loss and longing. This new element of mourning seemed to draw out the intensity of the love felt between father and daughter, with a gut-wrenching rawness that left the audience weeping. It is said that all people grieve in their own way and I’m sure that’s true, but Kristin really showed us a unique approach: on stage, unaided, in an hour of inspired, magic theatricality.

‘Everything Must Go’ was staged at The Basement, 24 Kensington Street. For other similarly original productions, see their December listings at
thebasement.uk.com

Short Fiction

Short Fuse, is marketed as ‘a night of short stories’, that takes place monthly at Komedia Downstairs. This marketing is clever: it completely draws the attention away from the importance of the storytelling and focuses entirely on the story itself.  It is a night for writers to showcase the art of short fiction not the fine art of storytelling and although I did, over all, have a very good time, I  do think that is a shame. As it has to be said my reception of the Nouvelle Noir stories themselves was significantly impeded by poor delivery. After all, a narrative, no matter how compelling, cannot fail to be deadened somewhat, by a monotone and muffled reading.

A noteworthy exception was A.K. Benedict, a former Sussex student,  who read ‘The Laboratory’; the eighth chapter of her latest novel ‘The Beauty of Murder’ which although somewhat absurdist in isolation, was read in such an endearing manner that you could not fail to warm to her. Even if that impression did jar, and not only slightly, with the gaseous, swollen and maggot infested testicles she was so meticulous in describing.  James Burt’s enthusiasm also added much hilarity to his bizarre tale of the weird and wonderful life of cartoon actor Bugs Bunny and Charlie McQuaker’s wonderful Irish accent brought his Brighton based fiction of senseless violence vivdly to life.  Artistic director of Short Fuse herself Tara Gould was also without doubt, another highlight of the show. Her first attempt at writing nouvelle noir, ‘Red Sails’, was utterly engrossing for both the harrowingly matter of fact narrative of a rape victim and her emphatic delivery.

Komedia Downstairs was the perfect venue for exploring the sordid underworld of Nouvelle Noir; the stage was lit only by the red glow of the themed visuals and the flickering flames of candle light, the room dark and the material performed even darker. For that reason, regardless of inconsistencies in performance, if you like short stories, Short Fuse is returning to Komedia on the 6th December, this time with the theme of the Uncanny, which will definitely be worth a look in.

Helen Grace

Boycott instead of dialogue?

The fact that students at Sussex have voted for a boycott against Israeli goods on campus during a strongly contested referendum shows that the complicated political situation in the Middle East continues to be a highly emotional issue shaped by strongly differing views and interpretations of the roots, the history and the political reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Read more

Students protest to stop the cuts

Last Thursday the 26th November, ‘Stop the Cuts’ protestors descended on Bramber House to lobby the Vice-Chancellor, Michael Farthing, over the latest proposed cut backs and redundancies at Sussex.

The University has announced that it will be making over 100 redundancies across the campus as of July 31st. These job losses will affect the departments of Life Sciences, Informatics, Engineering, History, and English, as well as the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE).
Read more

The Pink Bear Club

The opening skit of The Pink Bear Club set a tone that the rest of the show lived up to: a tremulous man, wearing only a pair of briefs and mouse ears, smeared honey on his bare chest at the bidding of an unseen master named “Mister Bear.” Despite what you might think, this was not in fact, sexy. The rest of the show took it from there, alternating frighteningly manic live sketches with irreverent short films.

As is bound to be the case in any sketch comedy show, the results were mixed. The more successful sketches were the ones that required a little more thought on the part of the audience and a little less crazed mugging from the performers. The best bits were the simplest, like the video diaries of “Terry Bunt,” who complained about Liverpool failing to acknowledge its “favourite son”- The Hulk, and the Fry-and-Laurie style job interview in which a man seeking a zoo-keeping position was asked to wring the neck of a baby penguin.

 The theme of murder and pink bears continued off and on, although the  appearance of Mister Bear himself turned out to be something of a shrieking anticlimax after the wry humour of tabloid news-style interviews with jaded woodland creatures. It was hard to find a baseline for a show that veered so rapidly between satire, dementia, and deliberate ‘Office’-style awkwardness, but it was still more entertaining than your average episode of Saturday Night Live.

Cabaret Brecht

Cabaret Brecht; a combination of poems, plays and songs, extracted and adapted from Brecht’s lesser known work, was outstanding.  Both comical and political, nonsensical and logical, Cabaret Brecht was accessible, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable. It was a nuanced and well structured performance which had clearly been carefully considered by director, Sussex graduate, Alex Brown. The Roll Call of the Virtues and Vices with its highly choreographed movement was particular testament to this.
A talented cast, that included Sussex students Benedict Shaw and Sanya Adebola, demonstrated a remarkable versatility; adapting easily to the variety of acting styles and dramatic skills that the cabaret style show required, moving seamlessly from intense sincerity to farcical comedy with tremendous success.  Notably impressive was the large amount of singing that the show incorporated and the reality that the actors were capable of doing more than simply carrying a tune. In fact the ensemble songs were always noteworthy and the moving Song of a German Mother, sung beautifully by Katherine Kotz was one of the highlights of the whole performance.
For me, it was the touching moments like this one that were the most affecting. Although the comic timing and emphasis of the humorous pieces, of which Dansen was particularly worth mentioning, was consistently flawless, it was the genuine sincerity of the more emotive pieces that was most effective. For this reason, the closing piece, a poem entitled Everything Changes, proved a perfect ending: splitting the lines between the entire cast not only emphasised the repetitiveness of the poem’s very form, reaffirming the thoughtfulness of the direction, but also reinforced the poignancy of its sentiment. I thought this performance was exceptional and I have read this poem every day since.

The Grass is Greener

‘The Grass is Greener’ is undeniably a slick, polished, well acted and aesthetically pleasing production. The script is competent throughout and funny in parts, and although there are occasional comic gems and tastefully set up gags, it is a muted comedy style which is particular to the 50s when it was written and set. Unfortunately, this dated feel extends throughout the piece, and there is a pervasive sense of the inaccessible, elitist and rather antiquated style and subject matter of traditional theatre: the universality of enumerable other classic plays is sadly lacking.
Although the script is somewhat moralistic, with the clear maxim that marriage is for better or worse, it treads quite lightly, and so avoids having many eye rolling moments. Nonetheless, once the situation of the impoverished English Lord’s wife falling in love with the American oil millionaire is set up, it is apparent that the plot could only result in a couple of outcomes, and the denouement feels slightly inevitable, without any real sense of excitement or tension. The actors are all strong and polished in their roles, with Liza Goddard and Christopher Cazenove delivering particularly good performances as Lord and Lady of the manor. This may be due to the fact that they are the only fleshed-out roles, next to the stereotypes of the butler, rich American and high-society diva.
A polished production with a rather irrelevant script, it is a shame that pieces of theatre with so much money thrown at them cannot be innovative or important in the context of their contemporary society. ‘The Grass is Greener’ feels sadly representative of the world of mainstream theatre: catering for a well off, elderly audience who are the only ones willing and able to pay en masse the extraordinarily high ticket prices of venues such as the Theatre Royal.

Blood Brothers

Sitting in my seat before the curtain came up, I was feeling a little apprehensive. Musicals were something I enjoyed as a child, but were increasingly beginning to irritate me as the years went by. Having not heard of this famous production before, I was intrigued to see what all the fuss was about.

This story follows the lives of twin brothers raised by different mothers, one biological, and one desperate for a child. Willy Russell avoids narrowly focusing on the theme of separation and guilt,  broadening the story’s appeal by looking at class division: Eddy, the rich, well-educated and reserved boy is familiar with things such as a dictionary, whereas Mickey, the cheeky, uneducated brother uses profanities and has bad habits. Despite these obvious caricatures, the boys remain likeable, with credit given to the actors Sean Jones and Simon Willmont.

The lives of the brothers constantly intertwine, though eventually taking strikingly different paths – a comment on the constrains of class structure perhaps. Indeed, the continuing success of this production is perhaps reliant on the prevalence of class consciousness as an issue, something I am sure Russell was aware of.

The back bone of this performance was the outstanding cast, with particular acclaim to the leads – Lyn Paul, Sean Jones, Simon Willmont and Anna Sambrooks – who together made it engaging and energetic. The music was impressive too; the sound vibrant, the voices powerful, and the range of songs managed a good balance between sing-song crowd pleasers and the more serious numbers.

The one criticism of this water-tight performance would be of the on-stage narrator, whose role was to warn characters that their actions may have negative consequences. However, his often High School Musical-esque performance style distracted me. His appearances were comical, not foreboding, turning the play at times into a quasi pantomime, with lines such as “the devils right behind ya!”.

Towards the end, my friend turned to me and said, “I swear this is a Disney song”, which I felt summarised the performance well. On the surface fun and enjoyable, but when you scratched away a little, some interesting issues buried underneath. If you get the chance, it’s definitely worth a see.